“I’ll be relieved when this is over, won’t you? When we can arrange for a proper burial.” Louise went on as if she hadn’t heard Abby. “We won’t have a moment’s peace until then, Abby. Do you know that? Those media ghouls won’t leave us alone; they won’t allow us to move on, if it’s even possible after a thing like this.”
“Move on?” Abby straightened. “From what? We don’t even know what happened, Louise. I’m not sure anymore why Nick came out here. He and Lindsey spent Friday night in San Antonio for some reason. You don’t know why, do you?”
“I know he made the trip to give you time to yourself. He was always talking about how much you treasured having time to yourself.”
“He told you that?” Tears thickened in Abby’s throat. Time to herself. How could she have ever wished for it?
“Yes. Not that he had to. Anyone with eyes could see—”
“You blame me, is that it? You think it’s my fault Nick came here.”
Louise began an answer, but Abby cut her off. “That’s fine, Louise. You’re free to think whatever you like, but as you have often pointed out to me, your son has a mind of his own. I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d begged.” Unless I’d never been born, Abby thought. Unless I’d never met Nick, never married him. She half expected Louise to say these things.
But Louise was backing down. She said she was sorry. She said, “You and Jake are all I have left.”
But Abby said, “No, we’re going to find them, Louise. You’ll see.” And she wondered when she hung up how Nick’s own mother could have so little faith. If it were Jake, Abby thought, she would never give up searching. She would never stop until she knew exactly what had happened to him.
Chapter 4
Abby and Kate spent a portion of every day searching the area around the ranch, or they chose a section near one of the rural county roads that seemed to meander in every direction. Abby knew it was complete folly, and she hated that she felt compelled to do it, that she couldn’t stop herself. Kate went, too, every time, and when Abby struggled to put into words what it meant to her, Kate hugged her and shushed her and said, “It’s all right,” or “Never mind,” or “You’d do the same for me.”
One day, after searching a shallow gorge, they were coming back to the car—they’d driven Nick’s BMW that day—and they caught Nadine Betts looking inside it.
“I don’t believe it,” Abby said to Kate.
“I do,” Kate answered.
“What are you doing?” Abby shouted, quickening her steps.
The reporter jumped back. “I was just passing by,” she said as if anyone would find that believable. “I saw the car and thought there’d been an accident, that you might need help.”
“Oh, right.” Abby shot Kate a look.
“But now that we’ve met up this way—” the reporter ignored Abby’s sarcasm “—exactly what are you doing out here, Mrs. Bennett?”
“Do you have nothing better to do than to follow me around?” Abby demanded. “Do you think if you spy on me long enough, I’ll do something that’s, what—newsworthy? Incriminating?”
Kate said, “Really, Nadine. You need to find another story. Isn’t it bingo night at the Knights of Columbus? Didn’t I hear that Pratt Street United Methodist Church is having a pancake supper?”
“Very funny,” Nadine said. “What have you heard from your husband, Mrs. Bennett?”
“Leave me and my family alone, and that includes my mother-in-law.” Abby brushed by the reporter and got into the car. Kate did the same.
“Will she ever give up?” Abby looked in the rearview as she drove away. Nadine was still there, standing inside the open door of her car, watching them.
“She just wants a story, a headline. Her ticket to the big leagues, I guess.”
“Maybe.” Abby said, but she thought there was more to it, that Nadine’s interest was more personal, and it scared her.
* * *
On what turned out to be Abby’s last afternoon at Kate’s, Dennis dropped by. Kate saw him and Abby into the living room, and after she had served coffee, she excused herself and left them sitting on opposite ends of her cream-colored leather sectional. Abby was nervous. She didn’t know what to say.
After a moment, Dennis sat forward. His hands were strong, long-fingered and graceful, and he held them in a loose clasp between his knees. He was dressed in jeans and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
She said, “I’ve never seen you out of uniform.”
“I was ordered to take the day off,” he said.
“My daughter and my husband have been missing nearly a month,” she said.
Dennis’s gaze was intent, gentle. “It’s possible we’ll never find them.”
Abby pressed her lips together, feeling heat gather in the front of her skull.
“It was some thirty-plus inches of rain in two days. We lost nearly all the crossings and a lot of the bridges on most of the major roads. There’s a lot of wild country, a lot of canyons and gorges. There were rock slides, places where the entire cliff face came down. We’ve got secondary roads buried under rubble or torn up by the water from one end of a three-county area to the other. Every river flowed out of its banks, and when you get that kind of water raging that way, it gets a hold on things—cars, houses, trees, what-have-you—and it takes them wherever it wants.”
Dennis spoke of the water as if it were conscious, as if it had mind and will, a brain. “There’s a lot of ground to cover, miles and miles crisscrossed by rivers and streams and creeks, and frankly, there’s just a whole lot of it that’s not accessible at all, not even on a good day.”
Abby studied the pattern of veins on the backs of Dennis’s hands, the cording of blue that traced the pale flesh inside one wrist and disappeared into the crook of an elbow, a sprinkling of freckles on his forearms. She looked at his kind face, his hazel eyes. The delicate netting of lines at the corners suggested exposure to sun and laughter. He didn’t like having to tell her these things, having to prepare her for the worst. He hadn’t liked questioning her in the first hours after her arrival here. She was sorry for him.
He pushed his untouched mug of coffee a little farther toward the center of the coffee table and continued. “Let’s say they were on Highway 46 like the attendant at the Shell station said, but they got off for some reason, took one of the ranch roads, by accident maybe, and we don’t know that, but if they did, then— Well, there’s no telling. Now there are still crews out, clearing and repairing, and so forth. They’ll be at it for weeks so it’s possible they could come across something, you know?”
She nodded.
“I just don’t want to give you false hope.”
She thought of saying she would settle for any kind of hope, false or otherwise.
He shifted his elbows off his knees and straightened, looking uncomfortable, and as if he could read her anxiety, he spoke quickly. “It’s like I’ve said before, it would be really helpful if I knew what your husband had in mind coming out here, or where he was headed after he left Boerne, assuming that was your Cherokee the kid saw leaving the gas station.”
It would be helpful if you knew? The retort rose like acid. It brought Abby to her feet. She went to the wall of glass and looked out, seeking relief in the view. The scene was as still, as quiet and lovely as a painting. Even the water was undisturbed by all but the faintest tracing of ripples. It was impossible to imagine that it had ever flung itself over its banks and run amok across