Abby turned on her side, jerking on the sheet, cramming a corner of it into her mouth, and when the cry broke from her ribs, it wasn’t louder than a whimper.
* * *
She woke later in a panic, unable to believe she’d slept, uncertain of where she was, and then the sound of the rain reminded her. It peppered the window in wind-driven gusts. Abby pressed her fingertips to her ears, and still she could hear it; its rattling insistence...the never-ending drops forming rivulets, the rivulets making streams, the streams combining into rivers. Rivers rising over their banks. Endless flooding and drowning and dripping and wet. Water sloshing everywhere. She lay staring at the ceiling. Why was she here safe and warm and dry, while her family was out there shivering and alone in the cold and the dark and—
But she couldn’t do this, couldn’t lie here with her mind spinning through the endless and terrifying loop of her own thoughts. Flinging aside the bedcovers, she got up. There was light coming from the great room, and she went toward it. A man was there, one of the paramedics she’d met earlier. Abby thought his name was Billy. Billy Clyde Coleman. He was sitting on the floor, eating a bowl of chili Kate had made earlier, and watching television. Abby imagined most everyone else was bedded down in the campers she’d seen parked everywhere or else in the bunkhouse. They’d get what rest they could before resuming the search effort at daybreak. But Billy was like her, Abby thought. He couldn’t sleep. She started to speak, to make him aware of her presence, but then she heard her name, Bennett, and her eyes jerked to the TV screen.
Catching sight of her, the paramedic raised the remote, saying he would turn it off.
“No!” Abby said. “Please. She’s talking about my family.”
“—attorney from Houston along with his daughter are among the missing, and at this point they are presumed drowned.”
“Oh!” The syllable popped from Abby’s mouth, a near shriek. She clapped her hands there. The commentator went on. Abby’s ears were ringing, but still she heard it. Heard the woman say the search effort for her family and the others had been downgraded. Now, rather than a rescue, what they hoped for was a recovery.
Of bodies, Abby thought. The commentator meant they hoped to recover the water-bloated remains of her husband and daughter. They would then return them to her for burial. And there was even more to be hoped for, according to the commentator. Closure, the woman said. Recovery of the bodies would give a measure of peace to the families and to the community that had suffered such a devastating loss.
Abby shook her head, no. She said, “No!” and repeated it, “Nonono.”
Billy came and led her to the sofa. He settled her there and reminded her that the story was unverified. He tried to reassure her. He gave her one of his soda crackers; he brought her a glass of water. She looked straight at him now, at the smooth curve of his cheeks, his relatively unlined brow, and she thought how young he was, not much older than Jake, and she would always believe that was what kept her from weeping. The idea of Jake being put into this position where he would be called on to comfort some hysterical woman.
She drank a little of the water, set the glass down and wedged her trembling hands between her knees, resisting an urge to lay her head there, too. “I’m okay,” she told Billy. “You should get some rest,” she added.
He nodded and sat on the opposite end of the sofa, and he was still there an hour or so later when morning sunlight burst roughshod into the room, making Abby blink. Billy turned to her, looking astonished. “Am I dreaming?” he asked.
“Do you know who Adam Sandoval is?” she asked.
“The jerk who stole the money from those kids who got the bad vaccine? Yeah, who doesn’t?”
“Did you know he was missing? Did they say anything about him when you were watching the news?”
Billy said no. He said he’d heard Adam jumped bail, that he might be somewhere in the area. Billy said, “If that’s true, I hope he drowned.”
Abby looked into her lap. She would not go there; she would not examine the connection her mind was trying to make between Adam’s disappearance and Nick’s. There was nothing there. Nothing. Nick wouldn’t endanger Lindsey in that way. He couldn’t.
“It should get easier now,” Billy said.
“Easier?”
“The rescue effort, you know, the work should go faster now that the worst is over.” He reddened. “I meant the rain, that it’s stopped.”
Abby knew what he meant, and she managed a smile. She wouldn’t tell him what she thought, that the worst wouldn’t be over until her family was found.
Chapter 3
It was one of those perfect spring days: a breeze fiddled along under a blue umbrella sky while the sun rose, a butter-yellow balloon above the sodden earth. It was the picture of innocence, a child’s crayon drawing. Not one vestige remained of the horrible rain Abby had driven through to get here, and it disconcerted and infuriated her...this weather that lay on her like a blessing, that wouldn’t hurt a fly, that would take nothing from anyone. She felt mocked by it. She paced the length of Kate’s porch feeling she was the brunt of its joke. An awful noise began to build inside her, and when it pushed into her throat, she bit down hard against it, went back into the house and found Kate in the kitchen. “I have to call Louise,” she said. “I can’t put it off any longer.”
“I can do it, if you want.” Kate switched on the coffeemaker. She’d dragged out the big one, the forty-cupper that she and George used during roundup or rodeo days when they fed and coffee’d dozens of ranch hands, men who bunked with them, who loved to cowboy. Now a lot of those same men were here in a far different capacity, and Abby was so grateful for their presence. As long as they stayed, there was activity and there was hope.
She opened the dishwasher and began unloading the clean dishes. “As much as I dread it, I should be the one to tell her that her son and granddaughter are missing.”
“I’ll sit with you then.”
“I’m worried she’s alone. I wish I knew a friend to call for her, who could be with her. She’ll be devastated.”
Kate stowed the glasses Abby handed her in the cabinet. “Won’t her housekeeper be there? Maybe she’ll answer. It might help to soften the news.”
But it wasn’t Louise’s housekeeper who answered Abby’s call. It was Louise herself.
“There must be more that can be done,” she said through her tears. “You aren’t thinking clearly, Abby. Of course, you aren’t.” Louise blew her nose, and Abby heard the jangle of her bracelets. “I’m coming there.”
“No, Louise, you can’t.”
“What? Of course, I can. For heaven’s sake, I’m Nicholas’s mother. I’m Lindsey’s grandmother.”
“I know, but the roads are still closed. They’re asking people to stay—”
“I’ll fly then. It will be quicker in any case. You can pick me up in Austin or San Antonio.”
“The airports are closed, too, Louise. I’m so sorry.” Abby meant it. She and Louise had never had an easy relationship,