“It isn’t Dad on that surveillance tape,” Jake said.
Abby wished she could be as certain.
They had looked at it a few days ago. Dennis had driven them to San Antonio and accompanied them into the D.A.’s office. The quality of the film was as poor as everyone had said. The images of the two men had been grainy and distorted, their movements jerky, like puppets on strings. The detective in charge of the case had pointed out that the fair-haired man on the left was the one they had tentatively identified as Adam. Abby had focused on the dark-haired man on the right. She’d asked to have the video replayed twice and watched the man’s gestures; she’d studied his posture, the tilt of his chin, convinced she would be able to identify whether or not it was Nick from these small details. But she had not been sure, not beyond the shadow of a doubt, and she’d felt sick inside. She’d felt as if she had failed Nick in a vital and substantial way. And not only Nick, but Jake, too.
“Mom?”
Abby looked up. “I’m sure you’re right, Jake. It’s not Dad. It couldn’t be.” She offered reassurance she didn’t feel, but Jake took it.
He propped himself on his elbow and said, “He risked everything when he took on that case, you know? He was like a man on fire. His partners would have cut him loose, if he’d lost. He said so himself.”
It was true. Nick had said that. Taking on contingency cases like Helix Belle was the same as gambling. You could lose as easily as you could win, and the loss might not be limited to money. It might cost an attorney his reputation, his profession. Abby didn’t like gambling. Nick knew that; he chafed against her more cautious nature. But there were their children to care for, always their children who had to be considered. That’s what she pointed out to him. That was the authority she invoked.
Jake said, “I asked him once how come he did it, how come he took that case when he never did anything that crazy before, not with his work.”
“What did he say?”
“That you can wait too long to figure out what really matters in your life.”
Abby tried to sort that out, to make it fit with what she knew about Nick or what she thought she knew.
“Am I supposed to know what that means?” Jake was as mystified as she was.
“You didn’t ask him?”
“Why? He just would have started preaching about law school like he always does. How should I know? He’s your husband.”
Jake made it sound as if he blamed her, Abby thought. For what? Marrying Nick? For failing to convince him that Jake’s refusal to attend law school wasn’t the end of the world? She considered telling Jake that her and Nick’s harshest arguments were about him and Lindsey, but she didn’t want to go into it. Abby hugged her elbows. She felt as though the boundaries that defined their roles, hers as the parent and Jake’s as the child, were already disintegrating, and it dismayed her.
Jake flipped onto his belly. “I’m really tired. If I’m driving back to College Station tomorrow, I better get some sleep.”
* * *
But the following morning when they said goodbye, it didn’t look to Abby as if he’d slept much at all. He tossed his gear into the backseat of his Mustang. It was vintage, an original 1965 model that he and Nick had painstakingly restored. They’d only finished the project last year, and Abby was still sorry it was over, despite having to fight the grease and the constant sound of tinkering at all hours. She’d loved seeing their heads bent under the hood so close they were almost touching. The occasional rumbles of laughter, even the shouted curses had pleased her.
“I don’t want to go,” Jake said when he straightened, and Abby was unhinged at the look on his face. She saw the child he’d been, helpless and bewildered beyond explanation.
She said, “I know,” and stopped to find her composure, “but you heard Sheriff Henderson; he’s not giving up. The search just isn’t official anymore. We have to keep the faith ourselves, that’s all.”
“You’ll call?”
“The second I hear anything.”
Jake looked off, blinking.
She took his hand, then put her arms around him. “You should get going, okay? It’s best for you.” She held him at arm’s length. “Can you imagine what your sister will say if you blow your freshman year? You’ll never hear the end of it.”
Jake scoured his eyes with the heels of his hands. “She always has to have the last word, doesn’t she?”
Abby nodded, mouth trembling.
“I’d flunk out right now just to hear her.”
“Go,” Abby said.
And Jake did. And it was only after he disappeared from view that she sank to her knees and cried.
* * *
When Louise called Abby on her cell phone the following afternoon, she was alone. Kate was gone to the grocery store, and George was out helping a road crew with repairs. In her old life before the flood—BTF—Abby might have let the call slide to her voice mail. She and Louise had never been close. Louise had seen to it. She’d made it clear from the moment Nick introduced them, that she didn’t think Abby was good enough for her son. Louise had never said it to Abby’s face, but the sense of Louise’s disdain was implicit. Abby had long ago given up on the notion that Louise would change, that they would someday be friends, but now that they shared this terrible catastrophe, Abby felt her heart reaching for Louise. They needed each other, Abby thought. They would help each other.
“Where are you?” Louise asked, and Abby was shaken at how frail she sounded.
She answered that she was still at Kate’s. “I keep thinking any day we’ll get word, something concrete.”
“Lindsey and I were supposed to go to New York this summer.” Louise’s voice caught on her tears. “I was going to get tickets for the theater. We were going to tour the museums, shop Fifth Avenue.”
“I know.” Abby went through the house onto the deck. It had aggravated her when Louise had planned the trip with Lindsey as a gift for her upcoming sixteenth birthday. Louise had done nothing so special when Jake turned sixteen. Even for high school graduation, he had only merited a small television from Nick’s mother. So many times, Abby had wanted to ask her: Do you think the children don’t notice how differently you treat them? But Nick said Louise couldn’t help herself, that she had always wanted a daughter, and Abby’s compassion for him, for the sore ground of his childhood, had kept her silent.
“How did this happen? Why did it?” Louise demanded, and she was fuming now and shrill. Abby’s heart retreated. Louise would cling to her anger, her sense of offense even in the face of these horrific circumstances. Abby murmured something that was meant to placate, to comfort.
But Louise was beyond that point. “I can’t stand it. I’m telling you, Abby, I can’t! And as if it isn’t enough that my son and granddaughter drowned in that horrible flood, poor Nick’s name is being slandered again all over the television news. You’ve heard, I know you must have heard, from that reporter, that odious Nadine Betts.”
“She’s contacted you?”
“Oh, yes. She acts as if we’re friends.” Louise huffed. “As if I would tell that woman or any one of her kind anything.”
“You haven’t—?”
“No. I might be old, but my brain still works, thank you very much.” Louise was offended, but then, she often was. “She’s determined to believe that I know Adam Sandoval. She tried to tell me that I’d met him while he and Nick were in school together, as if she could know. I don’t see what difference it makes if that were true. I told her my son would never under any circumstances