Evidence of Life. Barbara Sissel Taylor

she said. “I’m fine. Fine,” she reiterated.

      * * *

      The next day, working like demons, they got the yard work caught up and thoroughly mucked out the horse stalls. They labored mostly in silence as if they had no idea what to say or how to be around each other anymore.

      At dinner, they sat at the kitchen table in a well of light, silverware clanking monotonously against china. Abby couldn’t stand it. “When are finals?” she asked, although she knew, but she couldn’t think of anything else, and anyway, it was a normal, motherly-type question.

      “Next week,” Jake answered.

      “I guess you’re studying like mad then.”

      “Yeah.”

      “But you’re okay, grade-wise?”

      “Yeah.” He forked bites of meatloaf into his mouth, keeping his gaze from hers.

      Deliberately, Abby thought, the same as answering her in monosyllables was deliberate. This was not normal. “Jake, is anything wrong?”

      His head came up. “Wrong? Gosh, Mom, what could be wrong? Here we are at the dinner table, the two of us, one big happy family with a mountain of food.”

      She frowned at him. “I knew you’d be starved. You always are when you come home.”

      “I can’t take their place. I can’t eat for them. I can’t be here all the time like they were.”

      “I don’t expect that.”

      Jake thrust aside his napkin and stood up; he took his dishes to the sink and rinsed them. He came for Abby’s.

      She grasped his wrist. “I should have stopped them; that’s what you think, isn’t it?”

      “How? It isn’t like Dad was going to listen to you.”

      She loosened her hold, and he took her plate away.

      He turned from the sink, towel in hand. “You aren’t going all paranoid on me now, are you?”

      Her laugh was uneasy. “Maybe I am.”

      His smile seemed forced; it seemed pitying. He said, “I’ll try and come home more, okay?”

      He left for school the next day, and without him the house was dead still again.

      Chapter 6

      In May, nearly seven weeks after the flood, Dennis Henderson came to Abby’s house to collect DNA samples. When Abby opened the door, he took his hat from his head and said, “I’m sorry I have to put you through this.”

      She widened the door, allowing him to enter. “I can’t believe it’s come to this.”

      He followed her through the house, and Abby saw how it must appear to him. He couldn’t fail to notice the neglect, the musty smell, the dust everywhere, the sheet and blanket tossed in a heap on the sofa in the den where she was sleeping. She thought of making an excuse. Or she could tell him the truth, that she couldn’t bring herself to do the household chores, to wash the clothes, to dust and scour. The messiness and smells were all that was left of her husband and daughter, and she clung to them.

      “I expected one of your deputies.” She poured tea over ice into two glasses.

      “I’m trying to give them a break.” He put the metal case on the table next to his hat. “We’ve made a lot of progress since the flood, but it’s still pretty much nonstop.”

      She brought the tea to the table, indicating he should sit. She set the sugar bowl within his reach, and Abby sat down across from him. “I thought you were the boss.”

      “Yes, ma’am, but the work is the work and has to be done. This has to be done.” His eyes were grave, quiet.

      “I know you explained what you needed when you called, Sheriff Henderson, but I’m still not sure I understand. On television, the police take hair and—”

      “Hair will work, and please, call me Dennis.” He opened the case and took out square envelopes made from something transparent.

      “We’ll have to go upstairs,” Abby said, standing.

      Again she was conscious of his steps following hers, that she was leading a stranger deeper into her family’s private quarters. She felt exposed. Vulnerable. She hesitated in the doorway of the bathroom that joined Lindsey’s bedroom to the guest room. There was a scrap of white, lace-trimmed nylon poking out of the hamper door. Abby recognized it was a pair of underwear, Lindsey’s underwear, and her discomfiture increased. An athletic sock lay on the floor underneath. She had left it there on purpose, knowing when she picked it up, it would feel crunchy. It would leave a powdering of fine dirt from the barn on her hand.

      Dennis saw the focus of her attention and smiled when their eyes met. He was trying to reassure her, to ease her anxiety. She opened a drawer and took a round-bristled hairbrush with a polka dot handle from the jumbled collection. “Her hair is long,” she said, “and there’s so much of it. She wants to get it cut, but she worries her dad will be unhappy if she does.” Abby looked ruefully at Dennis. “I end up having to do it for her about half the time.”

      When Dennis smiled again, Abby noticed one of his front teeth was chipped. She imagined there were fights in his line of work, men hitting each other. She looked away. “Nick says it’s fine with him if she wants to cut it short. Almost anything she does is fine with him.”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “You think they’re dead, don’t you?”

      Dennis rubbed two fingers near the center of his forehead.

      Abby began unwinding long hairs from the bristles of Lindsey’s brush, seeing them through the prism of her unshed tears. She tucked them into the envelope Dennis held open.

      He bent to label it. “Of all the things in the world that are hard,” he said, keeping his eye on what he was doing, “not knowing is the worst. I want to find your husband and daughter, Mrs. Bennett, and I’m going to do everything I can to accomplish that. So will my deputies. I want you to know that.”

      She brought her hands to her face. He plucked a tissue from the box on the vanity and gave it to her. And he waited for her to mop up and blow her nose as if he had all the time in the world, as if he had been born to wait through a woman’s tears.

      “I guess you’re used to hysterics.”

      “I don’t like this part of the job, ma’am. I never get used to it.”

      “Abby, please. Ma’am is what my students called me.”

      “You teach school?”

      “I did. I’ve been thinking of going back.”

      “What grade?”

      “Kindergarten for a while and then second grade.”

      “Man.” Dennis grinned. “Of all the years I was in school, through college, the academy, you name it, my kindergarten teacher is the one I remember. Miss Sneed. She taught me to read. Taught me to tie my shoes. I thought when I grew up, I was going to marry her.”

      Abby said, “I thought all little boys wanted to marry their mothers.”

      “I never knew mine,” Dennis said. “She and my dad were killed in a bus accident right after I was born.”

      Instinctively, Abby reached out, touched his wrist, murmured regret.

      “It’s all right,” Dennis said.

      Abby led the way into the hall. The bedroom she and Nick shared was to her left, but she hesitated, reluctant to go into that room with Dennis. She said Nick only had one hairbrush, and she didn’t think he would have left it behind. “Is there something else that will work?” she asked.

      He