The Divide by Nicholas Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

they ever talked nowadays. Then Ben realized that by found, she meant alive. He swallowed, still struggling to clear his head.
    “Sarah—”
    “For heaven’s sake, Benjamin! Tell me!”
    “She’s dead.”
    “What?”
    It was more an intake of breath than a word. How could he blurt it out like that? Kendrick had broken the news to him with so much more finesse. He stumbled on.
    “They found her body. In Montana. Somewhere in the mountains.”
    “No. Abbie. Oh, no. No . . .”
    She began a low, moaning wail and then tried to say something but couldn’t. And because the sound was so harrowing he began to talk, just to keep it from his ears. He talked and went on talking, trying to seem calm and clear, telling her what he knew, about the DNA and the fingerprints and where the body was being kept and about the decisions that they were going to have to make, until she screamed at him and told him to stop. At that his voice cracked and he lost control, as if all his words had emptied and weakened him.
    And, separated by so many thousand miles and by distance of another kind far greater, they sobbed as one but each alone for the young life they had together spawned and loved and separately lost.
     
     
     
    The funeral home, so Ben had been told, was only a short drive from Missoula Airport and he had already resolved that he would go there as soon as his flight got in. He hadn’t told Sarah he was going to do this and he knew he should probably wait until she arrived from New York so they could go there together. But when he landed and switched on his cell phone there was a message from her saying she was having to take a later flight. She wouldn’t be getting into Missoula until the evening, by which time the funeral home would be shut. That meant going there with her tomorrow. He couldn’t wait that long.
    Despite Kendrick’s assurance that the identification was one hundred percent certain, there lingered in Ben’s mind just a sliver of doubt that they might have made a mistake. He’d once read about a case where this had happened. Someone had mixed up two sets of samples and put the wrong names on them. He had to see her, see with his own eyes that it was Abbie.
    He had brought only hand baggage and was one of the first off the flight. The chirpy young woman at the Hertz desk welcomed him like an old friend but that was probably just how they were trained.
    “On vacation?” she asked.
    “No, I’m here . . . to see my daughter.”
    “That’s nice. She’s at UM, right?”
    “She was, yes.”
    It took her only a few minutes to process the paperwork. She told him the bay number of the car and handed him the documents and keys.
    “So, you’re all set. You have a great time.”
    Ben thanked her and went out through the double glass doors. The sky was vaulted in slate-colored cloud and the air felt warm and restless as if at any moment it might rain. Abbie used to say the weather in Montana was like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: You never knew what you were gonna get. He remembered that first visit to Missoula, more than five years ago, when he and Sarah had flown here with her to check out the university. It was late October and when they arrived it was eighty degrees. They woke the next day to a foot of snow and had to go out and buy warmer clothes. At a store on North Higgins they had bought Abbie a cerise Patagonia ski jacket that cost more than two hundred bucks. God, she’d looked so beautiful that day. So confident, so full of joy.
    Ben stopped himself. He mustn’t think about her that way. There was too much to be sorted out, important decisions to be made, people to talk to, the sheriff, the local FBI people, find out what they thought had happened. If he let himself remember her like that, all aglow and happy, then he would be sure to lose it and be unable to think straight. Above all, Sarah would need him to be strong. He didn’t want to let her down, give her yet another reason to hate