Rocky Road (5 page)

It was as though once we knew we didn’t have to make it work, we both just calmed down and became friends again. It wasn’t enough to save our marriage, but it managed to preserve our relationship.”

“Did he see the kids regularly? You live in Vegas, right?”

Lori nodded, and sliced open another melon. “I moved down there to go to school, and he didn’t love it, but he supported me in it all the same—even paid my first year of tuition until I was able to get some scholarships. He was really good about staying involved with the kids and would drive all the way to Vegas when they had school things or sporting events whenever he could. I’m really glad that the kids have so many good memories.” She paused a moment and her face fell slightly. “My dad was a bum, and when he died a few years ago, I felt nothing but relief. It’s bittersweet but ultimately a good thing that the kids have reason to miss their dad.”

“And his new wife—do they get along with her?” Sadie couldn’t remember the new wife’s name.

“They like Anita. In fact, she invited the kids to stay through the weekend. They’ve always been involved in the cancer walk for the foundation, and she set aside little jobs for them to do this year, too. I’ve got class Thursday and Friday, so I’ll head home after the luncheon and be back for the walk Friday night. I don’t know what their relationship with her will be like in the future, but I’m glad she’s kept them a part of things this year. Helping with the luncheon is my way of showing that I’m still here—that I still want to be a part of the Hendricks family, and that I don’t consider myself no longer a part of it.”

“You are an impressive woman,” Sadie said. “I’m not sure many women in your shoes could encourage that relationship like you are.”

Lori shrugged but she seemed to appreciate the compliment. “Maybe you just got me at a good moment. I’ve certainly had my share of blind ones, where I can’t see anything but the ugly.”

“No one can fault you for that. It’s a very complex situation.”

They both went back to cutting their fruit, and Sadie noted that they were halfway finished, which meant that Sadie’s chance to talk to Dr. Hendricks’s ex-wife would be coming to an end. Someone Sadie hadn’t met came into the kitchen to get a washcloth and asked if they needed help. Lori assured her that they had things covered.

Sadie cut into the first watermelon and scowled at the juice that immediately began pooling beneath the heavy fruit—she hated cutting watermelon. There was no way around the mess, however, and so it must simply be tolerated. “When did you last talk to him?”

“A few days before he disappeared. He was supposed to have the kids that weekend, but called me to cancel a few days earlier—we had words about it.”

“Did he cancel very often?”

“No,” Lori said with a shake of her head. “But that was the third time he’d canceled since Christmas, so I was a little bugged about it. And he was supposed to take Joey on an overnight hike for a Scouting thing he needed so he could finish his Second Class, so Joey was really bummed about it, too.”

“But then Dr. Hendricks went hiking on his own?” Sadie asked. If he’d planned to go backpacking anyway, why didn’t he take his son with him?

“I know, right?” Lori’s look said that she questioned Dr. Hendricks’s actions but that she wasn’t bothered by the inconsistency as much as Sadie was. She shrugged. “Like I said, I’m really hoping this memorial service will help me be able to move forward and make peace with what’s happened.”

“What do you think did happen?” Sadie asked, moving more watermelon to the bowl. She realized too late that they had filled one bowl with cantaloupe and honeydew and the other bowl with watermelon, rather than mixing all three in both bowls. “To Dr. Hendricks, I mean.”

“I think he fell.” Lori said sadly. She was slicing more slowly than she had been, with thoughtful and ponderous motions. “He’d taken up backpacking a few years ago—he never did that kind of thing when we were married—but I don’t think he was as skilled as he thought he was. He’d told me about some canyoneering he’d done by himself, and I made him promise never to do that with the kids. I think he got in over his head on that last hike and either fell or got lost or something. Maybe that’s why he canceled with Joey—because he had plans to do something Joey couldn’t do with him.”

“It seems strange that no one found any of his gear.”

“It isn’t all that uncommon,” Lori said. She started slicing off the rind of her second watermelon. “After Trent disappeared, I spent a lot of time Googling similar situations—wanting to find some reason to believe that he’d come back, you know? There were dozens of cases where nothing was ever found or something was found years afterward. If he hiked into the red rock—which is what he loved—there are all kinds of crevices and slot canyons. That was his favorite thing to explore, and since he didn’t tell anyone where he was going, he could have gone anywhere. I really wish they’d found something, though. It would be easier for all of us to know for sure what happened to him.”

Sadie felt compelled to ask the next question even though it deserved a better foundation than she felt she had time to create. “Have you ever wondered if he just ... left?” She felt the need to qualify the question. “Remember how in that Julia Roberts movie she faked her own death in order to start over again? What if that’s why they never found anything?” Sadie held her breath a little, knowing that question was more pointed than the others.

Lori flicked a guilty look at Sadie and then turned back to the watermelon. She was quiet for several seconds while Sadie finished her section of watermelon and put it in the bowl. Juice continued to drip from the cutting board to the counter and onto the floor. Sadie was itching to get a mop, but she retained her focus. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about that, but he went to school for twelve years to have this life as a doctor, and he and Anita were really happy together—and I know he loves our kids. Besides that, when I last heard anything about the case, there was no money missing, no activity on his credit cards, and his phone was in his car. How could he disappear without any money? And what would he be running from? Especially so soon after Anita was sick? It just doesn’t fit his character.”

“Sick?” Sadie asked, startled by new information she hadn’t expected to hear. “Anita was sick?”

“She’s fine now,” Lori explained, looking up. “Didn’t you know she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year?”

“No,” Sadie said. Had that been in the articles Sadie hadn’t read? “That’s awful.”

“Stage one, I guess. Which meant a lumpectomy and a little chemo was all she needed. She claimed to be cancer free in March, but it’s one more reason I can’t imagine Trent leaving.”

“How had Dr. Hendricks coped with her diagnosis?” Sadie asked. How would it feel to have your wife diagnosed with the disease your foundation was attempting to combat? And yet it didn’t sound like it was a serious case, not like Tess’s cancer that had resulted in a double mastectomy at the age of twenty-nine.

Sadie thought of the photograph that showed Dr. Hendricks’s Cherokee not being at the Chuckwalla Trailhead that Sunday and felt a wave of realization finally wash over her—a realization she’d been trying to ignore since Caro had first showed her those articles. Dr. Hendricks had not gone hiking on a Friday afternoon in April and never come back, which is what everyone believed until Tess and Caro made the connection with the photographs. Unless Tess or Kathryn were lying about the date the photos were taken—and Sadie didn’t believe they were—there was a mystery here. A pretty big one. The answer to why his car wasn’t there the Sunday before it was discovered mattered.

Sadie felt a rush of adrenaline as she faced those two realizations full on. Tess and Caro must have already felt this, embraced it, and deemed it factual. Sadie was slower on the uptake, but now that Dr. Hendricks was more real to her, and Lori had given her more information, she knew she wouldn’t be able to let it go. Maybe she was becoming personally invested after all.

Lori continued speaking, and Sadie tuned in again. What had she asked about before zoning out? Oh, yeah, how had Dr. Hendricks coped with Anita’s cancer. “Trent didn’t talk to me about it, but Nikki said it seemed to really impact him—he even started going back to church, which he hadn’t done for years. I imagine it must have been really difficult for both of them—Anita pretty much runs the foundation. Having her own diagnosis after watching so many other women through the years must have been surreal, you know?”

Sadie nodded, but was now more focused than she’d been before. “Could he have had debts, or an addiction that he was struggling with?”

Lori shook her head. “He wasn’t that kind of guy. He was raised with really high standards and worked hard and smart. There wasn’t room in his character for those kinds of things.”

If something had happened to Dr. Hendricks, someone could have put his car at the trailhead to make it look like he’d gone camping. If he’d disappeared on purpose, he could have done the same thing for the same reason. Caro had posed these exact scenarios, but Sadie hadn’t taken them in. Now it was like rediscovering the possibilities. “What about another woman?”

Lori looked at her quickly, but with boldness. “Not Trent.”

Sadie met her eye. “You’re so certain?”

Lori went back to the fruit. They were almost finished. “My father was married to someone else when my mom got pregnant, and my mom went on to have two more kids with two more men before she finally settled down with a complete creep who was never faithful to her. It created chaos for all of us that I swore I would never repeat. Trent’s reasons for being faithful were different—he was raised religious, and even though he ended up with questions about the theology of the Mormon church, he believed in abstinence and fidelity, which they draw a hard line on. He wouldn’t cheat. Besides that, Anita is a perfect companion for him. She’s domestic and elegant and smart. She helps run the office and the foundation and the boutique. She hosts dinner parties for his friends and golfs with their wives. I was never that kind of woman—which I’ve come to realize is likely the biggest reason why it didn’t work for us—but Anita gave him everything he wanted. And she’d just recovered from cancer.” She turned to look at Sadie. “I know why you’re asking and, like I said, I’ve wondered the same thing, but every time I go down that road of thought I end up with only one possibility: something happened to him out there in the backcountry. I can’t come up with any reason he would leave this life on purpose.”

But Sadie had more questions. “Could anyone have wanted him not to come back? Even if he was living a clean life, like you said, maybe he made some enemies along the way.” But people who lived clean lives didn’t make those kinds of enemies.

Lori shook her head. “Everyone liked Trent. He wasn’t the type of guy who had conflicts with people. In fact, this one time we had a property dispute with a neighbor, and after months of back and forth, Trent just signed over the few feet we were arguing about. We had to redo our sprinkler system and our fence line, but he said it just wasn’t worth the fight. He and that neighbor ended up being golfing buddies after that. Really, he was a good guy—who overestimated his backcountry skills.”

Sadie nodded and went back to her fruit, pondering what she had learned. Lori lived two hours away from Dr. Hendricks and the life he had here. Though they were divorced, they seemed to have a good relationship, and what she saw in his life was likely what everyone else saw, too. Sadie agreed that a substance addiction was an unlikely possibility because it would affect his work a great deal, but there were other types of addictions: pornography or gambling, for example. And despite Lori’s assurances of his living a clean life, Sadie had seen too many people with a public persona that was different from who they were behind closed doors. Leaving to pursue that kind of addiction would require money, though, and Lori had said nothing was missing—though she might not be aware of everything.

“Lori!”

Startled, Sadie looked up to see Caro and Tess come through the doorway. Sadie was instantly reminded of how she’d shut down this investigation less than an hour ago. What would Caro and Tess think of her having changed her mind so drastically?

Tess headed toward Lori with a huge smile on her face. “I haven’t seen you in forever. Other than Facebook, I mean. How are you?”

“Hey!” Lori said, just as happy to see her old friend. “Let me wash my hands.” She moved to the sink, and Tess followed her.

“How’d it go in here?” Caro asked, approaching Sadie as she finished up the last of the watermelon. Sadie’s shoes were sticky from the watermelon juice. Where was that mop?

Lori and Tess began chatting by the sinks, and Sadie hoped Lori wouldn’t betray the depth of their conversation until she had a chance to explain things to Caro and Tess. “It went well,” she said. Sadie threw the last bit of rind in the garbage can. “How about you guys—did you get everything set up?”

“Yep. Looks like you two are just finishing up, too.”

Sadie nodded, dicing the last of the watermelon. When she finished, she picked up a huge, drippy, double-handful of the fruit and dumped it into the bowl. “We still need to mix up the dressing, but we’re pretty close to being done.”