Page 44 of A Future To Remember

“Today, when we had lunch, we met your sister, Patty, and she said you’d told her you saw Abby,” I continued. “That you recognized her from the flyers we put up. Your sister said you’d seen that she was asleep in the passenger seat of a car.”

Gwen was holding her phone, and it started ringing. She glanced at it and held it up. The call was coming from “Pats.”

She put the phone to her ear and said, “The guy with the missing wife is here. Thanks for ratting me out.”

There was a sound like Patty was protesting as Gwen punched the end button and regarded me angrily. “I don’t want to get involved.”

I stood tall and tucked Eggy carefully back inside his sling. “I get it. But the thing is, Gwen, Abby is the love of my life. I’m barely holding it together since she went missing, and now her dog is sick. Really sick. And if I can’t reunite them before I gotta let him go, it’ll kill me.”

I was watching her closely, and her gaze darted from Eggy to my eyes and back again. “He’s sick?”

I nodded. “Cancer. We’ve got maybe a week, two at the most, before he’ll be in too much pain to justify keeping him alive. It’d be too selfish to make him suffer more than he already is.”

Her expression softened, and she reached a tentative hand out toward Eggy, looking to me as if to ask for permission.

I lifted him toward her. “You can pet him.”

She ran tender fingers along his brow, and he licked her hand. “I had a wiener dog,” she said. “He was my best friend when I was growing up. He lived till he was sixteen.”

“Eggy just turned fifteen. A huge milestone that Abby will be so sad she missed if we can’t bring her home in time to say goodbye.”

Gwen sighed while her daughter continued to hug her mama’s legs. “I was at a gas station south of town, waiting for a pump because some moron towing a shitty-looking camper decided to take up the whole line of three pumps,” she began. “The pump just on the other side of him opened up, so I pulled into the space opposite where he was getting gas. He looked me up and down and gave me the creeps, so I looked away, and that’s when I saw his girlfriend in the truck, fast asleep. She was wearing this red sweater and sheepskin coat—they both looked expensive, which didn’t fit with the guy or his run-down camper. Plus, she was way too pretty for him, which is why I really took notice. He also stank, like stank, and I didn’t know how such a classy-looking lady could be with somebody so gross.”

I felt my heart start hammering. A lead. This was our first real lead and proof that Abby had been alive after she went missing.

“Do you remember what he looked like?” Oscar asked from behind me.

She jumped a little at the sound of his voice, and I realized she was startled to see another man with me.

“Sorry,” I said, motioning to Oscar. “That’s Abby’s brother, Oscar.”

Gwen nodded, but I could tell she was a little spooked, so I waited for her to get used to the idea that there were two of us, and that seemed to do the trick. “He was big,” she said, answering his question.

“Big how?” I asked.

“A lot taller than me. Probably even taller than you.”

I was a little over six feet, so this was a good point of reference. “Hair color?”

“Greasy. Like I said, he was gross.”

“Was his hair dark?”

She nodded.

“How about skin color?”

“White.”

“Age?”

“Don’t know.”

“Can you guess?”

“Maybe late thirties or early forties? It was hard to tell.”

“Facial hair?”