Since She Went Away (20 page)

It wasn’t Stanley’s Pizza.

Even with his back turned, Jenna recognized Ian from his clothes, his hair, his posture. She opened the door and let him in.

•   •   •

Jenna tried to estimate how many times Ian had been inside her house. She remembered him coming over for a few of Jared’s birthday parties, maybe stopping by to pick up Ursula when Jenna had
watched her. But it wasn’t often. No more than ten or fifteen times and probably not once during the previous five years.

He stepped into the living room, his long, lean frame seeming to reach the ceiling. Jenna took a quick look around, seeing the space through his eyes. It was clean and picked up, just like always. And Jared, thank God, hadn’t left any dirty dishes or socks or books on the floor. But it was nothing like what Ian had grown up with or how he lived as an adult. If you looked at the house that way, it suddenly seemed small and insignificant.

“This is kind of a surprise,” she said.

“I know. I realized, well, I didn’t have your number saved in my phone. I could have found it at home, of course, but I wanted to talk to you sooner rather than later.”

Jenna offered him a seat on the couch and asked if he wanted anything to eat or drink. He declined politely, and she told him she had a pizza on the way.

“You know Jared and I do that a lot on Friday nights,” she said. “It’s a tradition. I guess I have to enjoy it before he’s off to college.”

“Maybe Ursula and I need to think of some things we can do like that.” He looked lost in thought for a moment, as though he wanted to formulate a plan for bonding with his daughter right then and there. “It’s tough with a girl. I have to be honest, I don’t even know what she’s into. It was easy when she was little. It was pretty much all princesses and horses.”

“I think . . . maybe you don’t want my advice.”

“No, I do.” He smiled, the light in his eyes flirtatious. “You’re a girl, after all. You’d know.”

Jenna felt herself blush.
Dammit. Blushing when the big man on campus acts a little flirtatious?
“I was just going to say that it doesn’t matter so much
what
the thing is, just that there’s something you do together. Even if it’s as mundane as eating pizza.”

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “With work and everything . . . I never imagined I’d be a single parent.”

“You’re not,” she said, her voice urgent, trying to believe what she said. “You know what I mean.”

“Sure. But I am a single dad for now, no matter what happens next.” An awkwardness settled over their conversation, like an engine that just wouldn’t turn over. Ian brought them out of the nosedive. “I guess you’re wondering why I came by out of the blue like this.”

“I think I know.”

She told him about the calls from Naomi Poole and Reena Huffman. As she spoke, she knew Reena was on the air, broadcasting the story about Celia’s affair and, likely, Jenna’s lack of knowledge of it.

“Turn it on,” Ian said.

“Really? You want to watch it? I thought you stayed away from all that.”

“I watch sometimes,” he said. “It’s good to know what people are saying and thinking. Do you mind?”

“Not if you don’t.”

She flipped on the TV. The show was in its early stages, with Reena giving a rundown of all the stories she intended to cover during the hour. Apparently other things did happen in the world. She planned on discussing a priest who molested children in Idaho and a dog who rescued a family from a burning building in Michigan.

And, of course, she intended to devote a lot of time to the latest crime in Hawks Mill: the murder of Holly Crenshaw.

But then she was ready to launch into her first topic for the night:
Breaking news in the case of the Diamond Mom, Celia Walters
.

•   •   •

Reena delivered the news of Celia’s affair to the viewing public. She took her time, milking the story for all it was worth and placing
forceful emphasis on certain salacious words.
Extramarital. Sexual. Lying.

Jenna snuck a couple of glances over at Ian as Reena went on and on. His face showed nothing, just a simple curiosity about what was being said. He could have been watching a weather report.

“I hate this ‘Diamond Mom’ shit,” Jenna said.

“Celia would think it’s ridiculous.”

Reena mentioned Ian only in passing. She told the audience that Celia’s husband, Ian, had no knowledge of the most recent affair and was as blindsided by the whole thing as anybody else.

Jenna thought of her mom and the earlier phone call. Celia wasn’t as perfect as everyone thought, and everyone knew. Jenna hated herself for it, but she felt a little glee, the smallest hint of a fuck-you to her mother.

“Earlier tonight,” Reena said, “I spoke with Ian Walters on the phone. He was too upset to speak on the air, and I completely understand that. I do. But he told me how devastating these affairs are, especially considering that he has a young daughter at home. Think about that, folks, the Diamond Mom’s daughter is now learning that her mother, who is already a crime victim, was being unfaithful at the time of her disappearance.”

Reena gave the camera one of her patented head shakes, a gesture meant to indicate how confounding and crazy the things she was forced to talk about were.
If only I didn’t have to do this,
she wanted everyone to understand.

“Did you really talk to her?” Jenna asked.

“Briefly,” Ian said. “I didn’t want her smearing Celia without saying something.”

“I can’t reveal my source on this breaking news,” Reena said, “but I can promise you it’s been checked and double-checked with confirmation coming from individuals very close to the situation.”

“Do you want to turn it off now?” Jenna asked.

Ian held up his index finger without looking at Jenna, so she left it on.

“But do you want to know what really confounds me?” Reena said. “Do you want to know what really has me scratching my head? The best friend. Jenna Barton. I spoke to her earlier tonight as well. Obviously we didn’t want to speak to her live on the air given her proclivity for using profanity.” A little bit of an eye roll. “But I did want to get her take on this story, since she claims to be the Diamond Mom’s best friend.” She made air quotes when she said “best friend.” “And guess what? Jenna told me on the phone that she had no idea there was an affair going on. None. No idea that her best friend was involved with another man. Also no idea about the previous affair that we learned about. Does that seem a little odd to any of you?”

Jenna picked up the remote control. She placed her finger over the on/off switch, but didn’t press. Ian still appeared to be watching.

“What all this means to me is that there’s a lot of lying and deceiving going on. And it’s my job, as a journalist, to get to the bottom of it. But first, we’re going to go out to Becky McGee in Hawks Mill for more. And frankly, I don’t know what to even think of this. Another beautiful young woman murdered in this small town. Do we have a serial killer on the loose out there, preying on the women of Kentucky—”

Jenna turned the TV off.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

T
he driver from Stanley’s Pizza came as soon as the TV was off. Ian stood up and tried to pay, but Jenna waved him off. She might be publicly called out as a foulmouthed liar by a bloviating cable news host, but she could pay to feed her own son.

Her son. Who hadn’t come home yet. Her pulse sped up as she closed the front door.
He’s okay,
she told herself.
Give him another twenty minutes or so.

She and Ian went out to the kitchen, where she brought down plates and asked him if he wanted anything to drink. He accepted her offer of a beer—something bitter and expensive someone from her book club left behind one night—and they sat down to eat.

“I haven’t had Stanley’s in years,” Ian said. “Since high school.”

“We went there all the time after basketball games,” Jenna said. “After watching you play. It was always a big deal when the guys from the team came in.”

“I need to eat this more.” He bit into the pizza with gusto and took a couple of long swallows of the beer. Jenna excused herself and checked
her phone. Nothing from Jared. She sent him a message, asking him to let her know where he was before she had to call the police. He wrote back right away.

On my way home.

Jenna sighed with relief. She walked to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of wine. She told herself she’d earned it. Just one glass to take the edge off. “So you just came by to warn me about the TV show? Is that it?” She filled her glass and sipped off the top. Then she added more and came back to the table.

Ian patted the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “Not the only thing. Our conversation the other day got me thinking. About Celia. About everything that’s happened.”

Jenna leaned back in her chair, the wineglass held in front of her chest. She felt wary and wanted to consider Ian from as much distance as she could. All that time without any contact, and suddenly he showed up on her doorstep, wanting to talk.

But another impulse competed with the caution. She felt light-headed, a little giddy, the sensation pushed along by the alcohol. She hadn’t felt that way since . . . since before Marty left? Since the occasional dates and short-term relationships she’d experienced over the previous ten years of being single? Since that time in high school when Ian walked her home, those fleeting moments she held his undivided attention before Celia moved in?

“And what were you thinking?” Jenna asked, acutely aware that none of it would be happening, she wouldn’t be enjoying the time alone with Ian if Celia hadn’t disappeared.

“Celia kept secrets,” Ian said. He rested his hand on the beer bottle but didn’t drink any more. He wore concentration on his face, his brow slightly furrowed, his eyes staring at a fixed point somewhere just above the table. “We know that now. I’ve known it for a while, I
guess. Maybe the two of you shared more over the years. Maybe you were closer than she and I.”

“I was clearly in the dark about some things as well,” Jenna said. “I think Celia liked to remind those closest to her that she didn’t need us as much as we needed her.”

“Maybe that’s it,” he said, although he didn’t sound convinced. He used his index finger to pick at the label on the beer. It made a small ticking noise beneath their conversation.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“I’m sure you’ve seen or heard the rumors about Celia. The stuff people say on the Internet or sometimes even right in the papers.”

“I’ve made the mistake of getting on those sites,” Jenna said.

“People think they’ve seen her other places. Other cities and states, like she ran away and started a new life.”

Jenna’s heart beat even faster. And she felt a cold chill on the back of her neck as if a draft were blowing through the house. “You don’t believe any of that, do you?”

“The police know about something. For some reason, it hasn’t leaked out to the media, but maybe it will. I guess nothing’s really private anymore, is it?”

“What are you talking about?”

Tick. Tick. Tick.
Then he stopped and wiped his fingertip on a napkin.

“We kept cash in the house,” he said. “Not a lot. A few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand at the most. Just emergency money, if there was a sudden crisis.”

“Yeah, I have the same thing. It’s a jar of loose change.”

Ian ignored her comment. “It was gone around the time she disappeared.” He held up his hands right away to silence any comment. “Now, it could have been used for something else. I hadn’t checked it for a long time, and it’s possible Celia used it on a shopping trip or something. She did that sometimes. She’d go to Lexington or
Cincinnati with her friends, her
new
friends, and they’d shop. If I complained about the credit card bills, she might get into the cash, so that could be it.”

“Or?”

“Or I don’t know,” he said. “A thousand dollars can’t take a person very far, but it’s enough to start a new life somewhere, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“A
re you saying you think she ran away? That she’s not the victim of a crime?”

Jenna needed the wine. She needed water too, but she liked the wine more.

“We got a really good lead once. Somebody who followed the case online saw a woman in Chicago. Outside Chicago, actually, in some suburb. This person swore it was Celia, the so-called Diamond Mom. That’s what he called her, like she doesn’t have a real name. He even snapped a photo of her once at the mall.”

“Are you kidding?” Jenna felt an ache in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t touched the pizza and then she drank. And then the news. It was all making her feel a little sick.

Ian looked doubtful. “The police went and checked it out. They couldn’t find the woman who was supposed to be Celia. Maybe she’d moved on, or maybe the person who saw her was a kook.”

“Did you see the photo?”

“I did. It could have been Celia. But it could have been any one of a million middle-aged women with brown hair. The cops couldn’t prove anything. Nobody could. When the cops struck out, I hired a
private investigator to look as well. He talked to people who knew this woman. She moved to town and then left pretty quickly. She said her name was Amelia something or other. She didn’t leave a trail, so the investigator couldn’t find anything. There’ve been a few other incidents like that. Not as promising as that one, but we followed up on them.”

“So crazy people think they see her,” Jenna said. “There are people who think they see Elvis in gas stations. People see Jesus on a potato chip. Do you think Celia would leave you? Okay, even if you guys were having trouble, would she leave Ursula? Her daughter, who is just entering the most vulnerable and important period of her life?”

Ian seemed to snap out of something, some memory trance and reflection he’d fallen into when he started talking. He picked up the beer and drank. “You’re right.”