Since She Went Away (21 page)

“And why would she leave . . . I’m sorry, Ian, but why would she leave without the guy she was having a relationship with?”

“It’s okay. I’ve learned to discuss these painful things.” His smile looked more like a wince. “Maybe there was another guy, somewhere else. Maybe in another state. I guess I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry, Ian. I’m sorry for you and Ursula.”

“I think about this all the time and wonder if I want to believe these things the way someone would believe in a fairy tale. It’s just been so long now and nothing. And they found Holly Crenshaw so quickly. This isn’t a big community. People see things, they know people. How does something like this remain hidden for so long?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Benjamin Ludlow will lead to something.”

“Can you think of anything?” Ian asked. “Anything she said or did that might suggest . . . that might suggest anything? Anything besides this being a random crime?”

“Have you talked to her other friends? The ladies from the country club? The golf and bridge set?”

Jenna failed to keep the contempt out of her voice. What the heck? They were sharing secrets over pizza. Why hide how she felt?

“They didn’t know her well,” Ian said. “Not like you. I know you guys seemed to be drifting a little too, but you were always her closest friend. That could never change. If Celia didn’t open up to you about these relationships, it was because she feared your judgment. She knew you’d tell her the truth, and I don’t think she wanted to hear it.”

“What if there’s a killer on the loose? A serial killer like Reena said. Celia isn’t the only one.” The full weight of the idea settled on Jenna’s shoulders. “It’s terrifying, Ian. Who could ever have thought this would happen in Hawks Mill?”

He picked up the empty beer bottle and rose from his chair. He rinsed it out at the sink and then turned. “I need to get going. Jared will be home soon, and you have food waiting for him. I have to check in with Ursula.”

“You must worry about her a lot more now.”

“I’ve always worried. And I try not to smother her because of Celia. But it’s tough. My mother stays at our house most days. Between the two of us we’re managing with Ursula.”

He put the bottle upside down in the drying rack and came over to the table where Jenna still sat. He held his hand out, as if he wanted to shake. Jenna reached up and they clasped. It seemed like an odd gesture, awkward and formal for two people who’d known each other so long. She remembered the way he’d placed his hand on hers in the restaurant, squeezing before he left.

His hand lingered longer this time, and the racing of her heart began again. He used his thumb to rub the soft skin on the back of her hand, and they were just slipping out of each other’s grip when someone called from the front of the house.

“Mom?”

It took Jenna a slow moment to respond. Then she said, “Out here.”

She kept her eyes on Ian as Jared came to the doorway. “Oh,” he said. “Hi, Ian.”

“Jared.” He moved across the room and they shook hands as well, formal and still natural. “I was just leaving. I came by to bother your mom, but I have to go.”

“Okay,” Jared said, unable to hide his confusion. He’d heard his mother complain about Ian’s aloofness many times over the years. Jared had no doubt witnessed it firsthand at the few gatherings Ian bothered to attend. To see this man in his kitchen, standing over a Stanley’s pizza, must have thrown him off balance. “I just got home.”

“Will you walk Ian out, honey?” Jenna asked.

“Sure.”

She watched them disappear toward the front of the house. And when they were out of sight she had no choice but to throw back the rest of the wine.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

J
ared closed the door. On Ursula’s dad.

Ursula’s dad just walked out the door of their house. Right after Jared had seen Ursula in the park.

And had he really seen what he thought he saw in the kitchen? When he came through the entryway after calling out for his mom, it looked as though the two of them had been holding hands or something. Holding hands? His mom and Ursula’s dad?

Jared walked slowly to the kitchen, trying to process all of it.

And he tried to process what he’d learned at Tabitha’s house. If Tabitha wasn’t in the house, and it didn’t look as though anybody else was, where had they gone? Were they gone for good?

He smelled the pizza as he approached the kitchen. When he walked out there again, his mom was staring into space, the glass of wine in her hand empty. She must have drained it while he walked Ian to the door.

“Mom?”

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “There’s plenty.”

“I’m sorry about running out before. I just had to know what was going on.”

“Running out? Oh, yeah. You really shouldn’t do that, but I understand.”

She still looked as if her mind was somewhere else, which only added to his belief that something more was going on with Ian than met the eye. But he wasn’t sure he could ask her about it.

Jared went to the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Coke. Then he sat at the table, pulling on the metal tab, hearing the liquid
pfft
as it opened. He grabbed for the pizza and took a bite, his hunger surprising him. He’d spent the whole week worrying about Tabitha, and when he worried that way, which was rare, he didn’t like to eat. Maybe it was the Stanley’s, but Jared’s appetite roared back as he sat at the table across from his mom.

While he chewed, she rose and poured herself more wine.

“Do you want to hear what I found out? About Tabitha?”

“Sure,” she said. “Did you talk to her?”

“The house was dark, and no one answered. The neighbor told me he hadn’t seen them, but that maybe her dad got in an argument with some guy in a suit earlier. Bizarre, isn’t it?”

His mom stood with the bottle of wine still in her hand. “What’s her dad like? You’ve met him, haven’t you?”

“Briefly. I guess.”

She put the cork back in the wine. “You guess?”

“I mean I’ve seen him. I don’t really know him.”

“And nothing about her mom?”

“She doesn’t talk about her. Never. And I don’t push. I figure someday I’ll get the story.”

His mom closed the refrigerator again and came back to the table with her wine. She seemed more focused on him, whatever fog she’d been swimming in when he first came home having lifted.

“This is all strange. I think maybe you need to stay away from that house for now,” she said. “You don’t know what’s going on. And
if she asked for space, you need to give it to her. You don’t want to come across like a weird, desperate guy.”

Her words stung.
A weird, desperate guy
.

“Jesus, Mom. Thanks.”

“I’m not trying to put you down,” she said. “You’re young. It’s your first love. It’s easy to let your emotions get the best of you.”

Her words sank in while he chewed another piece. She seemed to be speaking from hard-won experience. And he knew on some level she was right. He’d been dating Tabitha for what? Three weeks or so? And what did he think was going to happen? They would stay together and get married? Have kids and grow old? But it wasn’t just about the relationship. He sensed something wrong, not with Tabitha but with her life. And she might be in danger or distress. Could he just stand by while who knew what happened to her?

“I think there’s something I need to tell you.” He swallowed. “I ran into Ursula in the park tonight. That’s why it was kind of weird that her dad was here when I got back.”

“What about running into Ursula?” she asked.

“Her friends started mouthing off about you. How you were the cause of what happened to Celia.”

“Have they done that before?” she asked.

“It happens from time to time. Just stuff they say in the halls at school when I pass by.”

“Are you serious? Do you want me to call the school and ask them to stop it?”

“Mom, easy. I can handle it.”

“It sounds like bullying to me.”

“Not everything is bullying, Mom. Well, I guess when Ursula tried to pummel that girl back in November, that was kind of bullying.”

“Her mother had just disappeared.”

“Sure, Mom, I get it. Well, here’s the thing, and you’re not going to like it,” Jared said. “They started mouthing off, and I got mad. So I told them the truth. I told them that I was the one who made you late that night. And why.”

For a moment, his mom remained calm, and Jared thought—hoped—it would be one of the many times she took bad news in stride, let it roll off her back like nothing. He hoped the wine would make a difference as well. Maybe the wine combined with the end of a long week would keep her mellow.

But her eyes opened wide.

“Tell me you didn’t,” she said.

“I lost my cool. It just came out. I don’t want people to think the worst of you. I deserve a share of the blame.”

A flush rose in her cheeks, and it wasn’t from the wine. She was pissed. She slammed the wineglass down on the table, making the liquid slosh up the side like waves on a storm-tossed ocean. Jared was surprised it hadn’t broken. “Dammit, Jared. I asked you never to say anything about that. To anybody. I lied to the police. Do you understand that? I told the police a different story to keep you out of it. I said I was just a dumb-ass who was running late because I couldn’t find my keys and my phone. I could get in a lot of trouble for that. And then once that starts to spread and everybody knows . . .”

“It was just Ursula and a few of her asshole friends.”

She gave him a withering look. “‘Just Ursula’? The biggest pain in the ass in town.”

“I thought you liked her. You felt sympathy for her.”

“I do. And I liked her more when she was a sweet kid. Not a nasty teenager. And those other kids . . . They could tell their parents or anybody else—”

“Okay. I get it. I’m sorry.” He held his hands out like a televangelist
beseeching the crowd. “You know, most parents would like it if their kid stood up for them. And most parents would like it if their kid decided not to tell a lie.”

His mom studied him for a moment, her cheeks even redder. “I’m done with you for the night.”

She grabbed her wineglass and left the kitchen.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

J
enna and Jared circled each other warily that weekend. Neither one mentioned the tension between them, and neither one apologized. They both did their own thing and passed by each other like roommates, answering each other’s questions with grunts, politely informing the other person where they would be.

Jenna spent most of her Saturday with Sally. In the afternoon they went shopping at the small mall in Hawks Mill. Sally needed to buy a dress for a wedding she was attending, and she wanted to bring Jenna along as an extra set of eyes.

“You’re younger than me,” Sally said. “You can keep me from looking like the bride’s grandmother.”

That evening, they met up with some friends from their book club at a Mexican restaurant. They all ordered giant margaritas and fried ice cream, and Jenna made a point of not saying anything about Ian or Celia or Reena Huffman. To their great credit, her friends didn’t bring it up either.

While they drank and talked and laughed, Jenna was also aware of where Jared was. He told her that morning that he and Syd and Mike
were going to a movie—some horror movie they’d all been hearing about for weeks—and then they were heading back to Mike’s house to play video games and hang out. Jenna knew Mike’s parents and had been to their house on numerous occasions to pick Jared up or drop him off. They were attentive parents, and even though Mike was already developing into a bit of a smarmy smart-ass, she trusted them to keep an eye on the boys while she went out.

She told Jared, as she always did, to text her if he went anywhere else.

Jenna returned home around eight thirty and started reading a book. Her reading habits had changed as soon as Celia disappeared. She used to read mysteries and thrillers, books about serial killers and disappearances, but she quickly found she couldn’t stand to experience those kinds of stories anymore. She’d taken to reading historical romance novels, dramas that ended with the man and the woman riding off into the sunset together, all their troubles behind them. Just a few months earlier she would have laughed if someone suggested she read something like
The Stranger Carried Me Away
or
The Knave Who Stole My Heart
. That night, waiting for Jared to come home, she read the last fifty pages of one of them and ended up getting a little teary-eyed when the hero and heroine finally got together.

“God,” she said out loud, “what’s become of me?”

Jared returned home just after nine. He told her that Mike’s dad had given him a ride, and then he started for his room as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her.

“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” Jenna asked.

“I already watched one today,” he said, and kept on going.

His words had some bite to them, but Jenna shrugged them off. She knew she couldn’t take a teenager’s mouthing off personally, and she remembered the awful things she’d said to her parents while she
was growing up.
What goes around comes around,
her mother always told her.
Someday you’ll have kids of your own.

Indeed.

She went to bed early.

She spent Sunday cleaning while Jared studied in his room. He emerged from his sanctuary from time to time, helping with the laundry and carrying the garbage out to the curb, but otherwise they remained in their mutually imposed détente.

Jenna knew she shouldn’t have lied to the police. And she shouldn’t have asked Jared to keep a secret. She never wanted either one of them, especially Jared, to get into the habit of lying, even about the most inconsequential thing. But she made her decision early on and felt she had to live with it. She wanted to protect Jared from the kind of scrutiny she had endured in the wake of Celia’s disappearance. Maybe he’d thank her for it later.