Since She Went Away (27 page)

“They shit themselves,” Ursula said.

Bobby winced a little, as if he’d felt a sharp pain in his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Jared said.

“I asked,” he said.

“I went over there once, a few days ago, and the neighbor next door told me that he’d seen a guy in a suit going into the house. And
then he thought he heard people arguing. Maybe that was your dad going in.”

“Probably was,” Bobby said.

“He doesn’t know anything, Bobby,” Ursula said, sounding bored. “Can he go?”

Bobby held out his hand, and Jared shook it. “Thanks, man,” Bobby said. “I appreciate it.”

“I want to ask you something,” Jared said.

His hand slipped out of Bobby’s. Bobby nodded, indicating he could go on.

“Do you know what your dad had to do with Tabitha’s dad?” Jared asked. “Why was he there at all? They don’t seem like they travel in the same circles.”

Bobby said, “I don’t know exactly. That lunatic, Mr. Burke or Mr. Rose or whoever he is, did some kind of work for my dad a few years ago. I kind of remember hearing my dad say his name. Then Dad said something about him coming back to town and they were working together again, although Dad acted kind of weird about it, like he didn’t want to say too much.”

“Mr. Rose was here a few years ago?” Jared asked.

“Yeah. He’s one of those guys who comes and goes. My dad once said he was rootless.”

“But you don’t know what kind of work he did?” Jared asked.

“No, I don’t. Something at the plant, but I don’t know what.”

“I think it was something illegal,” Ursula said. “Why else would he kill your dad? Somebody had dirt on somebody.”

“The point is I don’t know,” Bobby said, speaking to Ursula’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “Neither do the cops. Not yet anyway.” He turned to Jared. “Do you know what he did for a living? Did he ever say?”

“I never really talked to him. I never formally met him. The first time I ever set foot in the house was when I found your dad.”

Bobby nodded as though some profound truth had just been confirmed. “Well, I’m sorry about Tabitha. Or . . . what’s her real name?”

“Natalie,” Jared said.

“I’m sorry about Natalie.” They shook hands again. “The whole town’s kind of gone crazy. I hope they find her.”

He turned and stared out the window, his gaze distant and unfocused. Jared wondered if he was remembering something about his dad, some happy childhood memory like a Christmas morning or learning to ride a bike. Or was he focusing on the bad stuff? Stuff like the soccer game or whatever he was involved in with Natalie’s dad? When his own dad left the family, Jared spent a lot of time thinking about the good stuff. Times they’d gone for car rides together or played a game. And then the more time went by, he stopped thinking about him much at all. It was hard to remember any of the good stuff.

“I have to get back to my mom,” Bobby said.

“Sure,” Jared said. “Take care.”

“If you hear anything,” Bobby said, “will you let us know?”

“I will.”

He stepped out into the cold, expecting Ursula to move to the front seat, but she didn’t budge. He shut the door and watched them drive off.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

S
ally insisted on getting a drink after work. A couple of days had passed since the revelations about Natalie and William Rose broke. The news media and the cops seemed to be stuck in a loop, running on a wheel like hamsters. No additional credible sightings of them came in. No one saw Natalie anywhere.

They drove in Sally’s car to Haley’s Taproom, a bit of a dive in a strip mall near the office. The place was rarely crowded, and the owner kept the lights down low. No one had to make eye contact in Haley’s. No doubt most of the patrons didn’t want to.

Sally went to the bar and brought back two bottles of beer. Budweiser. Cheap. Jenna took a long swallow, and it tasted like liquid heaven. She enjoyed the sting of the alcohol against the back of her throat, the tingling in her bloodstream as the buzz started.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“Why not? You’ve earned a drink. And so have I.”

“I should be home with Jared.”

“I thought you called him,” Sally said.

“I did.”

“And?”

“And he’s home,” Jenna said. “His friend Syd came over. They’re playing video games.”

“And probably looking at porn. Normal boy stuff.”

“Sally, that’s gross.”

“Honey, every boy does it. They can’t get enough of the stuff.”

“Not Jared.”

Sally raised her eyes. “All of them, Jenna. Even the pope. All of them.”

Jenna took another drink. She’d spent the week lying low at work, trying to stay out of the way of patients who had once again seen her all over the news. She wished more than anything her life could return to being normal.
No chance of that,
she thought.
No chance of that any time soon.

“See,” Sally said, “you wanted that beer. And to think you said you didn’t want to come out.”

“You’re right.”

And Sally was. She always was. It felt good to get out of the house and away from work, to go somewhere and not talk about any crimes. Jenna wasn’t naive. She knew everyone in that bar had heard of Celia and Holly and Natalie. She felt certain some of them recognized her, if not from before, then certainly from the previous few days of coverage. Local and national news talked about the cases, covering every angle. And speculation ran wild that everything was related.

“Jared’s doing okay otherwise?” Sally asked. “I know he got his little heart broken, and now this with the girl . . .”

“He’s doing fine,” Jenna said. “I’m sure he’s talking to his friends about it.”

“Boys talking about feelings?” Sally said. “Playing video games together is as much as you’ll get. They aren’t going to talk.”

“Maybe. He hasn’t said much to me. I think I need to get him in to see a therapist. He’s a teenager, and he’s dealing with all this.”

“Has he been having nightmares?” Sally asked.

“Not that I can tell. He isn’t eating as much. He’s a little down, a little distracted. I’m walking a tightrope here. I don’t want to keep asking and push him away, but I don’t want to ignore him.”

“He’ll talk when he’s ready,” Sally said, her voice certain. “I’m sure he’s just glad to have you around and to know you care as much as you do. Really. If he feels loved, he’s doing okay.”

“I hope he does.”

“He does.” Sally emptied her beer and without asking went to the bar for more. She also brought back two shots. Kamikazes by the looks of them. “Drink up.”

“Sally, what are you trying to do?”

“We’re not driving for a while.”

“All I’d need right now is to get pulled over or arrested for public drunkenness on top of everything else. That would enhance the story.”

“You see that guy over there?” Sally pointed at an overweight man with a walrus mustache and a leather wallet on a chain. His belly had slipped out from beneath his shirt, exposing a pale roll of fat.

“What about him?” Jenna’s nose curled.

“He’s going to take you home.”

They laughed, and then they threw back the shots. Jenna felt good. Really good. Better than she deserved to. She also felt her tongue loosening, even more than usual. She wanted to talk to Sally, to say some things out loud she hadn’t said to anybody.

Sally seemed to read her mind. Her face grew a little more serious, and she said, “I’m really wondering how you’re doing. That’s what we’re here for.
Your
therapy.”

“All I need is alcohol,” Jenna said, pushing aside her pledge to drink
less. The alcohol made her feel philosophical, expansive. She asked, “Do you ever wonder about all the paths you didn’t follow in your life?”

Sally’s look told Jenna there were too many unwalked paths to ever think about all of them. “Where did that come from?”

“All of this. Everything. Thinking about Celia so much, seeing Jared growing up, it’s all making me feel old.”

“What does that make me? I’m ten years older than you.”

Jenna stared at her bottle of beer, the faint light from above reflecting dully off the brown bottle. “Did I ever tell you Ian and I were almost an item in high school? This was before he started dating Celia.”

“You told me once. You made it sound like Celia swooped in and took him away from you.”

“She did. It was no big deal. It was inevitable in a way.”

“No big deal?” Sally said. “It seemed like a big deal when you told me about it the first time.”

“It did?”

“I think it was a couple of months ago. We were talking after happy hour one night, maybe at the Downtowner. You still sounded pissed.”

Jenna couldn’t argue with Sally’s memory. It made sense. She was a little pissed, had been for almost twenty-five years. “I didn’t know I was so transparent.”

“Hey, I get it. High school’s a bitch. And it’s full of bitches too. No offense to Celia, of course. But those wounds stay with us. And so do first loves.”

“He wasn’t—” She stopped. “Not exactly.” But he was the heaviest of her teenage crushes. Even after he and Celia were married, even after she married Marty, she held Ian up as a kind of ideal, the model against which she measured all other men. She knew she was more likely to do that precisely because they never dated. “But nothing
happened. We were friends. We flirted. We skated up to the edge, and then that was it.”

“That’s the worst. What might have been. Heck, if you’d dated back then, you might have found out he was boring or a bad kisser or he farted in bed. And that would have been the end of the romantic dream. Now he’s always out there, a big question mark floating over his head.”

“It’s still here,” Jenna said. “A little bit.”

“What?”

“The question mark.”

Sally raised her eyebrows. “Oh, boy. I think this is beyond my expertise.”

Someone dropped coins into the jukebox, and a Glen Campbell song started playing. “Wichita Lineman.” Sally swayed a little in her seat as the intro came out of the speakers.

“You’re right,” Jenna said. “I need to let it go.”

“You’re not sixteen anymore.”

“I know.”

“And he’s married to your best friend. If you think you’ve seen a media shit storm so far, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Tell me that you hear me on this one.”

“I do. I get it.” Jenna swallowed more beer. “But he’s been opening up to me. We’ve been connecting. He and I, we’re the ones who knew her best. I think he just feels good being able to talk to someone about her in the way we can. Her new friends probably can’t do that.”

“Of course that comforts him. You feel old because Jared is growing up. How old do you think he feels with a missing wife?”

“When I look at him, even though he’s aged some, I see that same guy from high school. I think he sees the same thing with me.”

Sally pushed her bottle and the two empty shot glasses aside. She leaned forward, her elbows resting on the tabletop. “Are you listening to yourself?” she asked.

Sally’s tone had shifted. She’d shed the joking edge and sounded like someone on a mission. The sharpness of her words made Jenna sit up a little straighter. “Of course I’m listening to myself. I thought we came here to talk.”

“Then listen closely.” Sally looked around the room, her eyes wandering as though she was looking for someone else.

“Sally, he and I were friends in high school. We’ve both suffered a loss. Maybe a permanent loss. Are you saying we shouldn’t talk to each other?”

Sally turned back. “I get that. I do.” She picked up her empty beer bottle and shook it. There was nothing left. She frowned and pushed it aside again. “And if that’s all it was, if that’s all you wanted . . .”

Another song started playing. Something darker and heavier Jenna didn’t recognize. The fat guy at the bar drummed his hands against his thighs. Something felt tight and raw in her chest. It was the realization of how transparent she’d been to her friend. “I’ve been single a long time. My mom thinks I’ll never get another man to look at me as long as I live.”

“Forget her. My cousin would still like to meet you.”

Jenna had seen the pictures of Sally’s cousin. A harmless enough looking guy, but she hated to think Sally thought he was her match. He was balding, slightly overweight, and wore a goatee that hadn’t been in style in fifteen years. The pictures always depressed Jenna.

Jenna said, “I know what I’m doing, Sally.”

“I hope so.”

Jenna started to protest. She started to say,
He’s not interested in me that way
, but she couldn’t. He was, a little bit. He probably just needed someone: a friend, an emotional crutch. It wouldn’t be right for anything more to happen, but she kind of enjoyed his attention.

“I need to get home,” Jenna said. “Jared is there.”

“Don’t go away huffy,” Sally said. “I’m looking out for you.”

“Yeah, I know. Everybody seems to be doing that these days.”

The two women walked out in the cold night. The sky was purple, the stars scattered. They hugged good-bye at their cars, and Sally held Jenna a moment longer than normal.

“Remember what I said about that shit storm. Watch out for it.”

Jenna wanted to but didn’t say she’d already been living in one for the past three months.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

W
hen Jenna came home she found Detective Poole sitting in her living room, talking to Jared. Jared seemed to be in the middle of a long, complicated explanation of something.

“Hi there,” Naomi said. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t interrogating him. He’s explaining
Minecraft
to me. I have a nephew who plays it all the time, and I wanted to know what it was about.”

“That’s fine,” Jenna said. “Are you here to talk to me?”

“I am. If you don’t mind.”

“No.” Jenna slipped out of her coat and set her purse down. “I’m going to run to the bathroom first, okay?”

“Sure. Jared can finish what he’s telling me.”

Jared gestured toward Jenna. “She never wants to play these games.”