Since She Went Away

by David Bell

  “At long last,” she always said.

  Jenna shivered at the memory, felt the icy hand of regret and grief grabbing her around the back of the neck.

  Ian walked over to the refrigerator. “Wine?” he asked. “Or a beer?”

  “Nothing. Is Ursula home?”

  “She’s out. I told you. It’s Friday night. What teenager wants to be home? We never were.”

  He was right. They played and partied hard, and they didn’t have computers and video games and streaming movies to keep them occupied. If they wanted something they had to go out and get it. Good or ill.

  “Are you sure you don’t want anything?” Ian asked. He pulled out two beer bottles. “I get the feeling this is going to be an unfriendly conversation. Maybe beer would help?”

  Jenna nodded. She still felt cold and so kept her coat on. She slipped into a seat at the kitchen table, remembering the hundreds of nights she and Celia had sat there, talking and eating and drinking and talking some more. She never thought about any one of them being the last, even as their lives slowly changed the more Celia became involved with her country club life. She knew someday one of them would die, knew there’d be an end of some kind, but pushed it away, further and further out into the future. She wished they’d been closer in those final few years, wished she’d taken an emotional snapshot of every moment.

  Ian placed the beers on the table, the caps off. He slid one over to Jenna, the bottom of the bottle leaving a condensation trail on the tabletop.

  “So? You said something about the TV tonight and Ursula. You know, I told you not to trust Reena. She’s a snake.”

  “Yeah. But that’s not really my problem right now. Why did Ursula go to her and tell her—” She stopped. “Shit, you don’t even know. Nobody knows.”

  “Know what?”

  She told him why she’d been late the night Celia disappeared. The discussion with Jared that kept her from getting out the door on time. Ian listened, his lips slightly parted.

  “So you lied to the cops back then?” he asked.

  “I didn’t tell them the whole truth. I think there’s a difference.”

  He leaned back, sighing a little. “I understand if you didn’t want to involve Jared in all this,” he said. “I told you that before. I’d defend anyone who wanted to do that.”

  “Listen to me. Nobody knew Jared made me late. Just Jared and me. And he told Ursula and a couple of her friends the other night. Now Reena Huffman knows about it, and she broadcast that news on TV tonight. The whole friggin’ world knows now. So either Ursula or one of her friends told Reena.”

  He was slowly shaking his head, the corners of his mouth turned down. “I don’t think Ursula would do that.”

  “She went to Jared and encouraged him to go on TV tonight. She practically begged him to do it when I wouldn’t let him. What’s her interest in all this?”

  Ian pushed away from the table and stood up. He carried the beer with him as he walked to the sink, his back to Jenna. He stopped, staring at something on the wall Jenna couldn’t see, and then he turned around.

  “I know how Ursula is,” he said. “I know what she can be like.”

  “She’s been through a lot, Ian. I can tell.”

  He held up his hand. “Maybe if I’d been around more, I could have taken some of her edge off. Maybe a father’s influence . . . I don’t know.” He swallowed more beer. “But you’re accusing her of something. And I don’t like the way it sounds.”

  “Why did she want Jared to go on TV so much?” Jenna asked. “Why did she try to lead us into an ambush?”

  “She didn’t do that, Jenna. She wants her mother to be found. She wants this murderer to be arrested.”

  “And how does humiliating us on national TV accomplish that?”

  “You said yourself it could have been those other kids who said something.”

  “Do any of them do anything without Ursula saying it’s okay? We know who the queen bee is, don’t we? And, let’s be honest, we knew who the queen bee was when we were in school. We know who always got what she wanted.”

  “I guess I should have expected that comparison.”

  Jenna knew she’d pushed. Too hard, maybe. Her emotions had turned on a dime, from the wistful loss she’d experienced when she walked into the house to the vein of anger she carried with her best friend’s name on it. Talking to Ian dug it out of her, brought it up into the light.

  Ian didn’t say anything right away. He drained his beer and contemplated the empty for a moment. Then he turned on the tap and rinsed the bottle out, his movements methodical and precise.

  While he worked at the sink, Jenna watched, her stomach churning. She’d jumped the track, taken them down a path she hadn’t intended to travel. But Jenna always believed, always had and always would, that it was better for things to be out in the open than bottled up inside.

  He dried his hands on a towel and turned to face her. His expression was calm except for his eyes, which seemed alive with a new energy.

  “You think you understand everything, don’t you?” he asked.

  And Jenna knew the question didn’t require an answer. Ian was going to keep on talking.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Jared and Mike tried to blend in. They passed through the crowds of kids, music thumping in the background. Kirk Embry lived in one of the big old homes around downtown. His father ran a consulting business, and his mother was a lawyer who appeared every day in TV commercials advertising her firm. They were out of town, attending a family wedding, and Kirk stayed behind. He was a junior who came to school every day in a sleek black BMW.

  A few people gave them funny looks as they navigated the rooms. Jared tried not to imagine questioning stares and sneers where there weren’t any, but he knew they didn’t belong with this group. He and his friends were a little too young, a little too unpolished, even Mike. Jared simply wanted to find Ursula and then get out.

  “I have to tell you something,” Jared said.

  “What?”

  “The booze came up on national TV tonight.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Jared explained about Reena’s revelation. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your name wasn’t mentioned.”

  “Shit,” Mike said. “What if my parents see that? They’ll get pissed all over again. They always blame me, even when I didn’t do anything.”

  “I’m the one in hot water now,” Jared said.

  “Why can’t everybody keep their fucking mouths shut?” Mike said, and he stormed off.

  Jared thought about following him, but he let his friend go. He slipped through the kitchen, where a keg of beer in a large plastic tub drew a crowd of his classmates like flies to sugar. They held plastic cups before them, supplicants to the senior who held the nozzle. The guy filled the cups of the pretty girls first, and when the pretty girls were gone, he turned to everyone else.

  Jared went out the back door onto the patio. The crowd was smaller there. The night air was cool, and the people on the patio smoked and drank, filling the air with the fumes of alcohol and cigarettes. A little farther in the darkness, near the covered swimming pool, two kids were making out, their heads rolling from side to side in search of the best kissing angle possible. Jared thought of Natalie when he saw them. He couldn’t help it. And it wasn’t just the kissing and the fooling around he missed, although he very much missed that. Even in a few weeks’ time, he knew he could count on Natalie, knew she’d take his side no matter what was wrong. Seeing the couple together, two people so wrapped up in each other, made him feel lonely, as if he were the last man on earth even in the midst of the crowded party.

  Someone sat on the diving board, his feet dangling over the thick green tarp that was pulled tight over the pool with a series of dark ropes. The tarp looked like part of the ground, something a per
son could walk across and never know there was water underneath. The guy on the diving board took a drink from a bottle of whiskey, tossing his head back as he threw down the liquor. He smacked his lips, the noise reaching Jared in the dark. It was Bobby Allen.

  Jared walked over, his shoes scuffing against the concrete pool deck. Bobby looked up when Jared approached, his eyes heavy lidded and wary. Jared remembered what Ursula had said in the park the night before, her mention of a falling-out between them.

  “Hey, Bobby.”

  “Hey.”

  Jared looked around. The couple that had been making out suddenly stood up and walked inside, hand in hand, no doubt searching for a vacant bedroom. The music still thumped but was muffled by the walls and doors of the house. Jared knew how these parties ended. Some neighbor would call the police. They’d break it up, send all the kids scattering into the night.

  “Have you seen Ursula?” Jared asked, cutting to the chase.

  Bobby made a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “She was here earlier.”

  “She left?”

  Bobby took another drink and then he tilted his head back, taking Jared in. “You love her, don’t you? Ursula.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You want to fuck her.”

  Jared didn’t feel like arguing or verbally sparring with a drunk rich kid. “I’m sorry about your dad, Bobby. I’ll see you around.”

  “You don’t have a dad either, do you?”

  Jared didn’t say anything. He looked at the house. If Ursula was gone, there was nothing and no one for him to find in there. He wanted to just slip away, maybe even leave Mike to whatever adventures he had found.

  “Ursula told me all about you,” Bobby said.

  “Why was Ursula talking about me?” Jared asked.

  “Who knows? The girl talks. She talks and talks.” He held up the bottle. “Want some?”

  “No, thanks. I guess there’s nothing new about your dad’s case.”

  Bobby shrugged. “Cops say they keep getting reports about this William Rose guy. Once they put the word out, everybody thinks they know where he is. Like with Ursula’s mom. People think they see her everyplace, just because her face is all over TV. I guess they all think they’re going to be the hero and save the day. What do you want Ursula for if you don’t want to fuck her? I mean, you guys aren’t friends or anything.”

  “I just wanted to talk to her about something.”

  “She probably went home.” He pointed to an empty space next to him on the diving board. “She was right here. Right in this spot.”

  “She told me you two had a falling-out.”

  “We always do.” Bobby shrugged, the liquor bottle waving in the air. “She’s always mad at someone. Me, you. Her mom, her dad, her cat. Always mad.”

  “She was like that as a kid too,” Jared said. “She told me off all the time when we were little. I guess some things never change.”

  “They don’t.”

  Jared started to walk away.

  “Hey,” Bobby said.

  Jared turned back. Bobby had shifted his body a little. He sat farther out on the diving board, his legs dangling more quickly.

  “It feels a little like spring, doesn’t it?” he said.

  Jared hadn’t noticed. It still felt cold, as far as he was concerned. But Bobby was right that the temperature was a little higher, the air and the wind less biting. He’d seen the forecast and knew some warmer temperatures would be arriving during the next week. Highs in the mid-fifties, maybe even near sixty, a little hope amid the gloom.

  “I wish I was graduating,” Bobby said. “I’d be getting out of here, moving someplace else. When the warm weather comes, it’s time to go. Am I right?”

  “Sure,” Jared said, although he didn’t know exactly what Bobby was talking about. Maybe rich kids thought that way. They could imagine doing anything and getting away with it, even dropping out of school. But he and Bobby weren’t that different after all. Jared dreamed of leaving Hawks Mill, of going someplace very different. Everybody must at one time or another.

  “Everything will be different then,” Bobby said. “So maybe I’ll go.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Ian walked across the room and sat again. He placed his hands on the tabletop, and he looked calm, almost professorial. “I’ve already told you I wasn’t perfect, as a husband or as a father.”

  Jenna felt uncomfortable as she sensed a revelation coming.

  “I felt I had to protect my family. After Celia . . . wandered, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to protect Ursula. And Celia, frankly.”

  “And you wanted to protect yourself.”

  He nodded. “Self-preservation was part of it. Sure. I just knew if Celia strayed again, she could be putting not only our family in jeopardy but also herself. See, I always worried something like this would happen.”

  “Something like a kidnapping?” Jenna asked.

  “Something dangerous. When someone, a woman, puts herself out there that way, she risks the consequences of being around a man who doesn’t feel any loyalty to her. No commitment. No honesty. An affair is built upon lies, isn’t it? So what’s to stop that man from doing nothing but lying to the woman?”

  A clock above the kitchen doorway ticked. Jenna remembered going along with Celia when she registered for wedding gifts. The two friends laughed a lot that day, joking about the kinds of things they could add to the registry to shock the guests. Silk sheets. Or a box of rubbers. One of the things they selected—in all seriousness—was the clock that still ticked in the Walterses’ kitchen seventeen years later. Something itched below the surface of Jenna’s mind.

  “What form did this ‘self-preservation’ take?” Jenna asked.

  “It’s more complicated than that. I want to explain myself.”

  “You were worried about an affair, or Celia being in danger. You were also worried about your reputation. The family’s reputation. The foundry. A straying wife in a small town isn’t good for business.”

  Ian made an exasperated noise in his throat. “Don’t try to reduce me. Or my family.”

  “You weren’t worried about that?” Jenna asked.

  “I worried about my family more.”

  “So, what did you do with all this worry?” Jenna asked.

  “Jenna . . . because of my job, I have access to certain people and things that an ordinary person might not have access to. You’re right, a company needs to protect its reputation. And there are people who can do that for us.”

  “You mean PR people?”

  “No, I don’t mean that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ve been clear about this with the police,” he said. “I talked to them again when that man died. Henry Allen. His son and Ursula—”

  “Holy crap,” Jenna said. She remembered her conversation with Ursula in the park. “Did you know Henry Allen?” she asked. “The guy who was just murdered in William Rose’s house?”

  Ian sounded reluctant. “I knew him. Some.”

  “Did Celia?”

  “No,” Ian said. “He and I were once in a foursome at the country club. Some tournament thing to raise money for charity. Golf and then drinks. The usual bullshit.”

  “But you knew him well enough,” Jenna said. “Well enough to enlist his services?”

  Ian didn’t respond. A flush rose on his cheeks. He looked down at his folded hands, staring at them as though he could open them up and find some wisdom hidden there.

  “So, what happened? You had drinks together at the club and that loosened your tongue?” Jenna said. “And then how did it come up? You started bemoaning the fact that you couldn’t keep your woman at home?”

  Ian looked up. “Hold on. You’re making it sound so nefarious. I told you I was trying to keep the family
together.”

  “So you talked, and he told you what? That he knew a guy? A guy who could do the job for you? And you asked Henry Allen to have someone follow Celia?”

  “I did. And yes, Henry did have employees who could follow Celia. It was supposed to be simple. Keep an eye on her when she left the house in the evenings and let Henry know if they saw anything suspicious. I called a number when she was going out and told them. Or I’d call them if I wasn’t going to be home. If they didn’t see anything, they didn’t tell Henry anything. No news was supposed to be good news. I was trying to protect Celia. And the truth is, they never saw anything. Nothing was ever reported back to me.”

  “She was right,” Jenna said. “Celia was right. Someone was following her.”

  “Maybe. We don’t know—”

  “And you trusted these guys?” Jenna asked.

  “I trusted Henry. He’s a prominent businessman in town. He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “Businessmen never hurt people, do they?”

  “Jenna, you know I’d never put my family in danger.”

  “What did you tell the police about it?” Jenna asked.

  “I gave them Henry Allen’s name, Jenna. I told them the whole thing.” He tapped his fingers against the table a few times. “They questioned him, but I don’t know what he said. And when Henry Allen turned up dead, I told them again. Even though I didn’t need to. They remembered, of course. What are they supposed to think when a guy who might have been involved with having my missing wife followed turns up dead? It looks bad, doesn’t it?”

  “Bad for who?”

  “Everybody.”

  “So they’re all connected. Ian . . . you . . .”

  “I was trying to protect all three of us. To ensure that our family would make it. Celia had been wandering. Hell, I thought about having Ursula followed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I think kids should be free to make mistakes and learn from them.”

  “But not wives?”