Since She Went Away(15)
“You asked me to your book club the month Celia disappeared.”
“Was that rude?” Sally asked.
“It was a lifesaver,” Jenna said. “You were the first person to treat me like I was normal. That’s all I wanted, for people to act normal.”
Sally laughed. “No one ever accused me of that,” she said. “Well, there is something I’ve always wanted to ask you.”
“What’s that?” Jenna asked.
“What the hell were you doing going out that night?”
Jenna took another big swallow of wine. She nodded, ready to go on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jared froze on the sidewalk in front of Tabitha’s house.
The curtains were drawn, the porch light out.
He’d started home, cursing himself for letting Tabitha run late and cursing himself for not having the guts to walk her all the way to the door. All he had to do was stick out his hand and introduce himself to her father. Wasn’t that what boyfriends were supposed to do? Go to the door, shake hands with the dad? Times like that, he did wish he had a father, someone who could guide him through the complicated waters of manhood. But Jared knew he made a good impression on adults. He was clean-cut, well dressed, polite, and friendly. He needed to take the heat so Tabitha wouldn’t have to.
But he couldn’t will himself up the front walk to the door. He couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Tabitha’s face, the combination of fear and sadness. She’d shoved him with a force he couldn’t have guessed she’d have in her body, almost knocking him down. What if he rang the bell like an idiot and made it all worse? He didn’t want to be like his mom, barging into any situation and then thinking about the consequences later.
Jared needed to go home. His mom would be waiting, and he had homework to do, things he would have been working on except he spent that time with Tabitha. But he wouldn’t hear from her all evening. There’d be no texts or calls, no messages. He’d have to go home and work, all the while wondering if she ended up in trouble with her dad—and if she did, what kind of trouble might inspire so much fear? If the guy was so strict about everything else, might he hurt her if she came home late? And what if he had happened to look up the street and see her saying good-bye to a boy?
Jared looked to the houses on either side of Tabitha’s. They were dark, as still and quiet in the night as empty tombs. Jared took a few steps up the city sidewalk, moving parallel to the houses, then turned to his left, cutting across the grass between Tabitha’s house and their neighbors’. It was getting colder, and he’d forgotten to bring gloves. His fingertips tingled, so he stuffed his hands in his pockets.
The door of Tabitha’s house came open, a shaft of light spilling across the lawn.
Jared acted without thinking. He dropped to the grass, face-first. He pressed his body against the ground, hugging it as tightly as he could. The blades of grass tickled his face, and the cold seeped into his clothes, clinging to his skin like a tight suit.
He risked a look, moving his eyeballs slowly to the left. The man stood on the porch, his large body obscuring most of the light. He tossed a cigarette out into the yard, its glowing tip landing ten feet from Jared’s head.
Jared waited. Every atom in his body clenched. A pressure rose in his bladder, a painful surging of liquid. He gritted his teeth until he thought they’d chip.
Then the door closed. The man was gone, back inside.
Jared waited as long as he could. When he thought it was okay to stand up, he counted to twenty and then rose.
He was colder, his pulse racing. But he didn’t stop.
At the back of Tabitha’s house, a light burned in a window and then spilled into the darkness. Given the window’s placement, he guessed it was the kitchen. Jared felt a churning in his gut as he moved closer, a swirling of adrenaline and nerves that seemed to be on the brink of bursting through his skin. He still needed to pee. He knew if he was seen, if someone from the neighborhood or Tabitha’s father called the police on him, then Tabitha would know he’d been sneaking around. The relationship would be over. Game, set, match. But he needed to know she was safe. He’d seen guilt over Celia’s kidnapping rip his mother apart, felt his own guilt over that night like broken glass in his stomach. Did he want to feel the same way about Tabitha if something happened to her?
He came to within ten feet of the window. A dog started barking nearby, a harsh ripping sound that cut through the night, freezing Jared in his tracks. His breath came in quick huffs, but he realized the dog wasn’t barking at him. Somebody a few houses away shouted at the dog to be quiet, and the barking stopped. He willed his body to move forward again, avoiding the spill of light from the Burkes’ kitchen window.
He saw a row of brown cabinets, and a light fixture hanging from the ceiling by a decorative chain. The wallpaper was yellow and faded, a couple of corners peeling loose and curling away from the plaster.
Tabitha sat at the kitchen table. Her head rested in her hands, so Jared couldn’t see her face. Her shoulders rose and fell once as though she’d heaved a big sigh. Was she crying? A coil of anger wound its way through Jared’s chest. If someone hurt her, if someone made her cry . . .
Then the man came into the room, the same man he’d seen on the porch. He was close to fifty and overweight, his midsection straining against the confines of a stained sweatshirt. His face was flat and broad, and in the harsh overhead light of the kitchen, Jared saw pockmarks on either side of his bulbous nose. The lids of his eyes looked heavy, and his graying hair was greasy and thick. He lifted a newly lit cigarette to his lips and took a long drag, his eyes squinting as the smoke curled up toward the ceiling. Then he made a jabbing motion against the table, stubbing the cigarette out.