Since She Went Away(18)

But he didn’t go. He watched as her father bent down at the table and placed a quick, gentle kiss on Tabitha’s lips. It wasn’t a long, lingering kiss. Their lips made just the barest of contact with each other’s. And when her father straightened up, keeping his hand resting on Tabitha’s shoulder, she wore a slight, uncertain smile, as though the kiss had reassured her of something she’d been doubting.

But it seemed wrong to Jared. A violation.

Those lips. He’d just been kissing them.

Without thinking, he bent down, lowering his hands to the cold earth. He fumbled, his hands passing over brittle blades of grass and dirt. Then his hand closed around a rock, small and jagged like a throwing star.

In one motion, he straightened up and threw it toward the window, hoping to stop the scene playing out before him.

It made a short, sharp crunching sound as it passed through the windowpane. Both Tabitha and her father flinched as the rock bounced off the wall behind them. The look on her father’s face transformed. From doting love to defensive. He started toward the window.

“Shit.” Jared turned and ran back out to the street, his legs pumping so fast they seemed about to lift him off the ground. He ran and ran, the cold air in his face, his heart pounding. The dog barked again, and then a voice called after him.

“Hey!”

But he didn’t break stride. He kept running and running, the increasing rain like a frozen river on his face.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


“I wish the media could capture and really convey what good friends Celia and I were,” Jenna said. “Are.” They’d moved back into the living room, the snacks and the new bottle of wine on the coffee table before them. Jenna settled into an overstuffed chair while Sally sat on the couch. “We went through everything together. Everything over the last . . . Shit, we’ve known each other for twenty-seven years.”

“Everyone needs a friend like that. Women especially.”

“Do you have someone like that?” Jenna asked.

“My friend Dee. She lives in Atlanta now, but we talk almost every day. And we go see each other.”

“Exactly. Celia and I, we went through losing our virginity, prom, falling in love, and getting married. She was there during my divorce. She really encouraged me to go back to school after Marty left. She helped with watching Jared while I did it. If it wasn’t my mom, it was Celia. Always.”

“And you kept it up all these years?”

Jenna didn’t say anything for a moment. She ran one hand along the puffy contours of the armrest while the other held a full glass of wine. She felt Sally watching her, waiting for more. “It hasn’t been quite the same the last few years. Not that we weren’t close, Celia and I, but we hadn’t spent as much time together. Her husband, Ian, his family runs the Walters Foundry.”

“I know who they are.”

“Ian’s been taking a bigger and bigger role at the company as his dad gets older. They’ve become part of a different social circle. I’ll be honest—I worried about her as a mother. Was she spending enough time at home? They spend more time at the country club, more time traveling to places I could never afford to go. Barcelona. Costa Rica. I’d love to visit those places, don’t get me wrong.”

“But a nurse who’s a single mom can’t just jet off to Spain.”

“Exactly.” Jenna tried to find the right words to describe what had changed between her and Celia. It wasn’t anything big. It wasn’t the kind of shift that ends a friendship or even fundamentally alters it. There were just times when they’d see each other or talk that they seemed to be speaking different dialects of the same language. How could Jenna compete with stories of seaside dining in Saint-Tropez? “There was a little barrier between us the last few years. Not a wall. Not even a curtain. Maybe I’d describe it as mesh. Something sheer and see-through, but I was still aware it was there. And I think Celia felt it too.”

“Friendships, even the best ones, can go up and down.”

“Yeah.” Jenna looked around the room. Her house. Her space. Pictures of Jared from all stages of his life. A framed college diploma. She’d made a life, and she hated that sometimes, like an insecure teenager, she still held it up next to others to see how it compared. She thought she’d made her peace, way back in high school, with the fact that she’d never measure up to Celia in certain departments: looks, money, decorum, boyfriend. But she had other things. She knew she did. She had a life she’d built mostly by herself. “We used to sneak out all the time in high school. Weekdays, weekends, it didn’t matter. We’d sneak out after our parents went to bed, usually around midnight, and we’d meet at Caldwell Park. Sometimes there’d be boys or other friends to meet up with. Sometimes we’d just talk and wander around on our own.”

“And that’s what you were doing that night? Reliving your wild, single girl years?”

“It sounds idiotic.”

“Not really. It sounds like fun.”

“I was thinking about Celia that night. I heard a stupid song on the radio, one we used to dance to when we were kids. ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’? It’s a Cyndi Lauper song.”

“I’m not that old, girlfriend.”

“Sorry. I sat here in the house thinking of Celia and that stupid sheer curtain, and I decided it didn’t have to be there. We could just rip it down by acting like we used to act. So I texted her and said, ‘Want to meet in the park at twelve?’ I expected her to say no, but she said yes. One word. ‘Yes!’ So we were on. We would be kids again.”