Since She Went Away(28)
“Another nurse,” he said. “Besides you.”
Jenna didn’t follow. The man refused to meet her eye. “Is something wrong, sir?”
Then he looked up. “I don’t want to be helped by someone with a foul mouth, a troublemaker. It’s just not my values, that’s all.”
It took a moment to understand what he referred to, but then she knew. The TV interview. Reena Huffman. In the lobby, his face fell because he recognized her.
“Are you serious?” Jenna asked.
“What you’ve put that family through,” he said. “They’re pillars of the community.”
Some other “foul” words popped into her mind, and she wished she could share them. But she didn’t. She stepped out of the room without saying anything else and handed the chart off to one of her colleagues.
? ? ?
The receptionist in the lobby of Walters Foundry, a young woman with a bright smile and hair the color of straw, informed Jenna that there was simply no way she could see Mr. Ian Walters today. She offered to call upstairs to his private office and schedule the appointment herself with Ian’s secretary.
But Jenna didn’t feel like being turned away.
Something Naomi said stuck with her. Jenna did surf those Web sites and message boards because it made her feel as though she was doing something productive, even though, deep in her heart of hearts, she knew her little gestures didn’t make a bit of difference. Jenna remembered those first days after Celia’s disappearance. She walked the woods and hills of Hawks Mill with a group of volunteers. She manned a phone bank, dutifully writing down tips and leads.
None of it made any difference as far as she could tell. Celia remained lost, out of reach of all of them.
The other volunteers, as well as the observers and the citizens who casually followed the case around the country, they too slipped back to their daily lives, and the story barely left a mark on them. Another crime or crisis would pop up in the news, another distraction, and if something came up regarding Celia, they could flip the channel right back and pick up where they’d left off. The Reena Huffmans of the world would be sure nobody missed a detail.
Jenna, and those closest to Celia, floundered in the mire. No path forward presented itself. There was only looking back and regretting. Jenna wondered if she was stuck most of all. She wasn’t a member of the inner circle, a tight group she imagined included Celia’s mother, her sister, Ian, Ursula, and perhaps other friends Jenna didn’t know well, and she couldn’t walk away. Patience had become her watchword. Answers, if they came at all, wouldn’t come quickly. She understood the harsh truths: Even if they did find Celia’s body—in a rotten barn, a ditch, or a forest—they wouldn’t necessarily be any closer to knowing what had happened to her, unless they could firmly tie it to somebody. Benny Ludlow or anybody else. They’d only know she was dead, an unpleasant truth Jenna tried to push from her mind whenever it crept in.
She needed to do something.
So Jenna told the secretary—insisted—that she call up to Mr. Ian Walters’s private office and tell him Jenna Barton was here to see him.
Needed to see him.
The cheery young woman did as she was asked, never losing her smile.
A few minutes later, the phone on her desk rang. She nodded, writing on a small pad of paper. She tore it off with a flourish. “Mr. Walters says he’ll meet you at this address in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jenna took a seat at the Landing, Hawks Mill’s nicest restaurant. She arrived shortly before the height of the lunch rush and asked for a table for two. She felt self-conscious in her scrubs among the lawyers and executives and wealthy retirees who all were coming in wearing coats and ties and large rings. It was several years since Jenna had eaten at the Landing. Dr. Phillips, the founder of Hawks Mill Family Medicine, once brought the whole staff there for a holiday party. Other than an occasion like that, Jenna wouldn’t spend the money on a place like the Landing. When the waiter asked her what she wanted to drink, she asked for a glass of water.
While she waited, sipping her water, she bounced her feet under the table and rested her hand on the cool glass to keep from tapping her fingers too much. She tried to think of the last time she and Ian had spent any time alone. She guessed it was before he and Celia started dating, long before the two of them were married. Celia missed school one day, so Jenna started walking home alone. She didn’t mind the solitude. She let her mind drift, taking in the leaves that were just turning, the warm fall air that already carried a hint of decay. Her mind drifted so far she didn’t notice Ian until he was walking beside her, a couple of books in one hand, the other tucked into the pocket of his jeans.
Even then he was taller than everyone else, almost to his adult height of six-four. His hair was longer then, a lock of it tumbling over his forehead, but he didn’t give in to the grungy fashions that were sweeping through the high school. She never saw Ian in flannel or ripped jeans, never saw him in Chuck Taylor sneakers with the names of bands scrawled on the canvas in Magic Marker. She doubted his parents would allow it. They might not let him back in the house if he dressed that way.
When he showed up alongside her that day after school, she jumped a little as he said hello. He apologized, and she told him he’d materialized like a ghost.
“God, I hope not,” he said. “Not yet.”