Since She Went Away(50)

Jenna turned the TV off.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


The driver from Stanley’s Pizza came as soon as the TV was off. Ian stood up and tried to pay, but Jenna waved him off. She might be publicly called out as a foulmouthed liar by a bloviating cable news host, but she could pay to feed her own son.

Her son. Who hadn’t come home yet. Her pulse sped up as she closed the front door. He’s okay, she told herself. Give him another twenty minutes or so.

She and Ian went out to the kitchen, where she brought down plates and asked him if he wanted anything to drink. He accepted her offer of a beer—something bitter and expensive someone from her book club left behind one night—and they sat down to eat.

“I haven’t had Stanley’s in years,” Ian said. “Since high school.”

“We went there all the time after basketball games,” Jenna said. “After watching you play. It was always a big deal when the guys from the team came in.”

“I need to eat this more.” He bit into the pizza with gusto and took a couple of long swallows of the beer. Jenna excused herself and checked her phone. Nothing from Jared. She sent him a message, asking him to let her know where he was before she had to call the police. He wrote back right away.

On my way home.

Jenna sighed with relief. She walked to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of wine. She told herself she’d earned it. Just one glass to take the edge off. “So you just came by to warn me about the TV show? Is that it?” She filled her glass and sipped off the top. Then she added more and came back to the table.

Ian patted the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “Not the only thing. Our conversation the other day got me thinking. About Celia. About everything that’s happened.”

Jenna leaned back in her chair, the wineglass held in front of her chest. She felt wary and wanted to consider Ian from as much distance as she could. All that time without any contact, and suddenly he showed up on her doorstep, wanting to talk.

But another impulse competed with the caution. She felt light-headed, a little giddy, the sensation pushed along by the alcohol. She hadn’t felt that way since . . . since before Marty left? Since the occasional dates and short-term relationships she’d experienced over the previous ten years of being single? Since that time in high school when Ian walked her home, those fleeting moments she held his undivided attention before Celia moved in?

“And what were you thinking?” Jenna asked, acutely aware that none of it would be happening, she wouldn’t be enjoying the time alone with Ian if Celia hadn’t disappeared.

“Celia kept secrets,” Ian said. He rested his hand on the beer bottle but didn’t drink any more. He wore concentration on his face, his brow slightly furrowed, his eyes staring at a fixed point somewhere just above the table. “We know that now. I’ve known it for a while, I guess. Maybe the two of you shared more over the years. Maybe you were closer than she and I.”

“I was clearly in the dark about some things as well,” Jenna said. “I think Celia liked to remind those closest to her that she didn’t need us as much as we needed her.”

“Maybe that’s it,” he said, although he didn’t sound convinced. He used his index finger to pick at the label on the beer. It made a small ticking noise beneath their conversation. Tick. Tick. Tick. “I’m sure you’ve seen or heard the rumors about Celia. The stuff people say on the Internet or sometimes even right in the papers.”

“I’ve made the mistake of getting on those sites,” Jenna said.

“People think they’ve seen her other places. Other cities and states, like she ran away and started a new life.”

Jenna’s heart beat even faster. And she felt a cold chill on the back of her neck as if a draft were blowing through the house. “You don’t believe any of that, do you?”

“The police know about something. For some reason, it hasn’t leaked out to the media, but maybe it will. I guess nothing’s really private anymore, is it?”

“What are you talking about?”

Tick. Tick. Tick. Then he stopped and wiped his fingertip on a napkin.

“We kept cash in the house,” he said. “Not a lot. A few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand at the most. Just emergency money, if there was a sudden crisis.”

“Yeah, I have the same thing. It’s a jar of loose change.”

Ian ignored her comment. “It was gone around the time she disappeared.” He held up his hands right away to silence any comment. “Now, it could have been used for something else. I hadn’t checked it for a long time, and it’s possible Celia used it on a shopping trip or something. She did that sometimes. She’d go to Lexington or Cincinnati with her friends, her new friends, and they’d shop. If I complained about the credit card bills, she might get into the cash, so that could be it.”

“Or?”

“Or I don’t know,” he said. “A thousand dollars can’t take a person very far, but it’s enough to start a new life somewhere, isn’t it?”





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


“Are you saying you think she ran away? That she’s not the victim of a crime?”

Jenna needed the wine. She needed water too, but she liked the wine more.