Since She Went Away(83)
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 f*cking 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 person 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.