Since She Went Away(87)

Jenna pressed the switch and powered the window down.

“Did he follow her?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Goddammit, Ian. William Rose. The guy they suspect of killing Celia. Is he the one who followed her? Tell me you have something to say about this that makes sense.”

“I don’t know who followed her,” he said. “I don’t know if it was William Rose.”

“What did the police think when you first told them about this?”

“What do you think they thought? It was unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant? Ian. What did they think?”

“They didn’t like the way it made me look.”

Jenna pressed the button, starting the window up.

“Wait,” Ian said, his hand against the glass.

Jenna stopped the upward progress of the window. But she didn’t move it any lower.

“Can I get in the car and talk to you?” he asked. “It’s cold, and I feel like you need to hear this.”

Jenna didn’t answer right away. She checked the clock on the console. It was getting later.

“Or you can come back into the house,” Ian said. “I’m okay with either one.”

Jenna undid the locks. “Get in,” she said. “But I don’t want any evasions.”

“Have I been evading?” he said. “I’ve been telling you everything. I’m trying to tell you more.”

He moved around the front of the car, his body passing through the cone of the still-glowing headlights. He opened the door and settled into the passenger seat. He rubbed his hands together once he was sitting, and Jenna reached forward and turned up the heat.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me why I shouldn’t be completely outraged about this.”

She waited for Ian to start. She saw him in profile. She would have sworn there was more gray at his temples than the day in the Landings, as if even more layers of strain had been piled on top of him in the matter of a week.

“When Jenna cheated on me the first time,” he said, “we tried to keep it between the two of us. We didn’t want anyone to know. And we really, really didn’t want Ursula to know.”

“I can understand that.”

“She was only twelve at the time. Not that her age really mattered, but we both felt strongly that she shouldn’t find out.” When he looked at Jenna, his eyes were wide and pleading. She saw the remnants of the long-ago hurt inflicted by Celia, and it tempered her anger. She’d been wounded too. Deceived by Celia. Not like him, but she understood the feeling. “I felt strongly Ursula shouldn’t know. I couldn’t imagine our daughter, my daughter, looking at her mother with that kind of contempt or disappointment. Could you?”

“No. I get that.” Jenna was listening, taking in his story.

“Best-laid plans. Ursula found out. She heard us arguing one night when we thought she was asleep. Looking back, it seems foolish to think we could have kept it from her when there were just the three of us living together. She could feel and see the strain. She could hear the fights. We thought about sending her to live with Celia’s mom for a while, so she wouldn’t find out, but how would we explain that to anyone?”

The engine hummed beneath their words, a soft rumbling bass line.

“So Ursula found out?” Jenna said. “And?”

“It was bad. It was really bad. You know what Ursula’s like. She’s so . . .” He snapped his fingers in the air, searching for the right word.

“Hard,” Jenna said.

“Yes, that’s it. But she hadn’t always been quite like that. You know it.”

“She’s always had a temper.”

“Oh, Jenna. The coffee table thing was over ten years ago. They were practically babies.”

“Okay. I hear you. I can’t imagine what it would be like to learn that about your mother. It could change a person.”

“Right. She became hard. Difficult. It was like she’d grown an exoskeleton around her body. An armor. Not just normal teenage stuff. Quite frankly, and I say this with all the love in my heart for her, but if she wasn’t my daughter . . .”

He left the thought unfinished, but Jenna knew what he meant to say. If she wasn’t my daughter, I wouldn’t like her at all.

“You two always seemed pretty tight,” Jenna said. “You and Ursula.”

“You mean she knew how to get whatever she wanted from me?” Ian smiled as he said it.

“Lots of daughters can do that with their fathers.”

“I guess I’m a softie. Maybe that happened because she’s an only child. Who knows?”

“I’ve noticed the change in her over the last few years,” Jenna said.

“All teenagers get a little mouthy and a little standoffish. It’s a difficult time. But it became more than that with Ursula. She was openly contemptuous with both of us, and she really turned on Celia. She was furious at her. Barely spoke to her. She really shut her out. I caught some of it too, but not as much.” He rubbed his chin, his face lit up by the dashboard display. “I never understood why she held it against me. I was as much a victim of the affair as she was.”

“God, Ian. Don’t be a martyr. You’re her parent. You were in the cross fire.”