Since She Went Away (10 page)

Jenna warmed to the conversation with her son, realizing that they could bond over this. After all, who would appreciate someone cursing on national TV more than a teenager?

“I dropped an
f
-bomb. And I used the Lord’s name in vain. A daily double.”

Jared laughed, but his eyes remained serious. Something was bothering him, and she waited to see if he’d share it.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Sure.” Jenna tossed the towel aside. “Do you want to change first?”

“No.” He seemed to be choosing his words, trying to think of the best way to say what he had to say. “Did Grandpa ever kiss you?”

“Kiss me? You mean like a peck on the cheek?”

“I was thinking on the lips,” Jared said.

“You remember Grandpa, right? He wasn’t the warmest guy. I don’t think he ever kissed Grandma on the lips. Why are you asking me about that?”

He seemed to be working up to another question, his eyes trained on the floor. But then he shook his head. “Forget it. I haven’t done any of my homework.”

“Wait.” Even as she spoke, Jenna knew she was violating her own rules. She was pushing the conversation, pushing at her son. She hated when she acted that way, maybe all mothers did, but she couldn’t stop herself because she thought something might be wrong. “Is there something about Tabitha?”

Jared stood still for a moment, wavering between walking away and staying. “It’s nothing, Mom. Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s just that there was something about her. She looked familiar to me, and I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen her before. But I’ve been thinking about it, and here you are, having some kind of issue.”

“There’s no
issue
,” he said, his voice getting louder.

“Maybe I know her dad. Maybe that’s why she looked familiar. What I’m saying is I might be able to help with whatever’s going on.”

“Mom, stop.” He held his hands in the air, chest high, in exasperation. “Just . . . I never should have brought it up. I’m going to change and do my homework.”

“Jared, wait.”

She wanted to tell him about the earring, about the man in custody, but she’d blown it. She’d really blown it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
abitha didn’t come to homeroom. Jared sat in his seat, a row behind hers, and waited, trying not to appear eager or concerned. His friend Syd, slightly overweight with thick glasses, a kid he’d known since first grade, sat on his left and wanted to talk about a college basketball game he’d watched the night before. He knew Jared didn’t watch much basketball, but he kept bringing it up, even nudging Jared in the side to keep his attention.

“Isn’t it time you got excited about following the Wildcats?” Syd said for the third time. “What if they go all the way, and you didn’t pay attention?”

“Yeah, I’ll watch,” Jared said, but he didn’t even know what he was agreeing to.

“What’s the matter? Is your girl sick?”

“I guess so.”

The night before, Jared had dreamed of being chased. He couldn’t see who was behind him or what they wanted, but Jared knew, in the dream, he’d done something wrong. And if whoever was behind him caught up he’d be in big trouble. His eyeballs felt as if they’d been scoured with a Brillo pad, as if he’d slept about ten minutes.

“Didn’t she text you and tell you what was going on?” Syd asked.

“She doesn’t text much.”

“So text her. You know if you weren’t here she’d be texting you.”

Jared tried to laugh it off, to play along with the banter. He wondered if Syd had ever been with a girl, if he’d ever so much as made out with someone. And in that moment, he found himself feeling envious of his friend’s easy, uncomplicated life.

As the day went on, he looked for Tabitha in the hallways between classes, but he didn’t have much hope. Something was going on, he knew, something relating to her father and the events of the previous night. Kids came down with stomach bugs and colds all the time, especially when the weather was as shitty as it had been. But Jared refused to allow himself to accept an illness as the cause of Tabitha’s absence. He’d kept her out too late, and then made things worse with the rock.

At lunch he returned to the table with Syd and Mike. He’d been eating with Tabitha every day since she arrived at their school. He knew he’d get shit from them for coming back, but he also wanted the company and the distraction from his constantly racing thoughts.

“The prodigal returns,” Mike said when Jared sat down. Mike was the best-looking friend Jared had. His hair was thick, his clothes always perfect. Mike liked to boast about the girls he’d been with, and if he had been anyone else, Jared would have doubted the stories. But Jared knew the way the girls in the school talked about Mike—as if he were a rock star, just stepped off the stage. Mike had moved to Hawks Mill in the second grade, and he and Syd and Jared had been a tight-knit group of friends ever since. “Your girl wasn’t in history today.”

“She’s sick or something,” Jared said.

“And you can’t text her or anything? Is this all because her dad’s so strict?”

“Yeah.” Jared tried to concentrate on the slice of pizza before him, but he wasn’t hungry.

“And you’ve never met the guy?” Mike’s voice was full of awe. “That’s unprecedented. You’re walking this girl home every day, messing around with her, and the guy doesn’t want to meet you and check you out.”

“He’s never been inside the house,” Syd said. “Never even in the yard.”

Jared wanted to curse at Syd. He told him things in homeroom he’d never tell Mike. But the floodgates were open. Jared was going to face the full force of Mike’s interrogation and wisdom.

“Is that for real?” he asked. “Never set foot in the yard? Is she ashamed of you?”

“Easy, Mike,” Syd said.

“What I mean is, her dad works, right? And where’s her mom?”

Jared tried to think of the right words. “Her mom’s . . . missing in action. They’re separated. I don’t think she knows where her mom lives. It’s kind of like she left them, I think.”

“Weird. Usually mothers don’t leave,” Syd said. “Fathers do.”

“She acts evasive about her mom, like there’s something else going on.”

“So you could be in that house every day after school,” Mike said. “When do you think all the good stuff happens? It’s in that time between school letting out and the time the parents get home from work. I call it the Magic Hour. I guess your mom works too, but she’s pretty smart. She’d know. Dads are clueless for the most part.”

“I brought her to my house yesterday,” Jared said, trying to lighten the mood. “My mom walked in on us.”

Both Mike’s and Syd’s eyebrows shot up.

Mike said, “In the middle of the act?”

“Starting down that road,” Jared said.

“Holy shit,” Syd said. “I wonder what Jenna’s face looked like when she saw that.”

Mike laughed and laughed, the food he was chewing on full display. Jared hadn’t planned on telling him anything, but the sharing of information made him feel more closely connected to his friends. It provided a sense of comfort and ease he hadn’t felt since he walked Tabitha home the night before.

“Mom was cool,” Jared said. “She really was. She has other stuff on her mind.”

“Oh, yeah,” Syd said. “She was on TV last night. My mom saw it. She dropped an
f
-bomb on Reena Huffman’s show.”

Mike laughed even more and asked Syd to find the clip on YouTube so he could watch it. Jared started eating, started feeling a little more normal. Maybe Tabitha
was
just sick. Maybe she needed a mental health day. His mom let him have those on occasion. He didn’t have to be sick and she’d let him stay home and mellow out in his room, so long as he promised to keep up with the work, which he always did.

“I swear,” Mike said, “your mom is so freaking cool. She makes my parents looks like the mom and dad on
All in the Family
.”

Jared remembered the dustup with his mom the night before, all of which came about because he’d tried to open up to her and then changed course in midstream. He never liked losing his cool with her. He understood the pressures she felt, and she’d already opened up to him about the shitty day she’d had. But he wished she’d just learn to read the signals, to know when to back off and let him be. She didn’t have to have the answer to everything all the time. Over breakfast that morning, they both behaved normally. Neither one mentioned the disagreement. They did that sometimes—let things go. He wished he could do that with Tabitha, just turn the page and go back to the way things were almost twenty-four hours earlier.

“Let me ask you guys something,” Jared said once the laughing and the jokes about his mom’s
f
-bomb settled down. “You know how Tabitha doesn’t really text and she has the strict curfew and all that, right?”

“Practically Amish,” Mike said.

“Exactly.” For a moment, Jared wondered if that was it. Were Tabitha and her father part of some Amish splinter sect? Was the strictness and lack of communication and even the kissing just a cultural or religious custom? “Have you ever Googled her?”

“Googled Tabitha?” Syd asked.

“Yes.”

“Why would I Google someone?” Mike asked.

Syd looked at him. “You don’t Google people? I Google a lot of people. Teachers, students. Not Tabitha, though. I looked for her on Twitter and Facebook once.”

“I don’t Google regular people,” Mike said. “Not kids I know. Not that I really know Tabitha.”

“Well, I have Googled her,” Jared said. “I know the town she came from in Florida and her middle name. I figure maybe there’d be something. You know, honor roll. Soccer team. School project.”

“Graduation lists,” Syd said. “They always print lists of graduates in every town, so when she finished junior high they might list her.”

“You think about this too much,” Mike said, looking at Syd from the corner of his eye.

“He’s right, Mike. There’s nothing. There are other Tabitha Burkes in the country. The name isn’t that unusual. But nothing about her. No social media, no school or sports stuff.”

Syd pulled his phone out and started typing with his thumbs. While he did that, Mike looked at Jared and said, “Maybe she didn’t do any activities. She seems pretty much like a recluse, don’t you agree? I guess she gets out with you a little. She doesn’t have any girlfriends.”
He leaned forward, his hands folded on the tabletop. “To be honest, the other girls think she’s a little standoffish. You know? She’s pretty and all that, but she’s quiet. Maybe even aloof. She probably was like that at her old school.”

“You’re right,” Syd said. “Nothing comes up. What’s her dad’s name? Maybe he shows up, and then you can at least know she didn’t just materialize out of thin air.”

Jared didn’t even know where her dad worked.

He was starting to realize how little he did know.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

J
enna vowed she’d have a better day.

Driving to work, she recited a list of all the things she intended to leave behind: the scene at the barn, the cursing on TV, the disagreement with Jared. And something else, some other lingering unpleasantness. Yes, the prank phone call. It all belonged to yesterday.

She scanned through the stations, checking for news. The man and the earring were mentioned on a local station, but they didn’t seem to know anything else. She’d called Detective Poole once before leaving the house and hung up when it went to voice mail again.

A great song came on the radio. “These Are Days” by 10,000 Maniacs. Yes, she needed to hear that. The sun was bright, the temperature slightly warmer. Soon it would be spring and then summer. Things had to get better, didn’t they?

Times like this, when she needed a pick-me-up, she didn’t pray or meditate. She talked to Celia. Sometimes she heard the conversations in her head, but sometimes, usually when she was alone in the house or the car, she’d say things out loud and wish she could once again hear Celia’s voice or her laugh.

“You would have liked the show I put on last night,” Jenna said.

She made sure to stop talking before she reached a traffic light. She didn’t want the people next to her—and in a town like Hawks Mill, it very well could be someone she knew—thinking she had totally lost her mind. But as she accelerated down the road, the music playing in the background, she told Celia all about the interview with Becky and the bleeped
f
-bomb on CNN.

“You’d have gotten a kick out of that one, C,” she said. “You would have shaken your head and laughed. You would have found the clip on the Web and shared it on social media. You would have had a good time at my expense, as usual.”

Celia always laughed at Jenna’s missteps, the things she said wrong, the times she messed up. But she almost always followed up with something more: a pat on the back, a smile, or a hug.
“That’s our Jenna,”
she used to say.
“We love you for it all, babe.”

Jenna came to a light and felt emotion welling in her throat. Once she was moving, she pounded the steering wheel with the flat of her hand. “Where the fuck did you go, C? Where the fuck did you go?”

She didn’t let herself cry. She choked it all back, reminding herself once again that a new day had dawned. When she walked in to Hawks Mill Family Medicine, she saw Detective Poole waiting for her, and the whole notion of a new day went out the window.

•   •   •

Naomi Poole was about fifty-five. She wore her hair cut short and used the knuckle on her right index finger to push her owlish eyeglasses up the bridge of her nose every few minutes. She’d taken the lead on Celia’s case and had spent more hours than Jenna could remember asking questions and then more questions about Celia’s life and their plans on the night she disappeared. Jenna liked Naomi Poole and mostly trusted her, but couldn’t escape the feeling that the
detective, as a consequence of her job, was always sizing Jenna up, sifting through every piece of information and reevaluating her. Jenna believed Naomi turned that critical eye on everyone she met.