Since She Went Away (41 page)

The back gate hung open. Bobby strolled through and when Jared entered the pool area, he saw a few scattered Solo cups and empty beer bottles. A discarded UK sweatshirt lay next to the thick tarp covering the pool, and Jared wondered how Mike had fared at the party.

Bobby walked over to the side of the pool and crouched down next to one of the thick cords that held the tarp in place. He started unwinding the knot, looking like a deckhand preparing a ship to sail. He sprang a few of the cords loose near the deep end, never once looking up at Jared.

“What are you doing?” Jared asked.

But Bobby kept working, as patient as a carpenter. Jared thought back about twelve hours, to Bobby sitting on the diving board and waxing philosophic about the coming of spring and his desire to get away from Hawks Mill. Jared’s throat felt dry.

When Bobby was half done with the cords, he strolled back to the deep end of the pool and pulled on the tarp, rolling it back.

It looked heavy. Jared saw the strain on his face as he tugged, the tendons in his neck flexing.

When Bobby had it rolled back, he sat down on the side of the pool, his feet dangling above the water, which only reached half as high as it did during summer. Bobby stared into the depths as something grotesque settled over his face. A deep pain and sadness that seemed to age him twenty years as he sat and looked.

“Isn’t this what you wanted to see?” he asked without looking up.

Jared took a couple of steps closer.

No, he didn’t want to see
. But he couldn’t stop himself.

He edged toward the lip of the pool.

He saw a human shape, facedown, floating in the scummy water.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

J
ared stared into the partially frozen, dirty water.

He saw the back of a head, hair fanning out.

“Ursula?” Jared asked.

Bobby shook his head.

Then it made sense.

“It’s her,” Jared said. “Celia.”

Bobby remained in place, his feet hanging over the water, his eyes vacant.

A cold knot of revulsion and fear grew inside Jared.

“That’s what I meant about things changing in the spring,” Bobby said. His voice echoed off the concrete surface of the pool. “Pretty soon, Kirk’s family would open this up, and they’d see what was in there.”

“But Kirk didn’t kill her,” Jared said. Not asking. Stating a fact.

“He doesn’t know anything about it. Unless he’s looking out a window right now.”

Jared looked up at the house. The morning sun was hitting the windows, reflecting and obscuring anyone who might be looking outside.

“He’s probably hungover.”

Jared watched as Bobby started to cry, his face dissolving into tears, his body shuddering. “My dad. Her. All of it.”

Jared couldn’t move. The body in the water kept him transfixed.

The only sound in the quiet morning was Bobby’s sobs, which grew quieter and less frequent.

“Who did it?” Jared asked.

Bobby looked up, wiping his face. He stared at Jared, not saying anything.

And then Jared saw that Bobby was looking past him. His eyes were fixed on a spot behind Jared.

Something. Or someone.

Before Jared could turn he was hit in the back and knocked forward.

Jared was propelled into the air, out over the lip of the pool, and he landed in the screaming-cold water, his body bumping up against the frozen block of a human being.

•   •   •

Ursula didn’t answer calls or texts.

Jenna and Ian checked the park, the school—anywhere she might be spending time. Thirty minutes passed, then forty-five.

Detective Poole called. Ian answered and explained the situation. Naomi promised to spread the word about Ursula.

“But don’t make a big deal out of it,” Ian said. “Don’t embarrass her. This may be nothing.”

Ian hung up. Jenna was driving so that Ian could keep trying Ursula.

“We know she came home last night for some amount of time, right?” Jenna asked. “And you didn’t see her this morning?”

“No. I didn’t hear her either. And I was up early.”

“Could she have gone back to the party last night? Maybe to meet people or drink more?”

“Worth a try.”

“Do you know where she was?” Jenna asked.

“The Embrys’ house. Kirk Embry is the kid’s name.”

Jenna turned at the next stop sign and accelerated.

“Ian,” she said, “I have to ask you a question. Did anything else happen in your house the night Celia disappeared? Is there something we all don’t know?”

“Oh, Jenna . . .” Ian had the phone out again. Dialing and dialing.

They came to another stop sign, one on the edge of downtown. When it was her turn to go, Jenna didn’t. She put the car in park and turned toward Ian. “What else is there, Ian? Is this something about Ursula?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know?”

Ian stared straight ahead for a moment. Then he reached out and banged his fist against the dashboard. The noise made Jenna jump.

Ian still didn’t look at her.

His breathing grew heavy. “I wasn’t home that night.”

A car pulled up behind them and then went around when it saw they weren’t moving. Jenna struggled to put her thoughts together. And then she struggled to find words. “Where were you?”

“It only happened one time. I swear, Jenna. One time. Celia probably went out that night because I wasn’t home either. I was gone and you called . . .”

“A woman? You were with another woman? And all this time you’ve let everyone think—everyone know—that Celia had affairs? And you weren’t even there when she left?”

“I said we’ve all done things we aren’t proud of.”

“So you don’t know where Ursula was that night? Or what Celia was doing before she left the house?”

Ian didn’t answer. He looked at his phone.

“Wait,” Jenna said, reaching out and placing her hand on Ian’s phone. “You lied to the police? You lied to everybody?”

“What did it matter where I was? What matters is where Celia was.”

Jenna felt a pressure in her chest, a combination of anger and shock. “But if you lied, Ian, do you know what that makes you look like?” She stared at him, her lips parted. “Did you hurt Celia?”

Ian’s forehead creased. “Are you kidding, Jenna? Never. Never.”

“So Ursula lied for you?”

“Jenna, can we talk about this later?”

“No. Now. Ursula lied for you? Your own daughter.”

“We agreed it was best.”

“Where was she that night if you weren’t home?” Jenna asked.

“Home.”

“How do you know?” Jenna asked.

Ian didn’t answer.

Jenna continued to the Embrys’.

•   •   •

Jared scrambled away from the stiff body, reaching for the metal ladder above him.

The water in the deep end of the pool came up to his chest, and it helped to break his fall. But he was freezing, his lips chattering, his insides burning with cold.

He reached for the ladder and looked up. He used one hand to clear his eyes and saw Ursula standing on the edge of the pool where he had just been. She looked down on him imperiously, her face hard, her jaw set.

She looked over at Bobby. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked, her voice harsh and brittle in the cold air.

“He knows. Everybody’s going to know. And I’m glad.”

“You didn’t meet me. I waited at school with my fucking bag, you moron. We could be gone. Long gone.”

“Don’t call me that,” Bobby said. “You can’t bully your way out of this one.”

Jared reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It was soaked, the screen blank. His hands were cold, and it slipped out of his grip and plopped into the water next to Celia’s body, sinking down beneath it to the bottom of the pool.

Ursula came closer to the ladder, staring down at Jared where he shivered. She stepped away, and Jared started climbing, his hands so cold he struggled to grip the railing.

Before he reached the top, Ursula was back. And she held a long metal pole in her hand, the kind people attached a skimmer to in order to remove leaves.

Jared thought she was going to hand it down to him, to use it to help pull him up.

But then he saw the look on her face. She swung it at his knuckles, intending to knock him off the ladder and back into the water.

He ducked her first swing and her second.

And then someone called her name.

•   •   •

Ian went through the gate first.

He called for Ursula, and when Jenna came through behind him, she saw Ursula standing at the edge, a long metal rod in her hand, and Bobby Allen sitting on the rim staring down into the water.

Jenna wondered:
Why are these two rich kids cleaning their friend’s pool on a Saturday morning in February?

Then Ursula dropped the pole. It clattered down into the pool.

And Bobby stood up and leaned over, extending his hand down the ladder to the deep end.

Ursula locked eyes with Ian. She clutched her arms across her midsection as though she was about to be sick.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said. She folded in half, as if she’d been struck in the stomach. She sank onto the concrete that surrounded the pool, her body curling into a ball.

Ian rushed to her. Jenna tried not to be cynical. She tried not to see Ursula’s wheedling behavior as manipulation of her father.

But then she saw Jared, soaking wet and shivering, lifted out of the pool by Bobby Allen.

Jenna rushed across, taking her coat off as she went. She reached him and wrapped him in her coat. “What are you doing, Jared? You’ll freeze.”

“Mom, don’t look down there,” he said, his lips blue, his teeth chattering.

But Jenna looked.

And she understood.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

“I
didn’t mean for it to happen,” Ursula was saying. She said it over and over.

Ian continued to hold her.

Jenna listened. She felt far away, as though she were watching the scene unfold from a great remove. A million miles or more.

But it was real. She was there, hearing the nightmare words.

“We fought that night, the night she disappeared.” Ursula leaned back and stared directly into Ian’s eyes. “I knew you were out. I thought . . . I thought Mom was going to see someone, a man. I heard her making plans on the phone.”

“It wasn’t a man,” Jenna said. “It was me.”

“I didn’t know that,” Ursula said, her voice rising to a higher pitch like that of a wronged child.

“Honey, what happened?” Ian asked.

“I tried to stop her from going, and she wouldn’t listen to me. I thought she was lying to me when she said she wasn’t meeting a man. She’d lied to you about other men. Why else would she be sneaking out late at night if it wasn’t for a man?” Ursula’s voice grew more petulant as she went on. “She insisted on going. And I couldn’t stop
her.” She wasn’t crying. “I didn’t mean to shove her as hard as I did, but she wouldn’t listen. She fell by the laundry room and hit her head against the wall. She didn’t bleed. But her neck was turned kind of funny. Her eyes were open. I could tell . . .”

Jenna’s arm slipped from around Jared’s back. She felt nauseated, felt her mouth filling with saliva. She raised her hand and bent down on one knee as though genuflecting. She heaved, her mouth filling with bile, and she spit it onto the concrete.

“I helped her cover it up.” Bobby stood to the side of the scene, his face vacant. “She called and we brought the body over here. The Embrys are always gone. They’d just closed their pool. And we dropped that earring at the spot where Ursula said her mom and Mrs. Barton always met. Ursula knew right where to put it. Mrs. Walters said she was going to meet you, so we thought that would throw people off. I thought it was a shitty idea. I didn’t think anyone would even see it. But Ursula said the cops would look over every inch of that area. She was right.” He looked over at Ursula. “She tried to keep the other earring. Like a keepsake of her mother, after she’d killed her.”

“It belonged to me,” Ursula said.

“We would have gotten caught,” Bobby said. “I had to take the earring from her and throw it out. I should have thrown it in the fucking river, but she wouldn’t shut up about it. I barely got it away from her.”

“Bobby—”

Bobby didn’t stop. “You’d already taken money from the house. She said it would make her dad think her mom had run off on him. Then she went on message boards and tried to make people think her mom was alive, that she’d just run away.”

“I met one of the lonely people she convinced,” Jenna said. “You convinced him so well he showed up here.”

“We were going to come back here and move it—
her
—when the weather got warm,” Bobby said.

Jenna looked up at Bobby. His cheeks were red, but otherwise he looked so normal, so innocent. The all-American kid. And he was discussing hiding a body as though he were talking about hiding a case of beer.

“And William Rose found out,” Jenna said from one knee. “He was supposed to be following Celia, but he must have seen you two. You went out that night, Ian. Did you call to have Celia followed?”

Ian moved his head. It was barely a nod.

“Somehow he saw us moving the body,” Bobby said. “He knew what we were doing.”

“And what then? He wanted to blackmail your dad?”

“I think that’s why William Rose killed him,” Bobby said. “I think something went wrong there. Dad might have been tired of it. Maybe he didn’t have the money as fast as Rose wanted it.” His eyes filled with tears. “I might as well have killed him myself. I caused it to happen.”

“That’s why Natalie heard your names the night your dad was killed,” Jared said. “He was threatening your dad.”

“Ian?” Jenna said. “What about you?”

Ian nodded. Slowly. “He kept his distance from me after Celia disappeared. Maybe it was just a matter of time and he would have blackmailed me as well.”

Jenna stood up. Jared was shivering and scared. She placed her arm around his shoulder and led him away. When they passed Ursula and Ian, Jenna said, “I’m calling the police.”