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.