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.”