Sally distracted her. They traded notes over how tired they were when they woke up that morning. “Are you kidding? The wine helps me sleep,” Sally said. “That’s why I drink some every night. Doctor’s orders.”
Jenna admitted her sleep had been lousy, the lingering effects of the previous day’s events, particularly the disagreement with Jared.
“The boys,” Sally said, shaking her head. “They develop the sassiest mouths. If mine hadn’t been so big, I would have kept right on spanking them.”
Just before eleven, Jenna stepped out to the lobby and called a patient back. A middle-aged man, someone she had never seen in the office before. Possibly a new patient or someone she simply hadn’t crossed paths with yet. When she called the man’s name, he looked up, a hopeful smile on his face. People usually smiled when they were called back. Their wait was ending. They were that much closer to getting an answer from the doctor or receiving treatment. More than anything, they didn’t have to wait anymore.
But as the man came closer to Jenna, the look on his face changed. His brow wrinkled, the smile disappeared. When she attempted to make the usual small talk—How are you today? Is it any warmer out there?—the man grunted.
She understood. Some people didn’t want to talk. They wanted the business conducted without any of the frills. Except the smile the man first showed marked him as a talker . . .
When they entered the exam room, Jenna pulled out the blood pressure cuff.
“Just relax your arm,” she said. “No need to roll up your sleeve.”
The man cleared his throat. “Is there another nurse who can do this?”
“Excuse me?”
“Another nurse,” he said. “Besides you.”
Jenna didn’t follow. The man refused to meet her eye. “Is something wrong, sir?”
Then he looked up. “I don’t want to be helped by someone with a foul mouth, a troublemaker. It’s just not my values, that’s all.”
It took a moment to understand what he referred to, but then she knew. The TV interview. Reena Huffman. In the lobby, his face fell because he recognized her.
“Are you serious?” Jenna asked.
“What you’ve put that family through,” he said. “They’re pillars of the community.”
Some other “foul” words popped into her mind, and she wished she could share them. But she didn’t. She stepped out of the room without saying anything else and handed the chart off to one of her colleagues.
? ? ?
The receptionist in the lobby of Walters Foundry, a young woman with a bright smile and hair the color of straw, informed Jenna that there was simply no way she could see Mr. Ian Walters today. She offered to call upstairs to his private office and schedule the appointment herself with Ian’s secretary.
But Jenna didn’t feel like being turned away.
Something Naomi said stuck with her. Jenna did surf those Web sites and message boards because it made her feel as though she was doing something productive, even though, deep in her heart of hearts, she knew her little gestures didn’t make a bit of difference. Jenna remembered those first days after Celia’s disappearance. She walked the woods and hills of Hawks Mill with a group of volunteers. She manned a phone bank, dutifully writing down tips and leads.
None of it made any difference as far as she could tell. Celia remained lost, out of reach of all of them.
The other volunteers, as well as the observers and the citizens who casually followed the case around the country, they too slipped back to their daily lives, and the story barely left a mark on them. Another crime or crisis would pop up in the news, another distraction, and if something came up regarding Celia, they could flip the channel right back and pick up where they’d left off. The Reena Huffmans of the world would be sure nobody missed a detail.
Jenna, and those closest to Celia, floundered in the mire. No path forward presented itself. There was only looking back and regretting. Jenna wondered if she was stuck most of all. She wasn’t a member of the inner circle, a tight group she imagined included Celia’s mother, her sister, Ian, Ursula, and perhaps other friends Jenna didn’t know well, and she couldn’t walk away. Patience had become her watchword. Answers, if they came at all, wouldn’t come quickly. She understood the harsh truths: Even if they did find Celia’s body—in a rotten barn, a ditch, or a forest—they wouldn’t necessarily be any closer to knowing what had happened to her, unless they could firmly tie it to somebody. Benny Ludlow or anybody else. They’d only know she was dead, an unpleasant truth Jenna tried to push from her mind whenever it crept in.
She needed to do something.
So Jenna told the secretary—insisted—that she call up to Mr. Ian Walters’s private office and tell him Jenna Barton was here to see him.
Needed to see him.
The cheery young woman did as she was asked, never losing her smile.
A few minutes later, the phone on her desk rang. She nodded, writing on a small pad of paper. She tore it off with a flourish. “Mr. Walters says he’ll meet you at this address in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN