“So, did he . . . was he ever a threat to Celia?”
Ian bit down on his lower lip. “Who knows? Didn’t he slime around every girl in the school? Maybe he was following her.” Color rose in his cheeks. “If it’s someone like that, some worthless little man who hurt Celia . . .” He looked angry and hurt. “I guess I should assume it’s a worthless little man of some kind. Who else would go around hurting women?” His jaw clenched. “Jenna, I’m so damn tired of getting my hopes up. It just wears me the hell out, you know?”
“It’s like being kicked in the stomach repeatedly.”
“I was going to say kicked in the balls,” Ian said, “but I get your point. Look, you were, are, Celia’s best friend. You can’t be held responsible for what happened. You were just living your life, doing the things you two always did. Don’t worry about it. Lord knows every one of us could go back and find a million things we’ve done wrong.”
Jenna wanted to feel immediately lighter, to sense the burden she’d been carrying floating away above and beyond the ceiling. When that didn’t happen, she pressed ahead.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice close to a whisper. “And Ursula?”
“She wouldn’t think that way about you. She’s always been crazy about you.”
“Good. How is she doing?”
Ian’s gesture, a slight lifting of his shoulders in a kind of shrug, said he wasn’t entirely sure about his daughter. “She’s doing her best. She’s a little more like me than Celia in the sense that she doesn’t open up. I know she’s grieving and lost, but she puts on a brave face. I’ve offered to have her homeschooled or anything she wants really, but she tells me she’s fine. She goes to school. She spends time with her friends. In some ways, her life is no different. But there’s no mom in the house for her. My mother tries to fill in, but it’s not the same.”
“If I can help, let me know.”
Ian nodded. “Thanks.” He looked around the dining room until he made eye contact with the waiter. “I am hungry after all. Just a little. You?”
“Sure,” Jenna said.
Ian ordered a sandwich and Jenna a salad. When the waiter was gone again and the menus cleared, Jenna contemplated the normality of the scene. There she was, sitting in a nice restaurant having lunch with Ian Walters. The scene could have happened at any time during the past twenty-seven years, but it took Celia’s disappearance for the two of them to share the most commonplace experience.
“I saw the news last night,” Ian said.
“Oh, God.”
“Becky McGee called me too, trying to get me to show up out there at that crime scene that wasn’t a crime scene. I told her no, of course.”
“I guess you’re smarter than me.”
“It’s not easy to say no. It feels like being there, if something happened, would somehow complete things.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought. I thought—”
She stopped the stream of words just in time.
Ian nodded, his face full of sympathy. “You didn’t want Celia to be alone.”
“Yes.”
“I understand. I had to weigh that against . . . well, against being a pawn in some journalist’s game. Against being put on display like a monkey.”
“I played right into their hands. They can loop video of me for the next few days. They can make the bleep louder and longer.”
One end of Ian’s mouth turned up as he laughed. A low, subtle sound, but a laugh nonetheless. “I don’t normally watch that coverage. I can’t stand to see that Reena Huffman and her hysterics. But Ursula saw the clip somewhere and showed it to me.”
“Great. Everyone is seeing it. I’ve been avoiding my mother. She’s thrilled, I’m sure.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It reminded me of what you were like in high school. Definitely a loose cannon.”
“Some things never change, I guess.”
“And your mom’s still uptight? Thinks you’re not ladylike enough?”
“Naturally.” Jenna swallowed. “Ian, are the police still treating you like a suspect?”
“Lord, Jenna, you’re not holding anything back, are you?”
“I’d like to think this isn’t the right time, but who knows when I’ll get to talk to you again?”
“It would be nice to have a break from all that.”
“You can’t expect that with me.”
“I’m not a suspect. Officially. I’m sure plenty of people think I am.”
He paused, as though he expected Jenna to contradict him, but she didn’t.
He said, “They sure as hell treated me like one for the entire month of November. About the only thing they didn’t do was give me a rectal exam.”
“They always suspect the husband.”