“No. You don’t understand. What if you call the police and tell them about Tabitha, and then they go to her house and talk to her dad? She could end up in more trouble or she could . . .”
His voice trailed off. But Jenna understood.
“You think she’ll blame you,” she said. “She’ll blame you and then what? You’ll never be able to get back together with her?”
Jared looked down at the book cover. Jenna remembered those days when a fledgling little relationship meant more than anything else in life. There had been other boys in high school besides Ian. So many little crushes and flirtations, so many little disappointments and broken hearts. Hell, she felt that way when Marty left. He was no prince, but for close to six months after he walked out the door, she would have taken him back no questions asked. She had felt that desperate, that lonely and scared.
“Jared, there are more important things than a relationship sometimes,” she said. “There’s a person’s safety.”
“I’ll go. I’ll check on her.”
“No.” Jenna rarely told Jared not to do something. She trusted him to make his own decisions. Mostly. But she needed to play the parent this time. “You shouldn’t go over there.”
“Why not? It’s better than calling the police.”
“I thought you were worried about what she thought of you. What’s she going to think if you come knocking on her door after she’s dumped you?”
The word “dumped” sounded harsh and stinging, but Jared didn’t react.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, his voice lower.
“I won’t call the police, if you don’t want. Not right now. I’m holding on to that option, just so you know. If there’s more trouble with her or other bad signs.”
“Fine. That’s fine.”
Jared started paging through the book, not really stopping to read or look at anything. Just paging. It looked like a nervous gesture more than anything else.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I could call Stanley’s and order a pizza. I’m not cooking, I can tell you that.”
“Sure. That would be good.”
“Are you seeing Syd and Mike tonight? Or are you staying home with Mom?”
He shrugged. “I’m just hungry. Can you call soon?”
“Sure.”
She hung her coat up by the door, and on the way past the chair where Jared sat, she stopped. She wanted to hug him, pull him close the way she used to when he was little. He didn’t look up or invite any contact, so she ruffled his hair with her hand. He tolerated the affection without resisting, and then Jenna went down the hall to the bedroom. It felt good to change her clothes, to shed the day and all of its problems. She hoped Jared would stay in, that they would watch a movie together while eating the pizza, a little mother-son bonding they both needed.
She heard a noise from the other room. Something opening and closing.
“Jared?”
She hurried back out to the living room. His coat was gone.
She knew right away what had happened.
He’d left to go check on Tabitha.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jared knew what running out that way meant. It meant his mom would probably call the police.
But she didn’t know where Tabitha lived. She didn’t know how to find him.
He pulled his coat tighter around his body. It was close to six, the sky fully dark.
He decided to cut through Caldwell Park. It offered a more direct route, one that might shave a few minutes off his travel time. Kids from school hung out there in the afternoon and evening. On summer nights, it was impossible to go there without running into someone he knew. When he walked Tabitha home the other night, he’d bypassed the park for that very reason. He didn’t want to share his limited time with Tabitha with anyone else. Alone, he didn’t care.
He entered on the east side, a couple of blocks from where Celia disappeared. For a while, after her disappearance, the sidewalk was littered with candles and notes and stuffed animals. Most of that stuff was gone, the spot empty and back to normal. Jared wondered what the police did with all those trinkets. Did they keep them somewhere, as some kind of evidence or memento of the case? Or did they just trash them? He could imagine some cop with a garbage bag, showing up at night and sweeping it all away, tossing it in a Dumpster behind the police station.
There were swings and jungle gyms at the south end of the park. His mom had taken him there when he was little, letting him run around while she studied her anatomy textbooks. In the middle sat a statue of Abraham Lincoln, Kentucky’s favorite son. Never mind that he lived in the state only until he was six years old and spent much more time in Illinois, people in the Bluegrass State liked to claim him.