During lunch, Sally came into the break room and informed Jenna she had a phone call.
“Here?” Jenna asked. “Did they say who it was?”
“No, but it’s a guy. He sounds kind of formal. Maybe it’s Manuel, the waiter from Saturday night. I could tell he liked you.”
“He was what, seventeen? And gay?”
“He had to be twenty-one. He served us margaritas. Line three for your mystery call.”
Jenna stepped into the records room. Jared would have called on the cell or texted if he had a problem. So would the school. She picked up and pushed the flashing light. “Hello?”
“Hi, Jenna. It’s Ian.”
She would have recognized the voice even without his identification. It took her a moment to answer. “Oh, hi. Is something wrong?”
She assumed there had been a break in Celia’s case, something Ian needed to let her know about.
“No, nothing’s wrong. And I would have called your cell or something, but I don’t have it. I just knew where you worked and figured you’d be there on a Monday afternoon.”
“I’m here. I’m pretty much always here.”
“And I don’t want to take up a lot of your time. I just wanted to tell you I’m glad we talked on Friday. You were right at lunch that day when you said I should have spoken to you sooner and given you a chance to say whatever you needed to say.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Jenna kept her voice low. Even though she’d pulled the door to the records room closed behind her, coworkers and patients passed by talking and laughing. “I wasn’t up nights worrying about that. In the big picture, how I feel or what we talk about isn’t the most important thing.”
“But maybe it is in a way. It helped me, talking to you. Sure, Ursula and I have a bond and a relationship to Celia. But it’s nice to talk to another adult who knows her as well as you do.”
Jenna remembered the feel of his hand against hers, both in the restaurant and then in her kitchen. Had he really been caressing her skin with his thumb that night? Or had she imagined it, like a foolish schoolgirl? Either way, the memory of the touch made every nerve end in her body tingle. And as soon as she realized that, she told herself to make it stop.
“I wish we could talk about the good things,” Ian said. “All we’ve talked about is this awful stuff. This stuff that has blindsided us. When Celia disappeared, it felt like I’d been hit by a truck. And now this news of the affair . . . it feels like I got hit by another truck.”
“Or kicked in the balls?”
Jenna cringed. Had she said too much?
Ian laughed a little. “Right.”
Ian never seemed like the kind of person who needed sympathy, but what else could she say to him? “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s good. Let’s just make sure the next time we talk, we focus on something else. Maybe we can involve Ursula like we talked about. She’s at an age when she’s going to want to know what her mom was like as a teenager. Who better to tell her, right?”
“You know, Ian, I haven’t stopped thinking Celia can tell Ursula herself. I—”
But she stopped herself. She wasn’t sure if she believed the words coming out of her own mouth. And she didn’t want to sound completely fake.
“It’s okay, Jenna,” Ian said. “We all know where we stand.”
A silence settled over the call, so Jenna broke it by giving him her cell number. “Call me or text me if you want to share those good memories with Ursula. Or anybody else. I think you’re right. It would be a good thing.”
“Sure.” He paused. Jenna heard someone talking in the hallway. Then Ian said, “It’s been good reconnecting with you, Jenna. It’s, well, it’s a part of the past that had been shut off for a while.”
“You’re right,” she said. When she hung up the phone, her hand was shaking.
? ? ?
She walked out with Sally at the end of the day, both of them moving slowly, tired from a busy Monday.
“So, who was your mysterious caller today?” Sally asked.
“Oh.” Mention of the call made her feel guilty, even though she wasn’t sure why. She’d spent the day thinking about Ian a lot. The two times their hands touched, the desire to reconnect and share old memories. Wasn’t that a perfectly normal thing to do when someone . . . “Just a friend.”
“‘Just a friend’? Just a man friend? Why so defensive? Do you say that about me? ‘Oh, that’s Sally, she’s just a friend.’”
They stopped by Sally’s car, a black Jetta. Sally leaned back against the trunk as if she had all the time in the world.
“It’s Ian.” Sally didn’t react. “Celia’s husband.”
“Oh, I get it.” A knowing look spread across Sally’s face. “You’re worried what it looks like if you two start buddying up.”
“We’re not buddying up. We’re old friends too.”
“I thought he was such a stick-in-the-mud. Didn’t you always refer to him as Mr. Uptight or something like that?”