“You don’t have a dad either, do you?”
Jared didn’t say anything. He looked at the house. If Ursula was gone, there was nothing and no one for him to find in there. He wanted to just slip away, maybe even leave Mike to whatever adventures he had found.
“Ursula told me all about you,” Bobby said.
“Why was Ursula talking about me?” Jared asked.
“Who knows? The girl talks. She talks and talks.” He held up the bottle. “Want some?”
“No, thanks. I guess there’s nothing new about your dad’s case.”
Bobby shrugged. “Cops say they keep getting reports about this William Rose guy. Once they put the word out, everybody thinks they know where he is. Like with Ursula’s mom. People think they see her everyplace, just because her face is all over TV. I guess they all think they’re going to be the hero and save the day. What do you want Ursula for if you don’t want to fuck her? I mean, you guys aren’t friends or anything.”
“I just wanted to talk to her about something.”
“She probably went home.” He pointed to an empty space next to him on the diving board. “She was right here. Right in this spot.”
“She told me you two had a falling-out.”
“We always do.” Bobby shrugged, the liquor bottle waving in the air. “She’s always mad at someone. Me, you. Her mom, her dad, her cat. Always mad.”
“She was like that as a kid too,” Jared said. “She told me off all the time when we were little. I guess some things never change.”
“They don’t.”
Jared started to walk away.
“Hey,” Bobby said.
Jared turned back. Bobby had shifted his body a little. He sat farther out on the diving board, his legs dangling more quickly.
“It feels a little like spring, doesn’t it?” he said.
Jared hadn’t noticed. It still felt cold, as far as he was concerned. But Bobby was right that the temperature was a little higher, the air and the wind less biting. He’d seen the forecast and knew some warmer temperatures would be arriving during the next week. Highs in the mid-fifties, maybe even near sixty, a little hope amid the gloom.
“I wish I was graduating,” Bobby said. “I’d be getting out of here, moving someplace else. When the warm weather comes, it’s time to go. Am I right?”
“Sure,” Jared said, although he didn’t know exactly what Bobby was talking about. Maybe rich kids thought that way. They could imagine doing anything and getting away with it, even dropping out of school. But he and Bobby weren’t that different after all. Jared dreamed of leaving Hawks Mill, of going someplace very different. Everybody must at one time or another.
“Everything will be different then,” Bobby said. “So maybe I’ll go.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
Ian walked across the room and sat again. He placed his hands on the tabletop, and he looked calm, almost professorial. “I’ve already told you I wasn’t perfect, as a husband or as a father.”
Jenna felt uncomfortable as she sensed a revelation coming.
“I felt I had to protect my family. After Celia . . . wandered, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to protect Ursula. And Celia, frankly.”
“And you wanted to protect yourself.”
He nodded. “Self-preservation was part of it. Sure. I just knew if Celia strayed again, she could be putting not only our family in jeopardy but also herself. See, I always worried something like this would happen.”
“Something like a kidnapping?” Jenna asked.
“Something dangerous. When someone, a woman, puts herself out there that way, she risks the consequences of being around a man who doesn’t feel any loyalty to her. No commitment. No honesty. An affair is built upon lies, isn’t it? So what’s to stop that man from doing nothing but lying to the woman?”
A clock above the kitchen doorway ticked. Jenna remembered going along with Celia when she registered for wedding gifts. The two friends laughed a lot that day, joking about the kinds of things they could add to the registry to shock the guests. Silk sheets. Or a box of rubbers. One of the things they selected—in all seriousness—was the clock that still ticked in the Walterses’ kitchen seventeen years later. Something itched below the surface of Jenna’s mind.
“What form did this ‘self-preservation’ take?” Jenna asked.
“It’s more complicated than that. I want to explain myself.”
“You were worried about an affair, or Celia being in danger. You were also worried about your reputation. The family’s reputation. The foundry. A straying wife in a small town isn’t good for business.”
Ian made an exasperated noise in his throat. “Don’t try to reduce me. Or my family.”
“You weren’t worried about that?” Jenna asked.
“I worried about my family more.”