Since She Went Away Read Online Free Page A

some creep was stalking her. . . . Sometimes I watch those cop shows on TV. After forty-eight hours, it’s like impossible for them to find someone alive.”
    “I know,” she said, again with the heavy weight in her voice.
    Jared didn’t want her to be sad, so he tried to say something hopeful. “People do think they’ve seen Celia. More than once someone in another town, sometimes way across the country, says they’ve seen Celia somewhere. The cops always try to check it out, but they haven’t found her yet.”
    “And they haven’t found her body?”
    “No.”
    “I guess that’s good. Kind of.”
    “You must live in some kind of cave, or a news media blackout, if you’ve never heard of the Diamond Mom,” he said, trying to sound joking and casual.
    Tabitha’s cheeks flushed. Her lips, which had remained parted, clamped tight into a wire-thin line. The sympathetic emotion in her eyes grew hard and flat, almost like a light going out.
    “That’s not funny,” she said.
    “What’s not?”
    “That cave comment.” Her words came out in rhythmic bursts, like steel banging against steel. “It’s not funny.”
    “It’s just an expression. Everybody says it.”
    “I should go.” In one quick, fluid motion, she pushed herself away from the desk and grabbed her coat, moving to the door like someone rushing to catch a bus.
    Jared barely had time to move. He walked a couple of steps behind her as she glided through the bedroom door, turning to the right and the front of the house. “Tabitha? Wait.”
    He followed her, hurrying. The denim from her jeans made a sharp brushing noise as she walked away from him, and Jared had to jog to reach her before she made it to the living room.
    “Wait. Please.”
    She stopped. He started to reach out and touch her arm, but some instinct told him to back off, that no one as angry as Tabitha was wanted to be touched at a moment like this.
    But she had stopped.
    She kept her back to him, her shoulders moving as she breathed heavily with anger.
    “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was just . . . I didn’t mean anything.”
    She didn’t respond. But she didn’t leave. He took that as a goodsign, one that meant he still had a chance to keep her in the house for a little while longer.
    “I didn’t mean to insult you or your dad. I don’t care where you live. I was just being a smart-ass. I do that sometimes.”
    “It’s not . . . That’s not what I’m mad about.”
    “What, then?”
    “Forget it,” she said. “I should go.”
    “No, I want you to stay. Please?” Jared decided to pull out all the stops, open up the way he wanted her to. If he was going to lay it all on the line, he figured this was the time to do it. “I want to tell you something else. About Celia. And my mom. About what I had to do with her disappearing.”
    She turned to face him, her eyes open wide.
    And she stayed.

CHAPTER THREE
 
    J enna wandered away from the reporters, her feet crunching over the cold, uneven ground. She shivered, and not just because of the rising wind and the thickening clouds that blocked out the already meager and distant sun. Tension rose inside her as she waited for something to happen, a growing pressure that made her bones and muscles so taut she thought she’d explode.
    She couldn’t escape the feeling that the whole thing was a farce, a dog and pony show orchestrated by the media and the police. The police, who wanted to look as if they were still working on Celia’s case, and the media, who needed the ratings. Jenna just wasn’t sure whether she was the dog or the pony. Or both.
    She pulled out her phone and texted Jared. He’d be out of school and heading home, and she didn’t want him to hear on the news or from social media that something related to Celia’s case was brewing. He’d never said much about Celia’s disappearance or the media storm that blew up in its aftermath. Jenna got the feeling he didn’t know what to say to her,