“And now you’re mostly doing books?”
“Right. I used to write a lot for magazines, but print is drying up thanks to the Internet.”
“And you’re married, right? I remember hearing once that you were.”
“Well, briefly, but it didn’t work out, to say the least. I’m living with someone now, though. Nice guy. But enough about me. I want to hear about you.”
She cocked her head and glanced off for a moment, the expression in her eyes momentarily wistful. I found myself holding my breath. I’d Googled her name from time to time over the years, but once the neighbor was tried and sentenced, nothing ever surfaced, and I didn’t have a clue what had enfolded for her. I just prayed that she’d found a certain peace.
“I’ve bounced around a bit,” she said, returning her gaze to mine. “But not necessarily in a bad way. After—After everything, I went to live with family friends of ours, the Healys, who’d moved from Dory to Seattle the year before. I just needed to hide away for a while, and they took me in.”
“There were no relatives in the East you could turn to?”
She shook her head. “My mother and father were both only children, and my grandparents on both sides were deceased. But the Healys—both the parents and kids—were great. They did their best to make me feel at home.”
“It must have been so hard.”
“I was a basket case for a while, longer than I wish, but I eventually found a great therapist. And I went back to school—to the University of Washington.”
Something had started pawing at my brain a few seconds ago, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe I was simply feeling unsettled from thinking about her loss.
“Studying biology still? I remember you were wild about birds.”
“Hmm-hmm. There was a brief period when I thought of becoming a lawyer and helping other crime victims, but I realized that law school would bore me to tears. I branched into zoology, got a masters in ornithology, and worked after that with a professor of mine in Patagonia, studying Magellanic penguins.”
“Penguins? How fantastic. They’re birds, of course, right?”
“Yup.”
“Why do they swim instead of fly?”
“It’s just how they evolved. Their wings became flippers. In water, their swimming actually looks very similar to how other birds fly.”
“How long were you in Patagonia?”
“A few years. That’s when I stopped being blond.” She smiled. “They don’t exactly have hair colorists in Punta Tombo.
I grinned back. “And after that? Did you return to the states?”
“For only a month or so. Then I headed to Australia for fieldwork, studying what they call ‘little penguins,’ and I taught as well. It was different there from Argentina but incredible, too.”
All that sun and wind explained the crow’s-feet. But more importantly, it sounded as if things had been okay, that she hadn’t let the murders unspool her life. Though had all that globe-trotting actually been a form of being on the run?
“And now?”
“I’m considering doing a PhD program—I’ve been accepted into one—but for the time being I’m on a bit of a sabbatical. My parents always wanted us to be self-starters, and they designed their will so that if they died young, we wouldn’t inherit most of the money until we were thirty-five, which means I just came into a decent chunk. I thought I’d take a break. Travel some with New York City as a base.”
“Do you ever go back? I mean, to Dory?”
“Not since the sentencing. It was just too hard.”
I, on the other hand, had actually been to Dory a couple of times since then, visiting a first cousin of my father’s who lived close by and driving by Jillian’s old house on a couple of occasions. But it would have sounded creepy to admit that.
“It’s just so good to see you, Jillian,” I said instead. “And I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never reached out. I was never there for you.”
She shrugged, as if I was apologizing for picking up the wrong sandwich for her on a run to the deli. “It’s so hard to know what to say or do in situations like that.”
“I know, but I should have done something, tried to come to see you.”
“I probably would have discouraged it anyway. It was hard for me in the beginning to even accept sympathy, except from the Healys and a few locals I’d known for ages. There were people in town—like business associates of my father—who were upset because I didn’t want to have this huge funeral service with open caskets so that everyone could pay their respects, but I couldn’t bear the thought. The only way I could cope was to keep things small and private.”