The Secrets You Keep(112)

I didn’t see her before she took off for Dory that morning, and though I had every intention of calling her, I nervously kept putting off the task. I mean, what in the world would I say?

I suppose I could blame it on being nineteen and having social skills that were not yet fully developed, and yet in my case I think it may have had more to do with losing my father so young. His death had been like falling overboard in the middle of the Atlantic and trying desperately to claw my way back through the waves to the ship. For a long time the mere topic of death left me tongue-tied, and I was totally lame at comforting the bereaved. Though that’s hardly justification.

Several days passed and it grew harder and harder to phone Jillian. I promised myself I would make it up to her when she returned to campus.

But she never came back. She dropped out of college, and the next I heard, she was living on the West Coast. By then I was too ashamed to reach out.

Five minutes later, Jillian settled back at the table. I was still adjusting, I realized, to the fact that she was no longer a blonde. She took a quick sip of wine and smiled, with a warmth that I could also see in her deep blue eyes. There was still no sign that she was holding my past failing against me.

“Just so you know,” she said, “I didn’t buy your book tonight because I already own it. I thought it was terrific, Bailey.”

“That’s really nice of you to say.” The book was a true crime drama about the homicide of supermodel Devon Barr at a country house where we’d both been weekend guests. I was really touched by the fact that Jillian had read it, that she wanted to connect with me again.

“Of course, at school, people were sure you’d write one day, but I guess we just didn’t know it would be about crime. How did you end up going in that direction?”

I weighed my words before I spoke. Though her question didn’t seem loaded, we were on weird terrain considering the tragedy in her life.

“When people ask me that, I always say it’s because someone started leaving nasty notes for me when I was in ninth grade and there was such a feeling of triumph when I played detective and figured out who the culprit was. But that’s only part of it. When I got a job out of college at a newspaper in Albany, they put me on the police beat, and one thing kind of led to another.”

“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.”