Chapter 66 Jillian
JILLIAN
ONE MONTH LATER
“And what difference does it make / When this love is over?”
— Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevens
I’m standing backstage at the National Press Club holding a glass plaque with my name etched into it.
I’m wearing my best Normal Girl smile as a woman from the awards committee pins a lanyard to my lapel and tells me where to stand for photos.
I nod and hold the plaque the way she shows me, tilted so the overhead lights don’t bounce off the glass.
I won for the Elena Lazarev story. Not the first version, thank God, because that was a disaster and a half.
This award is for the corrected one, which I rewrote in a feverish haze in the forty-eight sleepless hours after Kir left town.
It might not have had the lurid tabloid appeal of “Billionaire Slaughters Wife,” but at least it was honest.
I look down at the object in my hand. The plaque says EXCELLENCE IN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM and then my name in smaller letters underneath. Jillian Rose Pierce. The New York Times. I vaguely consider dumping it in the nearest trash can.
Doug finds me after the photographer takes mercy on me and cuts me loose. He’s wearing a tie, which means this is a big deal, though he doesn’t look the least bit happy about it. “I’m proud of you, kid,” he says. “You earned it. Every damn word.”
I wish I could accept the praise, because this is the moment I’ve been working toward since I first took up pen and paper as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed little girl. Front page reporter. Prestigious award. Career made, lives changed.
But it doesn’t feel like enough.
Nothing does anymore.
Rae and I are talking again. Not the way we used to, though.
There’s a carefulness now, a politeness that was never there before, and it makes me want to scream into a pillow.
We used to finish each other’s sentences and steal fries off each other’s plates without asking.
Now, we text before we call. We ask permission before we show up.
We treat each other like people who might break.
We might, yeah—me more so than her—but it still bums me out if I think too long and hard about it.
She knows everything now. I filled her in bit by bit over the course of a few late nights.
When I was finally done, she pulled me into a hug so tight my ribs hurt, and she said, “I wish you’d told me sooner.
” I reminded her that she had her hands fairly full, which she laughed and acknowledged, but she insisted that she would’ve been there for me.
“You’re not alone, Jilly Bean,” she insisted. “You never have been.”
Agree to disagree. Anyway, she and I are getting there. It’s just slow.
The other thing is slower.
I wrote back to Briarwood Family Services three weeks ago.
It was a short letter, carefully worded, and even though I’m quite literally a professional writer, it still felt like pulling teeth, every single line.
Basically, I said I was open to contact and kept it at that.
I didn’t want to sound like a crazy, desperate, frothing-at-the-mouth lady who should not be allowed within five hundred yards of a school.
Adoptive services companies tend to frown upon that sort of thing.
I can’t imagine that my daughter’s new parents would be so keen on me, either.
The letter wound its way through all the intermediaries, but eventually, the adoptive family wrote back.
They seem kind. They said that they’d send pictures if I wanted them, but the mere thought made me want to puke and cry and scream, in no particular order.
Worse still was their other offer: An in-person visit.
Come see her, they urged. She’s smart, and brave, and beautiful, and she’d love to meet you.
I haven’t gone.
Why not? That’s the million-dollar question.
I tell myself it’s timing. Or if not timing, then logistics. Or psychology. Just a headspace thing, you know, and I just gotta figure a few things out, get various affairs sorted, settle this, arrange that.
All of which is obviously bullshit. “Cope,” as the kids say.
There was a window of time, brief and bright, when I actually believed I could do it.
There was someone who made me feel like the kind of woman who walks into hard rooms and doesn’t flinch.
Who bites through leather and fights back, who stays when every nerve is screaming at her to run.
For a few weeks, I had borrowed courage.
It wasn’t mine, but I wore it well enough to fool myself into thinking it was.
Now, that borrowed courage is gone. Wherever it went, it took the version of me who could’ve made the drive to New Jersey and knocked on that door.
Without that, I’m just regular Jillian again. Regular Jillian doesn’t knock on strangers’ doors. Regular Jillian sleeps with the windows locked and the lights always on.
I get home from the ceremony a little after nine, heels in one hand, plaque in the other. The elevator deposits me on my floor. As I’m awkwardly fishing for my keys with my hands full, Elliot’s door opens halfway down the hall.
He’s got a bag of trash in one hand and his keys in the other. He freezes when he sees me. I freeze right back.
The scar above his left eye has faded to a thin white line. You’d only notice it if you knew to look. Seeing as how I know exactly where to look, I always notice it.
His gaze drops to the plaque. He reads it, or at least pretends to, and then he nods. “Congrats,” he says. His weight edges backward, ready to flee at a moment’s notice.
“Thanks, El,” I say in a lame, bright voice that makes me cringe the second it leaves my lips. “How are you? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
He switches the trash bag to his other hand. “Good. I’m good. Yeah. Good. Yep.”
He’s clearly not good. He’s plastered against the wall and looking at me the way you’d look at a dog that bit you once.
I did that to him. Well, Kir did that to him, but the distinction feels pretty thin from where I’m standing.
Lie down with the masked man and get the fleas, or however the expression goes.
As I’ve said before, I’m no good with metaphors.
At last, the guilt gets to be too much. “Elliot, look, I know we’ve never properly talked about this, but I’m really sorry about—”
“It’s fine.” He cuts me off fast. “All good. Water under the bridge.” His free hand fidgets with his keys, jingling them against his thigh. “I should, uh… Yeah. Trash. Gotta take this down.”
“Right. Of course.”
He turns toward the stairwell, trash bag swinging. Then he stops. His shoulders do this little hitch, like he’s arguing with himself about whether to say the next thing.
“Hey, Jillian?”
“Yeah?”
His eyes are fixed carefully on the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall between our doors, like he won’t be able to voice his thoughts if he’s looking me in the eye. “That, uh… that guy,” he says carefully. “Is he still… around?”
I grip the plaque tighter against my hip. “No,” I say sadly. “He’s gone.”
“And he’s not…?”
“Coming back?” I shake my head, my dangly earrings flopping side to side. “No. I think it’s safe to say he’s never coming back.”
Elliot exhales in obvious relief. “Right. Cool. Yeah. Good.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re doing well. You look… you look really pretty in that dress.”
He gives me one last look, and then turns and scurries down the hall toward the trash chute. I stand there for one more second, wallowing in the harsh, specific pain of getting exactly what you deserve. Then I sigh and trudge into my apartment.
I lock the door behind me. Chain, deadbolt, knob. New habit. Every single time I do this, I consider leaving it open. Just to see what might happen. And every single time, I throw all the locks and check them twice.
I set the plaque on the mantel. Then I pick up the aqua envelope from where it’s been sitting on the coffee table for weeks now and lean it against the plaque so they’re side by side.
Excellence in Investigative Journalism and a letter from Briarwood Family Services.
The two defining artifacts of my life, hanging out together on a dusty shelf.
I change into pajama shorts and a ratty T-shirt and plug my phone in on the nightstand. Then, while it starts to charge, I open Google and tap on the alerts I set up three weeks ago. The results load fast.
Page Six claims he was sighted at a restaurant in Monaco with some whiz kid tech investor. Daily Mail puts him on a yacht off the coast of Antibes. A business blog says he’s been spotted in Nice hobnobbing with the gorgeous princess of some small European country I’ve never heard of.
Monaco, Montenegro, the south of France—it doesn’t really make a difference in the end, does it? Might as well be Mars. What I told Elliot is beyond doubt: Kir is never coming back.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand and pull the covers up to my chin.
The bedroom remains lit by the lamp on the dresser that I leave on every night, same as always.
I squint up at the air vent and see the familiar red light, but it doesn’t comfort me anymore.
It may or may not be filming, but there’s no one on the other end of the broadcast. Nobody’s watching me anymore. I’m alone now.
And like Kir said…
… maybe it’s better that way.
I close my eyes and try to sleep.