impressed by his concern for Lydia. And Jeffrey made a point to head up to Sleepy Hollow to see Lydia and what remained of her family whenever he was in New York City on business.
Initially, Lydia’s grief, her tragedy, had haunted Jeffrey. He kept in touch with her because he felt responsible for her somehow. But as she got older and seemed to adjust to her mother’s death, he came to see her more as a young friend, or a little sister. When she moved to Washington, D.C., to attend Georgetown University, Lydia’s grandfather asked Jeffrey to keep an eye on her, which he did gladly. During their regular Thursday evening dinner and movie “date,’’he observed her closely, making sure she was well and happy.
But even though she seemed to have adapted to University life well and was thriving academically, there was always something about her that worried him. An inner silence, the merest hint in her voice and her eyes that there was more pain in her still than she would admit to anyone. He noticed over time that she didn’t seem to make friends easily, was more focused on her role as the school newspaper editor than she was on parties and boyfriends. She just didn’t seem to ever have any fun.
“You should get out more, Lyd. There’s more to life than going to class,’’ he suggested one night over pizza.
“The paper takes up a lot of my time. I’m busy,’’ she said, avoiding eye contact.
“There’s more than the paper. College is about letting go, getting to know yourself. You’ll never have so much freedom again. Take advantage of it. I mean, what about guys? Do you date?’’
But he was glad when she told him that she wasn’t seeing anyone. He suspected that few men her age were worthy of her, would handle her as gently as she needed to be handled. “They’re all so shallow, so arrogant. Even the ones that pretend not to be,’’ she’d said.
After nagging her a couple of times and watching her withdraw from him, he let her be. After all, he had never listened to anyone when he was her age either. But he kept a careful watch on her, always ready to come to her rescue should she need him – even if that just meant a late night beer when she was stressing over finals.
But toward the end of the last semester in her senior year, she called him very late, her voice sounding small and scared.
“What’s up? Are you okay?’’ he asked.
“Yeah. There’s something weird going on in my building. I think someone’s been murdered.’’
A few nights earlier, as she sat studying, she had heard what she thought was the quick staccato of gunshots. But since she had never heard a gun fired before, she couldn’t be sure. She had looked out the peephole of her door but saw nothing. A few minutes later her phone rang and she forgot about the incident. But she had “a feeling’’ about it, she told Jeff.
“What kind of feeling?’’ he asked.
“I can’t explain it, Jeffrey, except to say that it was the same kind of feeling I had in the parking lot that day when I saw the man who killed my mother.’’
Over the next few days, she had noticed that the mail belonging to the woman who lived across the hall was piling up in her box. And on the night she finally called Jeffrey, she could hear the woman’s cat crying mournfully. She knew in her heart that her neighbor had been killed.
She lived alone off campus in an apartment in Georgetown. It was a nice building in a good part of town. But since she never overreacted to anything, he went right over, much to the displeasure of the woman sleeping in his bed – who left, incidentally, and never spoke to him again.
When Jeffrey arrived at Lydia’s apartment, they knocked on the neighbor’s door. Even as he stood outside, he caught the unmistakable smell of death. Since this was not an FBI case, Jeffrey had no right of entry. They called the local police.
The police arrived and Lydia’s fears were confirmed. The woman had been shot in the head, had been lying dead on her floor, her hungry cat gnawing on her fingers. Rather than being terrified and upset, as Jeffrey had expected, Lydia began asking questions of the police. Were there signs of forced entry or a struggle? How long did they think she had been dead? She intended to cover the story for the Georgetown University newspaper. Jeffrey was more worried about her lack of emotional response than he would have been if she had had a breakdown. That, at least, would have been more normal.
Jeffrey brought her back to his apartment. She hadn’t said a word on the way in his car, hadn’t shed a tear. She just stared out the window. Once she didn’t have anything to say professionally about how she would cover the story, or questions to ask of him about the possible motives, she had nothing safe to say at all.
“Are you all right?’’ he’d asked as he closed the door to his apartment.
“I’m fine,’’ she said.
“I thought you would be more upset than you are.’’
He knew as soon as he said it that it was the wrong thing to say, that it sounded judgmental, accusing. She turned on him.
“What did you expect? Do you want me to curl up into a ball and start crying for my dead mother? You know, I’ve been on the receiving end of every fucked-up thing this world has to offer. I have my own way of dealing with things.’’ She did not yell but her voice was a white flame, sizzling with anger.
Then she sank into the couch and put her head in her hands.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.’’
“I’m sorry, Jeffrey,’’ she said. “I’m so sorry.’’
He sat down next to her and put his arm around her. She looked up at him; he saw the same look he had seen when he had first met her on her mother’s front porch. But these were the eyes of a woman, a beautiful, grown woman.
She wound up selling the story to the Washington Post, tying the story to a larger feature about women who were murdered by ex-boyfriends, as had turned out to be the case with her neighbor. Lydia graduated a month later and was offered a staff writing job at the Post. That night was the beginning of her career, and of Jeffrey’s love for her.
Since then most of her instincts had been dead-on. Still this all seemed like a reach. She was so intense, so wound up about it. Usually she maintained a cool air of disinterest, of objectivity about her work. She could be like a dog with a bone about a story or a case, obsessive and unyielding, going days with minimal sleep and food. But that was not the same thing as caring personally about the outcome. As she recounted her findings, she spoke rapidly, gesticulating passionately. When she recounted the stories of the missing persons, her voice was angry. He could see she was dangerously in it. And that concerned him.
“What did Chief Morrow say?’’
“That man is an idiot, but even he knows something is going on.’’
“Did he tell you that?’’
“No. But I could sense that he was hiding something from me. He told me that there were no pictures taken of Lucky in the garden. But Juno told me that the police took photographs while they were there.’’
“Well, that might be something,’’ he said, more to quell the intensity with which she was trying to convince him of her theory. He wondered if she was just in trouble emotionally, needed him to be here for her, and had created this whole scenario subconsciously because she was too stubborn to admit that she needed anyone. Or maybe he was only hoping that was the case.
“Jeffrey, trust me.’’
“You know I trust you.’’
As they pulled up her drive, the clouds had not delivered on their threat of rain and had cleared to reveal a blanket of stars visible through the treetops. An amber light clicked on as they reached the garage door.
“Motion sensors. I like that. Very secure,’’ he said as Lydia opened the garage door by remote control. “Maybe you’re learning a little caution in your old age.’’
“It’s really more for convenience, Safety Man,’’ she answered, smacking him lightly on the leg, and added, “I just had them recalibrated because they were turning on every time a squirrel ran across the drive.’’
“Did you have that alarm system put in that I recommended?’’
“Actually, yes,’’ she answered as she punched in the numbers on the keypad beside the door leading into the house from the basement.
“Impressive. The fan club finally getting to you?’’
“Oh, come on, they’re not so bad,’’ she said, taking his bag from him and walking upstairs to the guest
