Angie explained to them what Justice Jilly Monaghan was seeking. They listened attentively.
Willow pulled up a stool and reached for her mug. “I can understand where Justice Monaghan is coming from. She was—is—a formidable woman. I’ve had my share of professional encounters with her in the past. One didn’t dare go into Justice Monaghan’s courtroom ungirded.”
Angie cupped the pottery mug in her hands, the shape comfortable. Warm. Like this couple, like this home. This was the kind of home she wanted with Maddocks one day. A place that exuded this same kind of geniality. The thought—the visual image, the feeling of it—blindsided her. Angie’s heart beat faster. She set her mug down quickly and cleared her throat, refocusing on why she was here. “Do you mind if I record this interview, just for my own reference later?”
The couple exchanged a glance. “Fine by me,” Trish said.
“I’m good,” Willow added.
Angie took her digital recorder from her bag, activated it, and set it beside the plate of cookies.
“Did you guys get to know Jasmine on the trip?” she asked.
Trish’s features turned serious. She eyed Willow again. Willow seemed to give an almost imperceptible nod.
“We didn’t like her,” Trish said. “I’m just going to say it straight because maybe that’ll help you paint the picture you’re looking for.” She reached for her mug. “Jasmine was probably a good kid at heart, and maybe she was just going through a phase, but on the trip she came across as self-centered. Arrogant. Provocative.” She looked at Willow again. “I leave anything out?”
A crooked smile curved Willow’s mouth. “She wasn’t easy to warm to, unless she felt she needed something from you. Then Jasmine was all smiles and irresistible, cajoling charm. Under her facade I believe lay real depth. She was intelligent, well read. Philosophical at times. I got a sense she was really trying to find who she was, testing ground, pushing boundaries to see just how far she could get. Maybe she was a lot like her grandmother, in truth. Jilly Monaghan had—probably still has—an abrasiveness both in and out of her robes.”
“Did any of the others on the trip warm to Jaz at all?” Angie said, intrigued at this picture of Jasmine Gulati that was emerging.
Another exchange of glances. “Maybe that Kathi woman?” Willow said to Trish.
“Nah, that was more a kinship in the bottle.” Trish met Angie’s eyes. “Those two liked to get drunk and talk shit around the fire before crawling into their sleeping bags and passing out.”
“So Jasmine drank fairly heavily on the trip?” Angie said.
“She sure didn’t hold back. Damn fine fly-fisher, though. She showed me a thing or two on the water.” Willow sipped her coffee as she appeared to cast her memory back. “Eden seemed to get on relatively well with her. They chatted a lot, usually earlier in the evenings around the fire while Jasmine was writing in her journal. Before she got drunk for the night.”
“What about Rachel? Did she like Jasmine?” Angie asked, poking at the perimeters of what Rachel had told her.
“Rachel was in work mode,” Trish said. “She played the role of nonjudgmental observer. She wanted to encourage natural interaction. She has a real knack of sticking a camera in your face and making it seem like she isn’t even there.”
“Rachel said Jasmine made an issue of having some big secret.”
Trish gave a laugh. “Yes. Some clandestine lover who’d given her that diamond ring she was flashing about. Then she’d go on about how everyone held some deep dark secret, each one of us on that river, she said.”
The words of the old nurse who’d found Angie stuffed into the baby box at Saint Peter’s Hospital on Christmas Eve over thirty years ago sifted through her mind ...Sometimes we think we’re keeping secrets. But really, those secrets are keeping us.
Angie set the photo of Jasmine’s diamond ring on the counter. “This was the ring she mentioned?”
They nodded.
“Did you get the sense she was promised to someone? Or just messing with you all?”
“By the way she was flirting with the guides?” Willow said, her voice quieter, a guarded look entering her eyes. “Someone engaged to be married doesn’t ... behave like she did.”
Angie said, “There’s no forensics evidence to support this question, but it is a question that has nevertheless come up.” She paused. “Did Jasmine at any point lead you to believe she might have given birth in the past, perhaps to a baby she’d surrendered for adoption?”
Surprise cut through both their faces.
“No,” Willow said.
“You both reacted quite sharply. Why?”
Trish raked her fingers through her silver-gray spikes. “It’s just that one evening we’d all been discussing adoption. It was in relation to what Willow and I were trying to do with an orphanage in Korea. Jaz came across as vehemently negative about our efforts to adopt a Korean baby. She said it was stupid, that we had no idea what we might be getting with a baby from an orphanage.”
“She was incredibly harsh,” Willow added. “She said we might end up with a kid with fetal alcohol syndrome or brain damage or ADD challenges. Admittedly, she’d made fair inroads into her wine by that point, but—” Willow paused. “It would certainly not lead me to conclude in any way that she was sympathetic to the notion of adoption. Or that she might have gone down that road herself.”
