She did. “She was tremendously talented. But she was so much more than her public image ever allowed her to be. I suppose we all are.”

“I know what you mean.” And that surprised her because, after four years of eluding the press, Ashley didn’t consider herself a public person. But she was. Just having to hide, wanting to, proved that.

Lillian hugged herself against the biting wind. “In so many ways, Judith was ahead of her time: one of the first of the superwomen. She was independent, stubborn, sanctimonious at times. She’d do anything on a dare—which often got us into heaps of trouble.”

Despite the slicing wind, the tide lapped the rocks with a surprising gentleness, and the sea was calm, stunningly beautiful in the late afternoon sun. Lillian turned inland, and Ashley followed her through the brush into a stand of pines, where they were protected from the brunt of the wind.

“You still miss her, don’t you?” Ashley asked, sensing Lillian’s lingering melancholy. “Even after all these years.”

Lillian turned her handsome face upward, looking into the sun, and she gave a slight nod, her eyes telling more. They were large, wide and sad. “It’s just this place,” she said.

Ashley could understand that. Isolated and bleak, strangely beautiful, Jude’s Paradise was the sort of place that forced one to remember.

“But Judith wasn’t perfect. You know that, don’t you?”

There was an intensity in Lillian’s look that told Ashley the question was one meant to be answered. She said, “No one is.”

Lillian nodded, not so much in agreement as just satisfied that Ashley had spoken, understood. “She was only nineteen when she made her first film—six in all before she died. That’s a lot for one so young. In some ways, she was terribly worldly and sophisticated, and in other ways, she was absolutely impossible. Her father had taught her she could do everything and have everything; she only had to want it.”

“Was she spoiled?” Ashley asked, plucking a handful of pine needles, just to have something to do, something real to hang on to.

“I suppose it might have made someone else spoiled and unpleasant, but it seemed to add a touch of vulnerability to Judith. She had such blind faith in everyone around her—herself included. She believed that if she liked someone, he or she must therefore be a good person. She assumed that everyone around her lived up to all her high expectations. And she believed all her dreams would come true.”

“She was young,” Ashley reminded her, keeping her tone neutral. She had no desire to defend a dead woman. She only wanted information; she couldn’t get enough of what Lillian Parker had to say.

Lillian shrugged as she ducked under a low-hanging pine branch and stood in a patch of blueberry bushes. “I suppose when you’re young it’s difficult to recognize and accept your own limitations—or those of the people around you. But I’m not sure Judith would ever have really changed. Grown wiser with time, perhaps, but not changed. It wasn’t in her to be a cynic.”