But in the same moment, I thought, that is ludicrous. Jill might be fanatical, but she wasn’t crazy. You didn’t break into someone’s house or terrorize them in the parking lot at their work and then have a chilly but civilized chat in the arboretum. Jill’s whole life these days was predicated on non-violence. Still, I studied Jill’s face as she stared me down. The way she looked nearly frightened me: Her eyes seemed to recede into her head and the contours of her face had sharpened, although I am sure that could be my imagination or a mere trick of the light.

“So I have your word that you will stop,” she said.

“You have my word.”

“If you don’t, I think you will regret it.”

Was that a threat? So maybe it was her. Or maybe, more likely, she meant her words as an ordinary phrase people said all the time in an ordinary way, that I would regret a sort of egregious disregard for a bereaved mother’s feelings.

Then, as she was walking back to her car and unlocking her door, I spoke up.

“Jill, wait. I don’t want us to part like this.”

“I don’t either, Thea. But there is no other way to part for you and me.”

She didn’t say thank-you or even goodbye. Why should she have? She just gave me that unblinking hooded look once more and then nodded, once. Before she started the car, I asked her, “Do you know a person named Esme?”

Jill glanced upward, the way people do when they’re thinking, then looked away. “Hmmm. No, I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone named that, actually. Now, if you asked me if I know somebody named Kayleigh, I know fifty. If you asked me if I know someone named Brianna, I’ve got a list of ten.”

“Okay,” I said. “Goodbye, Jill. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all this suffering and I’m sorry that what I did felt like making it worse.”

“Not sorry enough,” Jill said.

After she left, I sat huddled in my own car, overtaken by the desire to just fall asleep there in the front seat. I had writing to do at home, and the day was closing in fast, but instead of keeping to my planned course, I stopped to get the ingredients for eggplant parmigiana, which the family loved, but which I rarely made because it was so labor-intensive: peel the eggplant, drain the eggplant, bread and crisp fry and then layer the eggplant to bake with cheese and sauce. When I got home I went straight to the kitchen and the dish and made tsoureki, too, and a custard to serve with the sweet almond bread, for dessert. When Jep walked in and sniffed the fragrant air, he looked concerned.