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She should have changed her name, once she found out what he was doing. Changed her name and moved out of state, distanced herself from John in every sense of the phrase. But part of her was convinced that he could be saved, could be the man she fell in love with again, and so she stayed.
Worse. She got involved. By letting him continue his twisted games, by not turning him in, she became an accomplice. Every death caused by his judgement was aided and abetted by her inaction. The blood of his victims stained her hands just as much as his, even if she never touched a single wrench or tightened a single restraint. She wore no pig mask, hid in no shadow, delivered no game over. Nonetheless, she was masked by her status as a divorcee, hiding in the open by feigning ignorance and then disgust. A swine in sheep’s clothing.
When word first got out about her husband’s true identity as the Jigsaw killer, she’d been swarmed by reporters. Most of them asked the same questions: How does it feel to know who he really was? Did you know what he was doing? Did he ever give any hint about the kind of man he would become? She’d refuse to speak to any of them, doing her best to pretend they didn’t exist. One reporter, however, had given her pause, caught her off-guard with a simple question of ‘what was he like when you first met?’
He’d been kind. That was what first drew her to him, his kindness. She’d been volunteering at a local shelter, assisting with cleaning. John had been with a maintenance crew at the time, fixing up utilities that had been treated haphazardly. He’d been so patient, speaking with the people who lived there and encouraging them to keep going, keep living. He told one of them, a young man struggling with drug addiction, that he could overcome his demons if he put his mind to it.
Looking back, this advice wasn’t as kind as it first appeared. Over time, John had revealed himself to be far less understanding of those who needed help as she first thought. He hadn’t simply flipped a switch overnight and decided they weren’t worth the effort- it had been gradual. She’d watched him become frustrated, then disdainful, then openly contemptuous of the very people Jill had spent her life trying to help. The people that he himself had been working to provide housing for with his own foundation.
They met again a few months later, running into one another by chance on a bus. He’d been almost bashful, looking at her when he thought she didn’t notice, and turning his head when she caught him staring. She caught him by surprise the next time he did it, by sticking her tongue out and then looking at him before he had a chance to avert his gaze. He’d laughed, mouthing ‘sorry’ at her, but she had only given him a bright smile in return and waved him over. They got to know each other- first over the bus ride, then over dinner that night. John had escorted her home and dropped her off at her doorstep with only a kiss to her knuckles as a parting gesture, and a promise of future dinners together.
The thing that had primarily driven John’s disillusionment with the less fortunate was his insistence that things go as planned. He was a firm believer in efficiency and in things behaving according to strict logic. That mindset worked perfectly for engineering, but he demanded it of people, too, and didn’t seem to understand why that was such a difficult thing to ask of them.
“People choose to be addicts,” he’d told her, once. “They have to choose to stop enabling their addiction- alcohol, drugs, sex- these are things they choose to consume.” She’d tried her damnedest to explain that it wasn’t that simple, that addiction was more like a disability, but he just couldn’t wrap his head around the concept, and she’d had to drop it to prevent further argument. That had been the first time she’d truly seen him, seen the man he was inside. But still, she stayed.
John relied on elaborate plans to truly thrive. He planned everything, which would have been fine, if not for how agitated he would become when plans got derailed. Their picnic date in the park had been interrupted by an unforeseen shower of rain, and he’d been irritable the rest of the day. Nothing Jill had done had cured him of his bitter attitude, until the moment she said she was just going to go home and they could try again another day. He’d changed his tune immediately and apologized, saying he’d been looking forward to it so much and was just very disappointed that the forecast had been inaccurate.
She’d forgiven him so easily. She always had. Was it love that compelled her to forgive? Was it just her nature? Was it an instinctual fear of some kind? It didn't really matter anymore, not really. She forgave and forgave and forgave.
John had been trying to plan when they would have a child for years. It had to be perfect, he’d said, showing her his detailed, bullet-pointed list of reasoning. It had been cute at first, until she learned just how serious he was about it going exactly according to his will. He would refuse to have sex with her if they didn’t have enough protection, even leaving the house until she fell asleep, so as to prevent her becoming pregnant at the ‘wrong’ time. And then when the timing became right... it no longer felt like intimacy. It became a chore, less about pleasure and more about checking off an item on a to-do list. Wash the windows, return a book to the library, try to get pregnant.
When she didn’t get pregnant right away, John had been annoyed, but still hopeful. When she still wasn’t pregnant four months later, he’d become more withdrawn, more likely to snap over small inconveniences than usual. He had them both checked for fertility issues, insisted on adjusting their diets, even had a planner dedicated to her menstrual cycle for tracking when she would be at her most fertile.
Finally becoming pregnant should have brought her joy beyond measure. Jill mostly felt relief. Relief that things were finally on track, according to plan. But it didn’t last; relief turned to concern the moment she thought about what came next.
If John was like this now, what kind of father would he be? What if, God forbid, their child was born less than perfect, or did not develop according to John’s expectations?
She never told anyone of her fears. Who would she tell? Her family would just tell her she was nervous about being a mother so late in life. (Nevermind that Jill was only in her 30s.) John would dismiss her worries and promise that things would work out as intended. (He never said ‘as HE intended’, but it was always implied.) Art would give her platitudes and then probably tell John. So, she kept them to herself, shouldering them along with her other burdens.
Losing Gideon had broken what was left of the husband Jill once had. Everyone assumed it was the loss of his child, but she knew better. It was the destruction of his carefully laid plans, all his work in smoldering pieces broken beyond repair. She had hoped, briefly, that this tragedy would reunite them, and they could heal together as they mourned their lost son.
But John was mourning the loss of something else entirely.
After the divorce, Jill had gotten rid of almost everything that depicted their lives together, hiding it away in a storage unit under a pseudonym that few could ever tie back to her. Everything except one picture, a snapshot of them early in their courtship, back when John still believed in their mission to truly help people.
She kept it in a copy of a child’s book, The Giving Tree, where it was left untouched on her bookshelf, the last memory of a life that was once happy and full of promise.
Jill should have walked away. But that picture, that memory, wouldn’t let her. So she gave, and she forgave, and she stayed.