It’s what she’d always wanted.

So she came to Promise Falls, found a room over a pool hall in what was clearly not the best part of town, and went looking for work at the employment office at city hall. And ran into David Harwood, Boy Reporter.

He was, she had to admit, adorable. Not bad-looking, very sweet. She didn’t want any part of his story, however. She was here to keep a low profile. If you gave an interview, the next thing they were going to ask you for was a picture.

No thank you.

But she chatted with him a little, and darned if he wasn’t out there when she came out, offering to give her a lift. Why not? she thought. When he saw where she lived, he just about had a fit. Can’t live here, he said, unless your employment plans include dealing crack and turning tricks. He actually said that.

Don’t worry, she said. I’m a big girl. And, she told him with a smile, it’s good to have options.

Later, when she opened the door and found him there with a list of other apartments for her to check out, well, she almost cried, except that wasn’t something she tended to do unless she was having to perform. But it was sweet, no doubt about it. Not the sort of thing she was used to.

She let him help her move. Then she let him take her to dinner.

Not long after that, she let him take her to bed.

After a couple of months, David, while not actually popping the question, made some vague comments along the lines of how there were worse things that could happen than spending the rest of their lives together.

Jan sensed an opportunity presenting itself. She said to David that he might just be onto something there.

The only thing more anonymous than living as a single woman in Promise Falls was living as a married woman in Promise Falls. She’d turn herself into June Cleaver, the mom in Leave It to Beaver, although Jan didn’t believe June ever did for Ward the things she did for David. Mayfield never had a girl who could fulfill a man’s dreams the way Jan could. (Jan had to admit, Cleaver would have been the perfect name for her, considering what she was running from.)

With David, she could be the perfect wife with a perfectly boring job. She’d live in their perfect little house, and make a perfect little life for them. As the wife of a small-town newspaper reporter, she didn’t exactly fit the profile of a diamond thief.

No one was going to find her here.

And she’d been right. Not that the first year hadn’t been hell. Every time there was a knock at the door, she feared it would be him. But it was the meter reader, or someone looking for a donation to the cancer society, or the neighbor coming over to tell them they forgot to close their garage door.

Girl Scouts selling cookies.

But never him.

After a year or so, she started to relax. Connie Tattinger was dead. Long live Jan Harwood.

At least until Dwayne got out.

She could do this. Play the role. Wasn’t that what she’d been doing since she was a little girl? Moving from one part to another? Imagining herself to be someone she wasn’t, even if the only one she was fooling was herself?

That was certainly what she did when she was little. It was the only way she got through her childhood. Her father ragging on her all the time, blaming her for fucking up their lives, her mother too pissed or self-absorbed to run interference and tell her old man to lay off.

She did what a lot of children do. She created an imaginary friend. But it was different in her case. She didn’t hang out with this make-believe companion. In her head, she became her. She was Estelle Winters, the precocious daughter of Malcolm and Edwina Winters, stars of the Broadway stage. New York was her home. She was only living with this bitter, mean-spirited man and his drunken bitch of a wife as research for a role she was destined to play. She wasn’t really their child. How could she be? She was much too special to be the daughter of such common, horrible people.

She knew the truth, of course. But imagining herself to be Estelle, it got her through until that day she walked out that door and never came back.

And then, after a very long run, Estelle Winters, her imaginary friend/defense mechanism, was allowed to die.

For some time, she was actually Connie Tattinger. But even as Connie, she could be whoever she needed to be. She could be a good girl, and she could be a bad girl. Whatever the situation demanded.

When she was living on the street, the bad-girl thing wasn’t so much an act as it was a way to survive. You did what you had to do, and with whoever you had to do it with, to get a roof over your head, some food in your stomach.

If you got a lead on a half-decent job, in an office, say, what her mother would have called a “shave your legs” position, well, she could do that, too. She could turn herself from a street kid to a nice girl in a flash.

Whatever the part demanded.

When she met David, she fell easily into the role of small-town wife. It didn’t take a lot of effort. It was actually fun to play. She could do as long a run here as she had to. And when the time came to pack it in, she could do that, too.

The thing Jan hadn’t counted on was the kid. That was definitely not part of the plan.

They hadn’t been married long before she suspected she was pregnant. Couldn’t believe it, sitting there in the bathroom one morning after David had gone to work. Got out the test, waited ten minutes, looked at the result, thought: Shit.

Great day for David to have forgotten some notes. Suddenly appears upstairs. She’d been pretty good-excellent, in fact-at keeping on the mask, but he caught something in the way she looked, saw the pregnancy-test packaging. She ended up telling him she was pregnant.

This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, he says.

Part of her decision, she knew, was calculating. A child would make her blend in even more. Make her more invisible. And David wanted this child. Ending the pregnancy, it could send this new marriage-this terrific cover-off the rails. So far, this marriage thing was going very well.

And being a loving mother, well, wasn’t it just another role? One of the most challenging of her career? If she could play all these other parts, she could play this one, too.

Once she started looking at it this way, Jan wanted the child. She wanted the experience. She wanted to know what it would be like. She didn’t think about the future, what she would do when Dwayne got out. For once, she wasn’t thinking long-term. She was in the moment. Like all great ladies of the stage.

But now Dwayne was out. And she’d stayed with the plan. She was going for the money, and once she had it, she’d move on to her final role. The independent woman. The woman who didn’t need anyone else for anything. The woman who didn’t have to pretend anymore. The woman who could just be.

She was going for the beach and piña colada. No more David. No more Dwayne.

But there was a hitch.

Ethan.

She’d really gotten into that whole mother act. So she knew she’d feel something. What she hadn’t anticipated was how hard this role would be to walk away from.

Jan knew the Five Mountains thing was going to be tricky to pull off.

But she’d been out there a couple of times on her days off, scoped out where all the CCTV cameras were. There was the remote chance she’d see someone they knew, but Jan figured she had a couple of things in her favor. She wasn’t going to be there long, and for much of the time she wasn’t going to look anything like Jan Harwood, not once she came back out of the women’s restroom.

And if she had been spotted at Five Mountains-by a friend, a neighbor, someone who’d come into Bertram’s to get a furnace part-then they’d abort. She’d told Dwayne, if I don’t show up, we’ll try this another way, soon.