Chapter One: A New Life
Morgan Hills took what she knew would be one of the last looks out her bedroom window and sighed. I won’t see the autumn leaves in Central Park this year, I guess, she mused. Would the seasonal changes be as dramatic in Albuquerque as they were in New York City? Probably not, she decided. Just like every other thing related to her family’s upcoming move to Albuquerque, the many mysteries and open questions continued to pile up.
She shook her head (and her thoughts), the thick coils of her caramel hair muddying her sight for a nanosecond until they settled back upon her shoulders. Her second sigh turned into a slight, playful smile. It was true that she wasn’t thrilled with her parents’ decision to move when her father accepted a top management position at his company, but she didn’t really have that much of a life to lose either. Although she had spent all of the 16 years of her existence in the city, for some reason they hadn’t added up to a whirlwind of social activity or popularity. In fact, if she didn’t keep her distance and avoid certain cliquey groups at Grace Chaddingworth School, she’d probably end up would be a target of their gossip. She had become a master at being almost invisible, politely blending in and out of the throngs of uniformed kids at the private school, making her grades just good enough to keep her parents and teachers happy but not so outstanding that the other kids would pick on her for her performance. She kept afloat, she guessed.
She walked up to the last bag that lay open on her bed and saw that she still had plenty of space to put in the last of her things. The movers had already taken all the furniture from her bedroom (except for her mattress) and most of her clothes, but she still had a few things in the closet that she had to sort through. She turned to look at the narrow closet and her eyes quickly scanned over the scarce items hanging inside. Her gaze fell on the yellow sweater and instinctively her skin broke into goose bumps and she felt the familiar surge of cold, silent sadness wash over her entire body.
“Hey Morg Borg, whatcha doin’?” Her mother called playfully from the doorway. Her soft voice yanked Morgan away from her quick reverie much sharper than she would have expected.
“Just trying to finish packing,” she explained almost sullenly. She turned her eyes from her mother’s open, sweet face to the bag on the bed and she said a quick prayer: Please don’t let this turn into a difficult conversation.
Rose Hills ventured into her daughter’s barren bedroom and smiled, looking around the walls that had been stripped clean of family pictures, paintings and the random pin-ups of Bruno Mars and One Direction. “Wow,” she said. “It looks so different!”
“Yeah, pretty empty,” Morgan agreed. Her eyes dashed to the closet and she wished, uselessly, that she had kept the closet door closed.
That one distraction was enough to catch her mother’s attention. Morgan froze in place and watched her mother turn around and look into the closet. She counted the seconds under her breath, knowing her mother would recognize the yellow cashmere, remember how it fit Robin so perfectly last autumn, bringing out the greens and grays in her eyes, making her glow like her favorite color always did. Morgan lowered her head and closed her eyes as she heard her mother’s quiet steps make their way to the closet. She heard the rustle of the clothes on the hangers, and knew her mother would reach out to touch her sister’s sweater.
“She really did love this sweater,” Rose said quietly. Morgan didn’t respond, just as she rarely did when anyone mentioned Robin. What she did do was open her eyes and lift her head to look at her mother’s back. Rose turned around and gave Morgan her well-practiced brave face, but Morgan also knew how to read the sadness in her mother’s green eyes, which were so similar to Robin’s. “Are you taking this with you?” Rose asked.
“Yeah,” Morgan replied.
“Is there anything else you want to give away to Goodwill?”
Morgan shook her head no. They’d already given away so much – many of her older sister’s clothes, most of her books, her yearbooks, her many boxes of costume jewelry, the dozens of scarves and headbands for her thick, wavy hair that was so similar to Morgan’s, but blonde. “I’m keeping the sweater,” she said resolutely, but carefully. She never wanted to hurt her mother’s feelings; Robin’s death had done that already.
Rose walked up to Morgan and embraced her quickly, planting a kiss on the top of her head. “You’re almost my height,” Rose said wistfully, then took a step back. Morgan nodded and could almost hear the thoughts that were surely crossing through her mother’s mind: Robin had been taller than Rose (almost as tall as their father).
“I don’t think I’m getting any taller,” Morgan mumbled playfully, as she always did. As the family’s youngest (and now only) child, her height (or lack thereof) was an ongoing joke. It seemed to lighten the mood this time.
“Well, I’m off to try and put all of your dad’s stuff into our bags. Nice of him to run off to Albuquerque and leave us women to wrap up this mess, huh?” They both shrugged and laughed softly and made light of the moment. Rose left, and Morgan bent down to review the items in her bag: the last of her clothes, some books, a scarf, a camera.
They were more than just that, she admitted. Not just books, a scarf and a camera. Robin’s books, her aqua-colored silk scarf, her digital camera with the last pictures she took. I know there’s a message in these things, Robin. I know you meant to say something before you…before you died. Maybe you’ll tell me in Albuquerque. She didn’t want to linger on her greatest fear about moving: that the reasons behind her sister’s death almost a year earlier would somehow stay inside the house they were leaving. Come with us, sis, she told the empty room they had shared. I’ll figure it out for us.
Dark green water. Unfathomable depth. Slow-moving current. The shine of a few indiscernible objects making it to the surface, playing with the movement of the river’s tide to take the shape of oversized jewels. She kneels by the edge of the river, looking into the dark emerald waters, but she can’t see her reflection, only the reds and ambers and blues of the objects on the bottom. Her hand reaches out slowly, aiming at the jewel-like objects that are probably hundreds of feet away at the bottom of the river. She knows she won’t get to them, but she can’t stop herself from reaching out. The colors seem to retract deeper into the riverbed and she leans down, bending at the waist. Her fingers break the surface of the cold, dark water and disappear under the current, then her forearm, then –
She sits up in bed, her heart pounding, her body covered in sweat, her hair pasted to her face. She looks around her dark bedroom, reminding herself she’s safe in the house in New York and not in some dreamland forest, diving into a deep river. Even as she reasons with herself, the effects of the persistent nightmare keep her heart racing for a while. She throws the thick covers off her soaked body and breathes in and out, pushing the disturbing dream away with each deep breath.
She walks toward her bathroom, knowing her way expertly even in the darkened room. I hope I get to know the new house as well as I know this one, she tells herself. I hope you can find your way too, she tells her silent, invisible sister.
She doesn’t turn on the lights in the bathroom, but she steps up to the sink. She turns on the water and lets it run for a few seconds, testing it with her fingers. The water rushing out of the faucet reminds her of the water in the river in her dreams: both dark, but this one was safer, contained, known and unthreatening. She plugs the drain and listens to the cry of the water as it fills the sink. As her eyes adjust to the darkness she begins to see some shapes around her: the white porcelain sink, her light blue towel on the rack beside her, the blue-and-white backsplash in front of her. Her heart begins to beat at a more normal pace, reassured by the familiarity of her surroundings. She sighs. She is home, or at least at the only home she knows so far, and her mother is sleeping a few feet down the hall of the quiet house. There is no forest, no river.
She bends down and starts to reach into the water, wanting to cool her face and her hair.
Her eyes turn from the backsplash to the water and she freezes.
There, at the bottom of the sink – the colors. Amber, blue, red. Shining back at her with unmistakable clarity. And then just as immediately, gone.
She takes a step back, terrified. She wraps her thin arms around her shaking body, forcing herself to concentrate on the pressure of her arms on her chest, the sound of her chattering teeth, the cold sweat against her skin.
I’m not crazy. I’m not going crazy, she chants under her breath. But I’m awake and I know what I saw. The colors I saw in the river in my dream. They were in my sink.
She closes her eyes and counts to ten slowly, then in reverse. She exhales loudly, wishing the unnerving images away. She opens her eyes and dares the visions to return, mustering bravery she isn’t sure she has, but can pretend to have.
She glares at the sink, defiant.
The sink is full – but full of safe, crystal-clear water. No reds, no blues. No amber yellows so similar to her sister’s favorite sweater. She washes her face and dries herself off as quickly as she can, then rushes out of the bathroom. A peek at the iPhone on the floor beside her mattress tells her its 3:20 a.m., and she knows she won’t go back to sleep. She grabs the phone and holds it close to her body as she slowly lies back on the mattress. She waits for what seems like a long time for her body to settle back into some kind of serenity.
There was no one she could tell. Her father was already in the new house in Albuquerque, settling into his new position, working between his office in the city and his home office in the huge ranch that they would all soon call home. He was too busy keeping things normal and hinged to listen to her whine about a recurrent dream that wasn’t really a nightmare. What could she tell, him, really? Nothing in the dream was really scary, although the dark water and the shiny, mysterious shapes deep below the surface were somehow scarier than any imaginary threat she could muster or explain. And there was no way she was telling her mother, either.
To keep seeing those colors – her sister’s bright amber hair, her red sweater, her blue jeans – as they must have looked when she disappeared forever under the surface of that river – that was expected, wasn’t it?
“Morgan, take the window seat,” Rose coaxed, with a smile. Morgan shook her head again and clenched the arm rests of the airplane seat. “Baby, you’ve been flying since before you were born. You know we’re perfectly safe.”
“I’m not scared,” she protested with a grumble.
“Then take the window seat. You’ll rest better. It’s a long flight.”
Rose knew her mother would be relentless in her attempt to please her, take care of her. She sighed. She knew she was better off letting her mother care for her. “OK, mom,” she conceded. They did a couple of awkward yoga stances over the seats, trying not to bother the sleeping passenger in the aisle, and eventually settled into their seats. Rose buckled up in her new place in the middle; Morgan reluctantly accepted her window seat. As the pilot went over the flight stats and asked the flight attendants to prepare for takeoff, Morgan surreptitiously slid the panel over the small window. They would be flying over the Hudson, the East River and the Atlantic Ocean, and she didn’t want to chance it. Who knew what she would see in the water?
Robin had called her many names, although she was never mean. One of her pet names for Morgan was Curious Morg, because Morgan could be relentless in her pursuit for information. She just couldn’t let some things go.
So even though she was, in fact, still a little unsettled about flying (hey, I still can’t wrap my head over the concepts of lift and wind flow and thrust and acceleration to really understand how these heavy planes fly) her hands were itching to lift the panel and see what she was flying over.
She looked to her left. Rose was sleeping, leaning perilously close to the passenger in the aisle. Morgan carefully reached out and gently pulled her mother closer to her. Rose twitched, snored lightly and rested her head closer to Morgan. Morgan smiled and resisted the urge to hug her mother, to hold her and tell her, even in her sleep, that she was all right; they were all OK and ready to take on their new lives in Albuquerque. A new life they didn’t chose to live, a life without Robin, but they would brave and face the future together. She refrained from touching her mother. She needed her sleep; they’d all been too busy closing up the place in New York and saying goodbye to an entire lifetime in the city. She closed her eyes and wished her mother strength and patience and wisdom to move on.
Morgan turned her head and stared down the beige panel over the small, oval-shaped window. She mustered the same bravura she used to beam strength to her mother and slowly reached out to touch the cold panel. Her fingers trembled, but just a little. She yanked the panel and focused on the dark skies outside. Tiny stars blinked from faraway distances and times, and seemingly slowly-moving airplane lights blinked at her as they passed each other in the night sky.
There, she told herself. Just stars and random, flat gray clouds. We’ll be landing in an hour or so. It’s almost over. And this plane hasn’t even trembled. She pursed her lips, forming a mixture between a proud smile and a grim acknowledgment of her ability to look out the plane window, something she seldom did. Yeah right, the unwelcome voice in her head countered. Lean in. Look down. Then I’ll be over this stupid fear of flying.
She knew she could do it. She knew she would do it, too. She was about to start a new life, in a brand new house and school. She could definitely look out an airplane window and enjoy the view. Or not enjoy the view. But get over it already.
Morgan slowly leaned into the small window, her reflection growing larger in the slightly scratched Plexiglas before her. She got close enough that she could see the warmth of her breath against the window. She avoided her own reflection – one quick look told her she had dark circles under her eyes and she knew it was from lack of sleep – and allowed her eyes to descend, millimeter over millimeter, scanning the dark skies, the stars, the clouds.
At first she noticed nothing more than low clouds and lights from vehicles, homes and buildings. There it lay, broad and imposing, some corner of Texas or Oklahoma or maybe even New Mexico. She breathed out with small relief, relishing the moment of safety. Nothing there could harm her.
Her eyes stayed on the moving landscape, almost enjoying the generic, unthreatening scenery below. Roads and streets, lights, trees, mountains and planes paraded by her, acquainting her with her new surroundings. Nothing like the buildings and nonstop steel of New York City. These were her new territories. She almost felt giddy; she admitted her inner Curious Morg was looking forward to exploring her new worlds. She glued her forehead to the window, her eyes still focusing on the ground below. She watched as the lights became more sparse, interspersed with a random hill, a patch of dark greenery or an unidentifiable interruption.
And then, unexpected, unwarranted and undeniably scary: a river. Twinkling quietly thousands of miles below, shimmering against the moon and the stars, wide and winding and declaring, quite clearly: I am here. I am waiting.
She slammed the panel shut and burrowed herself into the leather seat, her eyes focusing straight at the seat in front of her. Her heart beat so fast and loud that she was sure her mother could hear it.
The river wasn’t going to let her go.
She listened as her mother cheerfully chatted with him on her mobile phone, while Morgan stood at the curb of the airport, surrounded by their bags. He was busy, Rose told her. Last-minute meeting. Issues with the main pumps in the water processing plant of the company he worked for. It’s always something, she mumbled to herself. Her mother was much more used to it, and because she, too, had a demanding business, she took things in stride. To Morgan, however, her father’s nonstop busy-ness always got to her. She shrugged it off after a while, as she usually did. She had other things to worry about.
Once they got a cab, she busied herself with the alien landscape flashing outside the car’s windows. Greenery that was skillfully wrought from the arid New Mexico soil. Foreign-looking plants that she recognized from her months of research on her new state: Joshua trees, cacti in all shapes and hues ranging from gray to sepia tones to dark green. Tall, glass buildings slightly reminiscent of the skyscrapers in New York, but mostly huddled in the area the driver happily identified as downtown Albuquerque. The properties here seemed to be more distanced from one another, much more spread out. Albuquerque immediately showed itself as grand, spacious and quiet; nothing like the noise, the rush and crowds of her streets, her subways and endless rows of tall buildings. She was definitely in a new place.
Her annoyance with her father disappeared when their cab came up to their neighborhood, Los Pinos. The Pines. While there were few pines to speak of, thin, overgrown shrubs reached up to the clear New Mexico skies, lining the orderly streets and sharing some welcome shade with the driveways, the cars and the neat, beautiful houses. While the houses looked well-cared for and the neighborhood gave off the impression of safety, she was glad it wasn’t obviously upscale and flashy. Although she was aware that her father was one of the top executives at Global Waterworks, and her mother did well as a psychotherapist with her private practice, she’d never been comfortable with their apparent wealth. Her parents rarely, if ever, spoke of their finances and Robin and Morgan were brought up to understand that their ‘privilege’ was the direct result of hard work and sacrifice (such as family time, in her father’s case) and not something to boast of or to make her feel better than others.
And she had learned, with Robin’s death, that wealth did nothing to shield you from sudden misfortune.
Still, as the cab made its way down the street, she noticed the houses were larger, much more spread out. Where the houses on the other streets had open driveways and front lawns, she began to notice fences and walls surrounding the sprawling homes. There was much more privacy; she could barely make out the features in the houses, or their facades. She furrowed her brow. So much for a simpler life in Albuquerque, she mused, a little disappointed that her parents would have chosen the neighborhood. This isn’t good.
“11195 Arroyo Escondido Drive,” the cabbie announced. “Beautiful place. Brand new, too.” And reluctantly, Morgan agreed. As the car went through the open gates, she marveled at the dark gravel driveway that went up the slight sandy hill. A few of the tall shrubs she saw earlier dotted the property, but mostly the grounds were raked neatly into circles, adorned with scattered gray and black stones. Short, fat cacti boasted surprising bouts of coral and garnet-colored flowers, others grew oddly-shaped yellow and orange blossoms. She allowed herself to smile. The colors broke the desert’s monochrome, and in a way, helped to welcome her to the new place.
Her favorite part was the house. Although the driveway and front grounds were better suited for a mansion, as she stepped out of the cab she was faced with a rather small ranch house, built out of gray sandstone and thick, solid wood. The front door was bright blue – her mother’s favorite color – and the numbers 11195 shone in brass over a wooden plaque on which the two words were written: Arroyo Escondido. Her Spanish wasn’t good enough to let her understand the meaning. She made a mental note to research it later. Curious Morg on the case.
She grabbed some of the bags and left them by the front door. She left Rose dealing with the driver, and she slowly began to walk through their new rooms. The main living area had no divisions; the dining room and living room were all in a spacious, light-filled rectangle. The kitchen – always their favorite part of their homes – was a roomy square filled with the light that filtered through the ceiling-high French windows on the west wall. The living area gave way to a hallway; one set of double doors was at the end of the hallway, two single oak doors sprouted from each side of the corridor.
A quick glance through the double doors revealed her parents’ familiar bedroom furniture. She walked casually through the room, admiring the few toiletries her father had placed in the in-suite bathroom, his dark suits, ties, shirts and shoes in the cedar-lined walk-in closet. Their large flat screen TV hovered over the dresser, where her father had already placed some of the items she knew were vital to him: her parents’ wedding picture, well preserved and framed in silver, and in separate ceramic frames a picture of Morgan, taken the previous summer, her now-gone braces shining with the flash. And another, probably more precious still, a self-portrait of Robin, her last, taken the morning she died. She remembered her father had found it in Robin’s iPhone, and he had printed and framed it a few months after her death. Morgan took a deep breath and turned around. Not now, she told herself.
To the right of her parents’ room was her father’s study; her mother’s across the hall. A small bathroom was by her mother’s office. A few steps forward was her new room. She smiled. It was much larger than her room in New York, and her furniture was already in place: her queen-sized bed was already fixed with a new batik bedspread she’d never seen before, but whoever chose it got her colors right: lilac, bright lime green, mustard. New throw pillows were carefully arranged on top of the bed. Her boxes, all filled with the belongings she’d decided to keep, were neatly piled against a far wall. On her wide, low dresser was a clear crystal vase filled with long-stemmed, cheerful sunflowers. She walked up to the dresser, still smiling, and opened the cream-colored envelope embossed with her father’s initials: DH. Welcome home, Morgan. I missed you! Love, Daddy. She traced her finger over his elegant, loopy scrawls. He’d done a good job. Although the room wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined it, and it was still new and unfamiliar, in spite of how busy he was and how ultimately clueless he was about making up her room, he’d given it a good shot. Thanks, Dad. She hadn’t called him ‘Daddy’ in quite some time.
She walked up to the window and looked out at the slight drop in the land that seemed to go on forever. Even though the house itself was pretty small, the property it sat on seemed to be endless. She wrapped her arms around her body and exhaled, letting go, just the tiniest bit, of the stress of the past weeks, months. Year. She had a new house to explore. She had to pick up her schedule and sign up for her classes the next day, although she still had two more weeks to go before she was due at school. And apparently she had a hill, a huge piece of land and something of an interesting property name she had to look into.
She caught a glimpse of the reflection of her leather backpack in the window. Her heart skipped. She still had Robin’s stuff to go through. I haven’t forgotten about you, sis. We’ll figure this out.
Chapter Two: A New Life
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