Chapter One
Today was Morgan’s birthday. Three years had passed, but in Wendy’s mind, her daughter was still eighteen, the age she’d been when she’d had an argument with her mother and stormed out of the house with a backpack full of her belongings. Her parting words to her mother had been, “I am so done with you. You can just go to hell!”
Edwin had predicted she’d be back, but even on that day Wendy had a bad feeling. For several months prior to that, she and Morgan had gotten into a lot of fights, mostly about her daughter’s much older boyfriend, Keith, and her new set of friends, all of them druggies, as far as Wendy could tell. Morgan had been a difficult teenager, and she’d gotten worse after she’d fallen in with this new crowd, the ones she’d met working as a barback in a sleazy place downtown. An eighteen-year-old working nights at a bar was undoubtedly a recipe for trouble. The news that she’d gotten a job there hadn’t gone over well with her parents. Wendy had argued that it couldn’t even be legal. “You’re under twenty-one,” she’d pointed out. “You’re not even supposed to be on the premises, much less employed there.”
Morgan had shot back, “With tips, I make three times as much as working in retail. You said that if I wasn’t going to college, I needed to make enough money to support myself. Then when I go and do it, all you do is find fault.” Morgan had a way of turning Wendy’s words against her, something that made Wendy crazy. By nature, she was a peacemaker, but Morgan was determined to be contentious.
Edwin had said to take a hands-off approach. “Let her get it out of her system. She’ll get tired of it. She’ll see that those people aren’t going anywhere in life. We raised her right. She’ll come back to us.”
“And if she doesn’t get tired of it?” Wendy asked. “If she doesn’t come back to us?”
“Wendy, we really don’t have much choice. She’s an adult. The more you push, the more she’ll push back. If we’re calm and keep touching base with her, she’ll come to us when she’s ready. Believe me, this is just a phase.”
Every fiber of her being disagreed with him, but she’d deferred, thinking he was the more levelheaded, unbiased of the two of them. Besides, as a college professor, he dealt with kids Morgan’s age every day. He was sort of the expert when it came to eighteen-year-olds. In her heart she felt he was wrong, but he seemed so sure that she doubted herself. She regretted it later. Mother’s intuition was the one thing she had going for her, and she’d ignored it.
Drinking and drugs had become the monsters driving her daughter. She couldn’t prove Morgan was using drugs, but her instincts told her it was true. Morgan’s personality had changed. She was moody and had lost weight, something she’d attributed to the physicality of the work. To illustrate, she’d flexed her biceps and said, “I got this from carrying cases of beer up from the basement.” Like it was a point of pride. When her new best friend, a woman named Star, came to the door looking for Morgan, all Wendy could think was that she looked like a drug addict out of a TV movie, right down to the stringy hair, bloodshot eyes, and twitchy movements. She’d come to borrow money, of course, something Wendy had picked up on even though the two young women’s conversation had been whispered in the front hall.
All of this conflict and worry, and then she was just gone.
At first they thought she’d stayed over at a friend’s house. After she’d been missing two days, Wendy had filed a police report. The police were sympathetic, but not too helpful. Morgan, they pointed out, wasn’t technically missing. Morgan’s parting words were a clear message that she was leaving of her own accord. The police were nice, though. They questioned all the sketchy people who frequented Morgan’s workplace. They asked about the boyfriend, Keith, but no one knew much about him, much less where he was or how to reach him. To her utter shame, Wendy realized she didn’t even know his last name. She’d asked Morgan for his full name and had been accused of interrogating her, so she’d let it drop. Now she knew that letting it go had been a big mistake.
The police quickly hit a dead end, but Wendy gave them credit for trying.
For her own sanity, Wendy got through the first year by staying busy. In addition to her full-time job as an accountant for a law firm, she put up posters, made phone calls, and created a website. She called Morgan’s cell continuously, until it no longer connected with voice mail. The phone company said the account had been canceled, but they couldn’t give her any other information. She still checked the website every morning for comments, even though they never led to anything concrete. The web page had a heading that said, Have you seen our daughter, Morgan Duran? Below she’d posted a collage of photos of Morgan, along with her physical description. Five-foot-six, slender build. Brown eyes, dark-brown hair, medium-tan skin. There was so much more to her than that, though, so Wendy had added, Morgan, if you’re reading this, please come home. We miss you so much.
So many memories. From early on, her daughter had a smile that could light up the world and a laugh that was infectious. Her older brother, Dylan, had adored her—still adored her.
As time passed, she and Edwin would only talk about Morgan in bed, the darkness making it easier for her to spill out her grief and worries. Although Edwin denied it, Wendy got the impression that he thought Morgan was dead. He never said as much, probably because saying the words aloud would tear them both in half, but she got the message all the same. What he’d said was, “I’m just as devastated as you are, but I think we should be prepared for the worst.”
She would never be prepared for the worst, but this in-between state, the not knowing, was just as bad, eating her up from the inside out. During her busy days at the law firm, she sometimes went hours without thinking of Morgan, but she never made it through a whole day without the agony of knowing her daughter was gone.
Dylan had suggested that all three of them send in a vial of saliva to both 23andMe and Ancestry.com so that their DNA was on file. Just in case. She did it, but her “just in case” included a scenario in which Morgan was in a coma in a hospital somewhere, unable to be identified, and when the DNA was matched and they rushed to her side, the sound of her mother’s voice would bring her back to consciousness and lead to a full recovery.
After the first two years, friends and relatives had stopped asking, knowing that if there was any news, they’d be notified. Occasionally there would be an article or video segment online about a missing person, someone who turned up after having been missing for years and then subsequently reunited with their family. None of these were gentle stories. The subjects were never the victim of amnesia. None of them had been out of touch with their families due to a misunderstanding. Usually horrific things had happened to them, things Wendy wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy, but for some reason, people felt the need to forward these news stories to her, as if to say, See, it’s not hopeless. It still might happen.
Giving up wasn’t an option, so she kept on searching online, checking in with the police, and reading the comments on the website. As if her efforts alone would lead to a happy ending.
Today, she stayed home from work on Morgan’s birthday because someone needed to commemorate the day, to remember that there once was a girl named Morgan, who’d started off as a precious newborn, six pounds four ounces at birth, the sweetest baby she’d ever laid eyes on. Wendy recalled Morgan’s childhood, how she loved to dress up as a princess, how she followed her older brother around the house like a little duckling, and how proud she was of making it all the way through middle school without taking a sick day, not even once. It was in high school when the trouble started—the defiance, the sneaking out of the house—but even then, Wendy saw signs of her beautiful, smart, funny daughter underneath it all. It was a phase, she’d told herself, a phase Wendy had prayed would pass quickly. Even with all the grief Morgan had caused, Wendy wouldn’t have traded her for the world. And that was how it was until, unthinkably, the world took her away from them.