That night, she went to bed in a strange room under the soft pink chenille bedspread, surrounded by magnolia wallpaper that almost seemed to glow in the dark. She felt thousands of miles from home, and the feeling wasn’t bad at all. Home had felt haunted to her lately. She needed this newness. The comfort of this bed, this lovely old house, this small, sweet town. And for the first night since her mother’s death, she fell asleep quickly, undisturbed by dreams.

Chapter 9. Morgan

Chapter 9

MORGAN

June 14, 2018

I barely slept during my first night in Lisa’s house. Nothing echoed here and I had grown so used to echoing. No footsteps outside my cell. No clanking doors. No flushing of toilets. Although the sunroom windows were closed to keep in the air-conditioning, I could still hear the hum of cicadas in the backyard. It felt like ten years since I’d heard cicadas, the sound so beautiful to me that I felt tears roll from my eyes into my hair.

I woke up in the middle of the night after one of my miserable dreams about the accident, and it took me a few minutes to get my bearings. Those dreams were always the same: Emily Maxwell’s terrified face was caught in the headlights of my car just before the horrid crunching sound of the crash. I had to turn on the night table lamp to remind myself that I was safe. My weird, silent cellmate wasn’t a few feet away from me. There were no bars keeping me in the room. I was free. Sort of.

When I next opened my eyes, lemon-yellow sunlight filled the room. I stared at the ceiling, thinking of old Jesse Jameson Williams opening his eyes to the same ceiling, morning after morning after morning. Had he lain right here in this sunny room, staring at the ceiling, when he thought to himself, How can I help that art student Morgan Christopher? The one who so thoroughly screwed up her life? I know! I’ll ask her to do the impossible, that’s how!

Oh my God. This was so ridiculous. The image of that soiled and strange mural came back to me. Filthy, stinky, bizarre, scratched up and battered and nearly bare of paint in some spots. I needed to quickly get a computer to try to figure out what to do with that thing. Setting me loose on it was so wrong. I didn’t understand why Lisa was so gung-ho on following her father’s deranged instructions, but whatever. It got me out of prison and if I could somehow do what needed to be done to the mural, it would keep me out.