scrubbed. Mona hated the house after that, and she was thankful when her father moved to a new job. And to this day Mona has never forgotten the way her mother looked when she apologized to her on that front step: she looked more sensible and saner than she had in many years. It was not until later, when Mona became a cop, that she learned how unusual it was for a woman to kill herself with a firearm, especially one as devastating as a shotgun. To this day, it still bothers her.
She keeps forgetting that in eleven days it will have been thirty years ago. Even though all of her adult life has occurred after that moment, it still feels as if it happened only yesterday, like Mona is still waiting on the front lawn, waiting for her mother to tell her to come back inside.
She remembers almost nothing of her mother apart from that moment and brief snatches of other memories that amount to nothing. Yet in this dingy motel room, with the sounds of Jeopardy! bleeding through the bedroom wall, Mona is confronted with the fact that her mother was much more than that sad, confused woman. How she got to West Texas and into Earl Bright’s life is something Mona cannot imagine.
Yet it is something Mona decides she will find out. She will go to this town in New Mexico and find out what her mother was doing there and what turned her into the weeping wreck of a human being Mona knew. And after all, Mona has no reason to stay in Texas: she’s had a rocky couple of years since her divorce, and though after her resignation the Houston PD made it obvious they’d welcome her back, she does not feel like being a cop anymore. She has become comfortable with drifting, with the endless chain of cheap motel rooms and the scents of diesel gas and watery beer. God only knows how many W2s she’s filled out for a month’s or two months’ wages. She has been all over Texas and Louisiana and, in one rock-bottom fit, Oklahoma, and though she has seen many miles she is now unsure if she’s actually found anything during her sojourn. Certainly never a house, or a car, or the ghost of her mother’s history.
Mona shoves the papers aside and starts trimming and filing her toenails (she has always taken very good care of her feet), and she watches the curtains change color with the neon lights outside.
She wonders how she will get there. She wonders what Wink is like, and why she’s never heard of it before. And she wonders if she will find any more to the stranger she has just unearthed in this little cardboard box.
CHAPTER THREE
On the outskirts of Wink, nestled in the western side of the mesa so it is shielded from the worst of the midday sun, there is a narrow, wandering canyon that is curiously treeless and silent. It is almost hidden within a thick thatch of pinyon pines, yet none of them has managed to penetrate this canyon despite having successfully invaded far harsher regions. It is mostly invisible to the town itself, but if the inhabitants wished, it would be an easy thing to climb down to the forest and hike their way over. Yet despite the canyon’s scenic appeal and accessibility, none of the residents of Wink ever enters. At least, not without an invitation.
Because this is where Mr. First resides, and Mr. First values his privacy.
It is early morning, and pink hues are just beginning to seep into the dark sky above, blanching out the stars. A flock of sparrows suddenly takes flight from the forest in a rush, and they wheel about before settling on the opposite side of Wink. A family of white-tailed deer also flees the mesa’s shadow, springing through the pines as if startled by a hunter, yet there is none. Even a pack of coyotes hurries away, an anomaly if ever there was one, as they’d normally be asleep by now.
Soon a heavy silence pervades the forest. There is no sound but the wind in the pines. For Mr. First is waking, and most creatures around the mesa know it’s wise to make themselves scarce at such times.
This occurrence is unusual, and Mr. First realizes this, for it is not his time to wake. He observes that it is morning, not evening, and more so he has set a very rigorous