CHAPTER ONE
The eagle’s cries and Marin’s screams faded, and she opened her eyes to morning sunlight and the breeze moving the bedroom curtains. She listened for the sound of Mark’s breathing, but this was her own bedroom and not the armchair at Mark’s bedside—and she would never hear his breathing again.
With Mark’s coaxing, she’d agreed to see Dr. Lippmann when the dreams had grown more frequent, agreeing to let Mark cover the cost. He’d been certain the doctor could help, and had wanted Marin to be, if not happy, then at least at peace with herself after his death.
“Your psyche is trying to tell you something,” Mark had said, tapping her gently on the forehead. “The mesa memory is in there somewhere, trying to get out. My advice is to see Dr. Lippmann, let her help. Then, I think you need to go to this so-called reunion, talk a few things out with Vangie Tso. It’s not rocket science to realize this dream-vision thing started after you got that invitation.”
“But I don’t think…”
“Do it,” Mark had said, and tapped his chest. “I can afford it. Dying man here; death-bed request.”
Mark hadn’t realized Marin’s true fear was she was losing her grip on reality, afraid of developing Alzheimer’s disease as her father had.
Mark knew Marin had cared for her father at home until his death, but he didn’t know everything…how isolated she’d been, unable to maintain relationships with former friends or have a life of her own. Mark came from a wealthy family; he didn’t realize how out of reach the expense of a memory-care facility could be, didn’t know how she’d depended on hospice visits to have even the free time to shop for food. After her father’s death, she had closed the big, Victorian house and contracted with a local agency as an end-of-life doula to make enough money to pay the mortgage and her father’s medical bills.
“Any relationships?” Dr. Lippmann had asked.
The doctor hadn’t known the irony of her question.
She got up and wandered into the kitchen, standing undecided before moving to fill the coffeepot.
It was always like this afterward, the lassitude, the period when she didn’t quite know what to do with herself, making the readjustment to living alone, to being in her own apartment and caring for herself instead of being fully given over to the care of someone else.
“It’syour dream, Marin…”
“Just something to think about…”
So much for the visit to Dr. Lippmann.
“Nothing like your dream ever really happened?” Mark had asked in one of their last conversations…
“Standing on a mesa ledge and having an eagle dive at me…an eagle with Vangie’s face?” she said and paused as if thinking. “I don’t think so.”
“No need for sarcasm,” Mark said. “Obviously it’s symbolism. Did Vangie blame you for something?”
“You’d have to know Vangie,” she said. “That’s not who she is. Vangie takes people as a whole—she doesn’t try and change you; she just accepts you. Or she did when I knew her…”
“But the mesa itself, it’s a real place?”
“Yes, it’s behind the school compound, less than a mile away…but it’s a place we didn’t go—the mesa is haunted.”
Mark leaned forward.
“The story is there was a stand-off on top of the mesa, a battle between the government authorities and a Diné man who had large holdings of land and sheep and horses…and two wives.”
“That’s allowed?”
“This happened around 1870,” Marin said, “around the same time most all of the western tribes had been relegated to reservations…and to your point, the U.S. Supr
