She hadn’t merely furnished this house; she had curated its contents, as if this were a multiroom installation in a museum. She’d thought she was putting together a version of Santa Fe style reflective of this storied city that she loved. Now she realized that the result was a rustic yet sophisticated decor that could be found to some extent beyond the borders of New Mexico; that in fact it wasn’t uncommon in humble, rural homes as far away as Wyoming and Montana, in those parts of the True West that had not yet succumbed to modernity as fully as the New West beyond the Rockies.
She realized as well, and with greater astonishment, she had surrounded herself with things reminiscent of the furnishings in the native-stone house at Rustling Willows, where she had resided during the first nine years and four months of her life.
Although she’d left the ranch twenty-four years earlier, and though her childhood memories were partly obscured by the dust of time, she found it incredible—inexplicable—that she hadn’t until this moment recognized the influence of Rustling Willows in this home she’d made for herself. It seemed as if she’d subconsciously suppressed her recollections of that place, perhaps as a defense against the emotional pain of the tragedies that had occurred there.
Her mother’s favorite form of exercise had been rowing a skiff on Lake Sapphire, which their house overlooked. She went onto the water at first light nearly every morning—and one day did not come back. The six-hundred-acre lake was as much as three hundred feet deep in places, but the authorities didn’t need to drag it to find her body, because she washed up on a shingle beach, in the shade of cottonwoods. The county coroner determined that she must have rocked the boat and fallen overboard, and in falling had knocked her head against the gunwale, drowning while unconscious.
Following the loss of her mother and, two weeks later, the death of her father, Samuel, Joanna had gone to live for twelve years with her mother’s unmarried sister, Katherine, in Santa Fe, in a sort of Victorian house crammed full of heavy furniture and bric-a-brac, a place that some might have thought was an affront to the graceful Pueblo-influenced structures that largely defined the fabled city. Soon after graduating from St. John’s College, Joanna inherited the contents of a trust that included the proceeds from an insurance policy on her mother’s life. She had bought her current home, furnished it, and lived frugally until her attempt to build a career as a writer bore fruit.
She couldn’t understand how one mysterious phone call from a nameless woman had restored color to the faded memories of Rustling Willows, but maybe it was no coincidence that the recent dreams had been followed by the caller’s quiet entreaty.
Which meant—what? That the dreams had been somehow induced? How? With drugs? Absurd. She was not a writer of paranoia-drenched fiction. She didn’t traffic in the conspiracy theories that, like a series of tsunamis, washed through the internet. Surely the timing of the call was coincidental, not related in any way to the dreams.
Only you can help me, Jojo.
Where are you calling from?
You know.
How could I know?
You know.
And of course Joanna did know. The unknown woman had called from Rustling Willows—or had implied as much.
But that place was twenty-four years in Joanna’s past, and she was not obligated in any sense to anyone in Montana. No one there could possibly be in a situation that only she could resolve.
She put the mug of coffee down. She toured the house, marveling—with increasing uneasiness—at how many objects echoed items in a ranch house twelve hundred miles and a quarter of a century away, at least as she now remembered them.
If she’d repressed other memories, some event or relationship that would explain the phone call, she must have done so for good reason. Although her imagination would now bedevil her with colorful theories, she would be wise to resist the temptation to seek an explanation. For all its natural beauty, the ranch had made an orphan of her. It wasn’t likely to be a place of bright promise for her future.
In spite of all that, something about the years she spent at Rustling Willows must have inspired an inexplicable nostalgia; otherwise, she would not have made this house in Santa Fe a reflection of the one in Montana.
She’d often accompanied her mother in the skiff, and she had enjoyed those outings. However, even though she’d been spared the sight of Emelia’s bloated corpse, the lake seemed polluted and unwholesome in the aftermath.
Neither had she seen her father’s body, two weeks later, but the horror of his death had finally robbed the ranch of whatever charm it possessed. Samuel had gone for a ride on Spirit, his favorite horse. The theory was that they surprised a bear with its cub or encountered one half-starved; the panicked stallion threw its rider and bolted, and the bear chased Samuel down. Only the vicious claws of a grizzly could have made such grievous wounds; only a ravenous eight-hundred-pound bear would have devoured so much of its kill.