MORGAN
It didn’t take longfor Morgan to establish a new routine. Whether it was a good sign or a bad one remained to be seen.
She was up before six regardless of whether there was any reason to be. Her body wasn’t used to sedentary days and a full eight hours of sleep at night. As a death investigator, she was often called out to scenes at all hours of the day and night, and the remainder of her time was spent in the office at the medical examiner’s office or less commonly, the morgue.
Here, there was none of that. Instead of grabbing takeout coffee on her way somewhere, she was killing time waiting for the ancient percolator to do its thing. Instead of battling traffic to get to a scene, she was donning flannel and watching the sun rise from Frank’s back porch in a glorious display. Instead of navigating police tape and dodging reporters, she was walking the perimeter with Shadow.
The dog had become a quiet companion over the last few days, climbing into bed with her earlier and earlier, and then parking himself somewhere in her general vicinity without making a fuss about it during the day. She didn’t hate it. She'd even caught herself talking to him once or twice, which she would categorically deny if pressed.
Frank would be on the porch when they returned, coffee in hand. Morgan didn’t hate that, either. It was nice having someone around, even if they didn’t speak much. There really wasn’t a need to.
It was peaceful. Grounding. And, she supposed, the point.
But she couldn’t completely quell the restlessness that had nothing to do with Pine Ridge and everything to do with Philadelphia. She was managing it, but that required effort that she would have preferred to spend on something tangible. Something productive. Downtime was nice—even necessary sometimes—but it didn’t suit her. She needed questions to answer and mysteries to solve.
The forced leave felt more like a punishment than the “much needed break” they’d labeled it as. She'd been pulled from her cases, her files handed off. Even now, someone else was probably sitting in her office, at her desk, touching her things and rearranging them in a way that would take days to put back when she returned.
Ifshe returned.
Her supervisor had said six weeks, but he hadn’t been able to look her in the eye when he’d said it.
A lot, she supposed, depended on how high up the directive had come from. The not-knowing was agony for someone whose entire career was finding answers.
Maybe, instead of walking out of her supervisor’s office with her tail tucked between her legs, she should have fought harder to stay. That was the other thought that came in the mornings, when her brain had nothing else to latch onto. She could have pushed back. Filed a formal objection instead of just stating her position.
But in her defense, she had been blindsided. She’d walked in ready to discuss the anomalies of the case and the next thing she knew, she’d been walking out with leave paperwork in her hand and the strong suggestion that wasn’t really a suggestion that she take a few weeks off to re-examine her goals and return with a fresh perspective.
The implication was, if she had refused, the separation would happen anyway and be permanent.
But why? That was what she hadn’t been able to figure out. The case wasn’t that different from dozens of others she’d worked—a suspected overdose in a known drug house, with only a few minor discrepancies. Was her supervisor right in saying that she was overthinking things and prolonging closure unnecessarily? Imagining inconsistencies in a situation that followed no rational consistency?
Did it even matter in the grand scheme of things?
Yes, she thought without hesitation, it did. The truth always mattered.
After five days,she couldn’t stand it anymore. She retrieved her phone and turned it on, needing to reach out and touch something beyond Frank’s domain. Within seconds, it began vibrating with notifications, interrupting the enthusiastic birdsong just beyond the kitchen window.
Morgan looked at the screen for a moment and then sighed. She'd been ignoring her mother’s frequent calls for five days. Now was as good a time as any to bite the bullet.
“You're alive,” her mother said, by way of hello.
“You know I am.”
“I know nothing of the sort. You haven’t picked up or answered any of my voicemails.”
“I texted you when I got here.”
“Anyone could text. I needed to hear your voice.”
Morgan had to admit, she had a point. Phones could be used to fabricate stories and create false narratives in some cases, but surely not hers. It was a sad fact of her life that no one outside the office—and her mother—noticed she was gone.
Morgan thumbed the screen and confirmed that her location was turned off. Not that her mother knew how to use it to find her, but one of her uncles surely did.
“Okay, well, you’re hearing it now, Mom.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. I'm fine. I just needed some space.”