Chapter 1
Issa McGuire’s heart was sick as she took a last look around her mother’s apartment, saying goodbye to the space she had once called home and that would soon be empty after Goodwill came to pick up the boxes. Walking out into the night, she could hardly believe her mother’s life had been reduced to those few possessions she’d seen in her mother’s final residence.
Among other belongings Issa had chosen to keep had been a leather keepsake box—about the same size as a large wooden cigar box—and a cardboard box full of papers. She’d taken a peek inside both but had found some of the information shocking. Surely the extensive criminal activities listed inside the topmost manila envelope in the banker’s box had to be wrong. She knew her father had been a smuggler, but that had been a way of life. The other charges, … well, those made no sense. Something, somewhere, must clarify all that had gone so wrong. She couldn’t trust her own childhood memories and wasn’t at all sure she could believe the papers found in her mother’s belongings either. Some things just didn’t add up.
Back in her vehicle, jammed full of her mother’s possessions and memories, she hurriedly got into the driver’s seat and slowly drove toward her small cabin.
And away from the remnants of that era of her life.
After years of the concrete city, she couldn’t do it anymore. She had died a little every day she was forced to exist without the space and sky that was secondary to her soul. Such an elemental thing, but, to her, it was the main priority. She’d made it through school; she’d made it through her degrees. And now she was beholden to no one.
Except for the birds. They were part of her soul.
At the nondescript turnoff to her road, she slowed for the corner and bounced hard, wishing there had been more money so she could’ve filled the pothole and done a better cleanup of the driveway. Not too much though. She certainly didn’t choose to pour down concrete or asphalt. Maybe a layer of gravel for the tires to grab in winter. All she wanted was a little more ease of living. But without it being too modern.
Her cabin illuminated in the headlights of her car, she could hear the birds already crying to her. Humbug, the huge snowy owl, who’d crawled inside her heart and made a place for himself, sat on a corner of the cabin’s roof, staring at her.
Roash, the beautiful falcon she’d found in the field, sat on a fence post—he too was waiting for her. She knew the golden eagle would be around somewhere. And then there was Gillian, the tiny saw-whet owl who wouldn’t be far away. Smaller than the others of his kind, a little more damaged than the other birds of any kind, the one who needed her just as much as she needed her birds.
Leaving the vehicle on for the headlights to shine on her front door, she quickly moved to the cabin and back to the car.
It might be summertime, but, once the sun went down, it didn’t matter where you were in this area of Colorado, a chill settled in. Inside she lit the woodstove and put on the teakettle. She had electricity but used it sparingly, choosing instead to use kerosene lamps. She wasn’t against some modern conveniences, but she didn’t appreciate the related monthly bills that came her way. Until she had a regular paycheck, she had to find and save the pennies wherever she could.
So far she had yet to discover anything of her mother’s worth selling, and she hadn’t figured out where her mother’s bank accounts were. She’d unloaded the big box of paperwork, hoping the information would be in there. Along with the answers she needed on her father’s criminal activities. But she didn’t want to look inside; she couldn’t bear it. Not right now.
Not with the grief of losing not only her only living relative but her mother. They’d had a complicated relationship, but, when it came down to it, she’d been family. Issa wanted to keep the little bit of fantasy about her father for as long as possible. Not that she had much in the way of illusions. It was hard enough to face the reality of losing her mother. How could a woman in good health, and only sixty-two, have a heart attack and die, while Issa was at the university collecting the paperwork on her doctorate? To come home and to find her mother in her own apartment like that—on the kitchen floor, already cold from taking her last breath hours ago. Issa shook her head, tears never far from the surface, once again rising.
Nothing had been on the kitchen table or on her mother’s bed that explained what her mother had been doing right before her death, and, after the chaos of the police and the morgue attendants, Issa hadn’t been able to return to her mother’s apartment and had crashed at home with tears of loss and grief. When she finally awoke midday the next day, it was to the cold harsh reality of being all alone at twenty-six. She was much too young to be the last one of her family still living. And to be facing the grim job forced upon her to contend with the reality of burying a loved one unexpectedly. It had taken days, almost a week, as she couldn’t even consider starting the process for several days. The fifty-five-mile drive, one way, between her secluded cabin and her mother’s apartment had only added to her exhaustion.
Her mother had hated that she lived so far away.
“Why can’t you live nearby me?” she’d whined. “It’s as if you want nothing to do with me.”
“Mom, I just need to be out on the land. One with nature. I can’t live like this. I can’t live in these concrete boxes,” Issa had said.
“They’re called apartments. Everyone lives in them.”
Issa had turned and said, “No, not everyone wants to. There are places with open spaces and real trees and dirt beneath your feet.”
Her mother had shaken her head. “Dear God, why can’t you ever leave that alone?”
“I can’t. It’s who I am.”
“No,” her mother had argued. “It’s part of who you were. It has nothing to do with who you are. That was twenty years ago. Two decades have gone by. You should’ve adjusted. You should be somebody else by now.”
Issa’s teakettle started to whistle in her little cabin. Issa pulled out a teabag and a very large ceramic mug and poured hot water over the top of it. It was the way she always drank her tea. Strong and black. Her mother, Maier, liked hers with a little bit of milk and a little bit of sweetener.
Issa liked the comforts of home—but what she considered home. Her mother’s place had never been home. Apartments made Issa feel closed in, like a prison. Maybe she’d only spent her first six years of life on the hills of Ireland, but those six years were ingrained into who she was. And every day that she was not outdoors felt like a prison sentence with no end.
“I can’t live up there with you,” her mother complained. “And I don’t want to live away from you.”
Issa had nodded. “I know that. So I’m the one who will come back and forth. I’ll stay here sometimes, but my life will be there.”
“How can that possibly be?” Her mother had walked away and sat down on the couch, looking so lost that Issa had felt guilty. “You have no job up there. And to do that drive back and forth …”
“It’s not that bad, it’s only an hour.”
Her mother nodded as she always did. “Only an hour. It’s an hour that you are away from me.”
“It’s an hour where I’m coming to you or going away from you, yes,” Issa had said quietly. “But it’s also an hour where I’m closer to the life I need to live.”
Her mother had turned such sad eyes her way. “Why is it such a sacrifice to be away from there?”
“I can’t explain it, Mom. It just is.”
Holding the big ceramic mug in her hand, Issa stood in front of the fire, letting the waves of heat wash over her. And now, with her mother dead and gone, Issa didn’t need to make the drive again. She didn’t need to do anything in the city again as she had no job to go to either.
She’d completed her PhD, but, so far, unfortunately she had found only concrete city work available. But, when you were a biologist and had your doctorate in environmental sciences, surely jobs in her field existed where she could live out here like she needed to.
Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. Yet one more sign of the trappings of civilization. She pulled out her phone and looked at the Caller ID on her screen. It was one of the university professors, one of the men on her doctorate team, sending condolences to her for her loss. She raised her gaze and stared into the darkness beyond the windows. “How is it they all know?”
She shook her head, not understanding. Her mother had been big on social media. And on secrecy. Her mother had made up a fake account and thought that was the best part. She could do and say and be anyone she wanted to be and no one knew.
Issa didn’t know that was possible. She was big on computer technology and having all the research material at her fingertips, but she would never want to be on those sites her mother had thought were such fun. Issa had been amazed when her mother showed her how many friends she had. The ongoing question in Issa’s mind was, Were they actually friends?
The one time she’d asked, her mother hadn’t cared, saying, “These are people I interact with, people who share what’s happening in their lives and are watching what happens in my life. I don’t feel so alone when I do this.”
Issa had nodded. The last thing she wanted was people prying into her world, into her life. She’d gone through school making friends but keeping few. She wasn’t wired to be a social butterfly. She wanted no part of the global fascination of other peoples’ lives.
She lived in the open air, the silence of the forest. Still waters and amazing forms of life dwelled within. But only a few special people cared to look for those wonders. She hadn’t tried hard to make friends. For that she knew the fault was hers. Her heart wasn’t in it; neither was her soul. She’d come alive when she joined the local falconry club. That was something she could relate to. She’d become as attached to the birds there as she had to the members.
They had rallied around her, understanding on some elemental level she was one of them. She hadn’t realized, growing up, such a group of people who did this was over here. She hadn’t understood her life as a child was in some ways unique and yet, to others, deprived. It made her both heartbroken for not being so special and yet grateful for having others who understood. And, despite all the time she spent with these people, she hadn’t yet found a hawk or falcon or another bird that could give her what she sought. And she’d spent decades searching. Two of them to be exact.
When she heard an unnatural sound outside, she froze. Making a fast decision, she blew out the kerosene light. But for some reason her instincts were on alert. And then she heard the rumble from her birds outside. Humbug screeched into the night, and she heard a gunshot. Her blood ran cold.
She raced out the back door, and two hard hands grabbed her. Not a word was said as she fought and screamed and tugged to get away until finally something was shoved over her head. It was long enough to drop down over the rest of her. She was knocked to the ground and trussed up like an animal. Finally she was picked up and tossed over someone’s shoulder. Blind, hurting, and terrified, she continued to struggle until something hard slammed into her head. And she knew no more.