Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Summer rolled into autumn without any of Morgan’s usual pleasure in the change of seasons.

Reality had to be faced.

Juggling, juggling, juggling, she’d tried to hold on. But the lawyer fees mounted to beyond what she’d asked her grandmother to lend her.

She couldn’t bring herself to ask for more, not when she so clearly saw her life become an endless cycle of work, bills, debt, worry.

They wanted to come, her mother, her grandmother, but she couldn’t face that either and put them off.

Even working nearly eighty hours a week, she fell behind. Nina’s car—it would forever be Nina’s car—needed more work, and though she knew Larry bottomed down his price for her, it cut into the budget.

Her washing machine decided to revolt and flood the day after she’d stolen enough from the budget to replace the balding tires on her bike.

Then her lights went off.

She’d paid the bill, but it seemed Gavin Rozwell had taken one more shot. Using her account number, he’d discontinued service. As she worked to straighten that out—with the power company rep insisting turning the power back on required a fee—she learned he’d canceled her homeowner’s insurance and filed a huge fraudulent claim against her medical insurance.

It could all be fixed, the lawyer assured her. For more legal fees, more court costs, more money poured out in hopes of recouping it later.

By November she accepted she was in over her head, and she’d never come up for the third time.

With Sam, she visited Nina’s grave with its pure white stone. The wind blew hard, scattered dead leaves, and overhead the sky held thick and gray with a rain that would come icy when it fell.

They hadn’t brought flowers. They’d agreed Nina would hate for them to lay flowers that would wither and die in the cold.

She breathed deep. “Can we walk? I feel like I’m dumping this on Nina, and that is weird, since I just said she’s not here.”

She looked out at the headstones, the monuments, the flowers that would wither and die.

She stopped, turned to take both his hands. “I’ll tell them when the house sells.”

Paint was cheap, and so was her labor. She painted the walls a neutral off-white she decided she personally hated. Taking her cues from HGTV, she went sell-this-house neutral everywhere.

She removed personal items, boxed up photographs, some sweet and silly knickknacks.

She cleaned every inch of what had been her home and now represented a fight she’d already lost.

The house sat on the market for six weeks without a single offer before the Realtor advised a slight price reduction.

Morgan agreed, and cleaned the house again for what the Realtor called a postholiday showing. By the middle of January, and a second slight price cut, she’d sold her living room furniture, which helped pay bills and allowed her one deep breath.

And she started researching bankruptcy.

An offer came in.

Pushing the soup aside, she pulled over the old laptop Sam had given her. No arguments, Morgan, she remembered him saying. Just take the damn thing.

She’d taken the damn thing and now did some calculations.

Belinda the Realtor had it right, of course. The offer on the table wouldn’t cover her debt. But instead of owing about three hundred thousand, she’d owe roughly seven.

She could live with that. She was currently living with a lot worse.

Belinda called back. “The buyers are willing to split the difference. I’d like to counter.”

She sat back, shut her eyes, and realized she felt nothing but relief.

Thirty days moved fast. She gave her bosses her notice, helped train her replacements. Since she’d have no need for them, she sold or gave away the rest of her furniture, the contents of her kitchen cabinets, even her cleaning supplies.

No matter how she’d braced for it, saying goodbye proved harder than she’d imagined.

On the morning of the settlement, when she locked the empty house for the last time, the relief she fought to cling to dropped into misery.

She’d cry later. She promised herself a champion-level crying jag, but later.

With the paperwork complete, the new owners beaming, she comforted herself that someone would love what could no longer be hers.

Maybe they’d take that wall down, and build a sweet little front porch.

She walked out of the settlement office with a check that totaled hardly more than two weeks’ pay. Since it seemed best not to think about how thrilled she’d been when she’d walked out of that same office as a homeowner, she blocked it out.

She got into Nina’s car with her suitcases already loaded, and drove north.

When she’d made her annual trek to Vermont for Christmas—except this past one, which she’d spent alone—she’d taken the train.

A happy little trip, she thought now, with her single suitcase, bag of gifts, and all that holiday cheer.

The drive from the outskirts of Baltimore to Westridge, Vermont, would take her a solid eight hours according to the GPS on her phone.

She hoped to make it without an overnight stop. And with bigger hope that Nina’s car would make it.

She drove away from the first whispers of spring and into the firm grip of winter, with its shivering trees and a quick squall of sleet.

After skirting Philadelphia, then New York, she stopped to gas up, stretch her legs. In the parking lot she ate half the PB&J she’d packed and watched a couple walk a big, curly haired dog.

A dog had been in her long-range plans, she remembered, after she’d established her own business. Not a big dog, she thought, but not one of those pocket jobs either. A nice sensible-size dog who’d curl at her feet when she did paperwork and romp around the backyard—no digging in the garden. A sweet and quiet-natured dog she’d raise from a frisky puppy.

She saw her imaginary dog stretched out on her finished back deck to soak up the summer sun. Sitting patiently in her open, cheerful kitchen while she filled his food and water bowls. Greeting her with wagging tail when she came home from work.

She’d need a dog door, of course, leading out from the kitchen to the deck and yard. And …

She caught herself, closed her eyes.

Appetite gone, she wrapped the second half of the sandwich and continued on her way.

She drove through Connecticut, into Massachusetts. Snow, white and thick, covered everything on either side of the highway, and the sky—gray as lead—surely held more. Wind streamed down from the rising hills, sent snow flying, drifting.

Traffic slowed to the point she felt herself drifting like the snow. So she pulled off again, walked in the frigid air. With light leaching out of the day, she nearly gave in.

A decent motel, a warm, quiet space, sleep.

She bought a large coffee instead and texted her mother she’d arrive in a few hours.

We’ll be here. Got a big pot of beef stew waiting. Drive safe.

She added a heart emoji, and feeling obligated, Morgan answered with another.

Ignoring the signs of lodging, she crossed into Vermont and the Green Mountains.

There was beauty here—maybe frozen at this time, but beauty. She couldn’t deny it, and had always enjoyed it on her holiday visits, her short childhood trips in summer.

Mountains and forests and valleys, snow drenched, made a winter painting, all Americana. She drove and wound through the dream of it, and felt something nearly release when the moon—just a slice of it—broke through the clouds to drop its blue light on the white.

She’d hiked the forest with her grandfather on rare and all-too-short summer visits. He knew every trail. It struck her that she missed him more here as she drove closer to where he’d lived his life than she did anywhere else.

He’d listened to her dreams.

To be fair, so had her grandmother and her mother. Though her mother had always seemed just a little distracted. But Pa had listened, as if nothing else existed in that moment but her words and wishes.

She thought of him now as she traveled through his world and remembered the little things he’d taught her.

How to hammer a nail without banging her thumb. How to use a compass. How to recognize a deer print, a bear’s. How to fish, something she did not for pleasure but just to spend time with him.

He wouldn’t be here this time, she realized, and that cold, hard fact ached in her heart.

She pushed on, veering west with the road out of the forest, through the towns, their outskirts, the villages and theirs.

And at last, at last, nearly ten hours after she’d begun, she came to the sturdy old Tudor riding its slope of snow with lights shining in the windows, smoke curling from its pair of chimneys.

After parking in front of the garage, heaving a sigh that she’d made it, she got out on her rubbery legs to drag her pair of suitcases out of the car.

The cold cut like knives sheathed in ice, and the moan of the wind crackled through the frozen trees.

But they’d blown the snow off the drive, away from the wide bricked path. At her limit, she bumped the suitcases up the pair of steps to the covered entryway and knocked.

The door opened quickly, told her they’d been waiting. In an instant it hit her, that study in shared DNA. So alike, the slim builds, the bold blue eyes, the beautiful forever bones of their faces.

An instant more enfolded her in female arms, the scent of women.

Olivia Nash took Morgan’s shoulders to hold her back and take a good study. “Worn to the nub, aren’t you?”

Her mother took her coat, scarf, hat, then stood holding them, taking her own good study. “How about some wine to go with that stew?”

But she let herself be handled, taken from the foyer, past the living room with its roaring fire, then the study that had once been her grandfather’s retreat, into what they’d remodeled into a great room with its cozy lounge, its dining area, its spacious kitchen that opened to the snowy yard and woods beyond.

All pin neat and, reflecting the two women who lived there, both practical and female.

They bustled, working in a way that told Morgan they knew how to work together, be together, live together.

Her grandmother had let her hair go gray as steel—like her spine—wore it short as a boy’s. She didn’t move, in Morgan’s estimation, like a woman who had seventy in the rearview mirror.

From the pot on the shining stove top, she ladled twice as much stew as Morgan could have eaten on her best day.

Audrey put a glass of deep red wine on the counter, ran a hand over Morgan’s hair. “We’ve got fresh sourdough bread, too. I baked it this morning.”

She cut a generous slice from a round on the cutting board.

She still wore her wheat-field-in-the-sun hair long, pulled back in a neat tail. Her hands—they’d always seemed so elegant, delicate to Morgan—nudged the butter crock over.

As her mother got more glasses—the Waterford, Morgan noted—she spooned up some stew. “It’s wonderful.” Then nibbled at the slice of bread. Surprised she could speak pure truth, she smiled. “It’s all wonderful. Thanks for letting me come.”

She lifted her glass. “And here’s to the three of us.”

With a nod, Morgan lifted her own glass, sipped.

Morgan nodded again, ate more stew. “How’s the shop?”

They hadn’t told her any of this, Morgan thought as she ate, as she listened to them talk about the details. Because they’d known she’d been mired in her own problems.

Eventually, she nudged the bowl away. “I can’t eat any more. It’s great. So’s the bread, Mom. I’m seriously impressed. I just can’t eat another bite. The drive wiped me out. If it’s okay, I’d like to go up, settle in, and get some sleep.”

They hauled the bags up to the bedroom she always used—two doors away from the master and across from her mother’s.

But when she walked in, more changes.

No more old-timey rosebud wallpaper. Instead they’d painted the walls a quiet, soothing blue that held soft against the dark trim. The floors gleamed, as always, but now a blue-and-cream rug, a subtle floral pattern, graced them.

They’d changed out the bed to a queen-size with a brass head-and footboard, covered with a white duvet, blue-and-white shams, and a throw folded at the bottom of variegated blues.

Instead of being on the walls, pink rosebuds stood in a vase on the dresser. A chair, with a little round table and reading lamp, nestled in the corner.

Olivia opened a door into an attached bath. A generous shower, a dark blue vanity with a white top veined with blue. Open shelves holding fluffy towels and the female touch of glass jars filled with bath salts, oils, cotton balls.

She narrowed her eyes at her daughter. “That doesn’t mean we’ll be tearing up the other baths anytime soon.”

Audrey just smiled. “Eventually. Can we help you unpack, baby?”

Audrey gathered her in, pressed cheek to cheek. “Good night, Morgan.” They went out, closed the door.

Needing to get it done, she unpacked first without giving much thought to what should go where. Just get it all put away, out of sight, along with the suitcases.

Because it felt as if she’d worn her clothes for a year, she stripped down, pulled pajama pants and a shirt out of the dresser where she’d just put them.

She got in the shower, let the water rain down. Warm, so warm.

She had her crying jag while the steam rose and the water struck the tiles.

She’d lost, she’d failed. She had nothing left of her own.

She wept for Nina, her beautiful friend.

She wept for the home someone else now lived in. For the jobs she’d loved, the life she’d built, and the future she’d hoped for.

Emptied out, she turned off the taps, put on her pajamas.

As she’d been taught, she hung her towel to dry before going into her nighttime routine.

Then she sat on the side of the bed, listening to the wind, the settling of the house.

A house where she lived, had this lovely, lovely room, because of the generosity of two women who loved her.

Tomorrow, she told herself as she climbed under the crisp sheets, the fluffy duvet. She’d figure it out tomorrow. Or the day after that.

Or, she thought, and turned off the light, shut her eyes.

And fell into sleep like a stone into a river.