Jack
By the time the sun went down, we’d made significant progress on the list. Or rather,Ihad – Morgan had spent most of the day holding a hairdryer to the various forms of vinyl she and Cara had installed in the kitchen. Between that and the August heat, it got to be almost unbearable inside, so we opened all the windows and got all three of the fans Morgan owned circulating fresh air. I taught her a bit about air circulation and how to design for it, and she suggested that might have been more helpful in the early twentieth century when the house had been built, which was fair enough.
The only helpful feature it did have was a cellar. I imagined most of the houses on the row had finished them over the years, but Morgan’s was still dingy and dirt-floored, which I discovered when carrying the boxes and boxes of books down for storage.
I’d made quick work of the door once I was back, but the back garden had taken some time, and I’d ended up making another trip out to the garden centre to get some mulch. There were too many tiny weeds, and I made the executive decision that it shouldn’t be Morgan’s problem, so I did a little cover-up job around the border. The stuff coming up between the stones was dealt with easily by my power washer. Part of me hated getting rid of the plants that had persevered enough to reclaim the space, but it was paved over anyway, so I decided to just be glad we weren’t having to touch the front garden. As I worked, I told Morgan about the treasure trove of native species she had out there, and she seemed genuinely interested, which made me feel like less of a nerd for knowing the difference between the various types of clover native to the area.
And finally, just as my stomach grumbled in protest of the fact that it was 8pm and I hadn’t eaten anything but a meal deal from the services, Morgan scraped away the last of the vinyl covering the worktop.
“That took fucking forever,” she groaned from the stool she was perched on, hunched over the worktop. “I’m sorry I’m so slow.”
I resisted the urge to rub my hand over her back, which I imagined was sore from hours of repetitive activity; to tell her that I wanted to be here. That I was hoping there was more for me to do. That as long as she needed help, I was her guy.
“Hey, better that than damage the worktop,” I said instead.
“True that,” she said, punctuating her words with a wave of the hairdryer. “In which case, I vote we order some pizza.”
“Seconded!” I said, waving my scraper in response.
We ordered from the nice local pizza place instead of the cheaper chain; Morgan insisted that it barely covered the petrol I’d expended, let alone the labour. I mentioned that, in that case, she probably owed me a beer, too, and she pulled two six-packs of my favourite IPA from the fridge. It seemed she’d been paying attention.
Morgan didn’t have a dining table, so we put the pizza box and beer on the coffee table and sat on the floor. We were both a full beer down by the time we started eating, so we got very chatty very quickly, and she asked me about what it was like growing up with Chloe and Phil. I told her about the time Chloe and I had broken into Phil’s house to try to decorate for his fourteenth birthday, only he had somehow figured out we were coming, and Ethel had pretended to be unconscious on the ground.
“We genuinely thought she was dead,” I said through laughter. Morgan was giggling, too, as if she were remembering it right along with me. “I mean, now I know that she wasn’tthatold at the time. But back then, she felt ancient to us.”
“I wish I had stories like that,” she said. “I never really had friends that close growing up.”
“No one?” I asked. “Not even from school?”
She shook her head, her smile dropping slightly. “No. I mean, I had friends; I wasn’t a total loner. But I don’t think I was anyone’s best friend. Not until Cara, anyway.”
“How did you meet?”
She sighed wistfully. “A random housing ad, actually. She was a bit of a spoiled posh girl; she’d be the first to tell you that. So her parents didn’t want her slumming it in the halls. That’s why they bought this place.”
“What a life, eh?” I asked. “Must be nice to have parents who will just buy you a place if you need it.”
“Says the guy that lives on his family’s land and works for the family business?”
I barked out a laugh. “Fair enough.”
She chuckled, too. “Well, it worked out well for me, because I didn’t really fancy the halls either. And this place was cheaper.”
“Cheaper than the uni accommodation?” I asked, incredulous.
“Cara’s parents didn’t actually know she was letting out the extra bedroom,” she said. “She was just doing it so she had someone to live with. So it was dirt cheap. Mum had saved a bit for uni, but not enough for somewhere to live, and I wanted to keep my loans to a minimum.”
Morgan’s mum wasn’t exactly a loaded subject, but it also wasn’t her favourite one. But unexpectedly I sensed warmth in her voice when she mentioned her now, so I took my chance to dig a bit deeper.
“Do you miss her?”
“Mum?” Morgan asked, then, when I nodded, “Yeah, sometimes. It really sucked when she left. She gave me a whole speech about how life had passed her by, but given how close we were when I was growing up, it kind of felt like she was saying thatIhadn’t been enough. Which was bullshit, considering how much trouble she went through to have me.”
Her lower lip wobbled slightly on that last part, and it was everything I could do not to catch it with my own and try to make her forget that anyone had ever made her feel like she wasn’t enough. But instead I settled for the only thing anyone could say in that situation; words that are never enough.
“I’m so sorry, Morgan.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Now I get postcards every month or so. Last year I got one from a nudist colony in the Pacific Northwest, so I get to have those nightmares every now and then. Thanks, Mum.”
