Epilogue - Morgan
The following morning, after Mabel had come to pick up Mister Rocket and all, all of his things, the paper scanner, at last, arrived. As had, oddly, several crates of nails and screws and bolts in dozens of little plastic packets packed in half-crumpled, grease-stained cardboard boxes.
Which meant that while Morgan started scanning the stacks and stacks of elderly but might-be-useful-and-or-important-one-day papers, Jack could currently be heard in the store ripping open boxes and packets, and hand-sorting the nails and screws and bolts into their appropriate yellow bins.
Just another day at the feed and grain, with both of them doing their best to keep up with the ragged-edged and just about nonexistent paper trail that Aunt Oralee had left behind, because no matter how hard Morgan searched and organized, no matter how many folders he flipped through, he could find no record of that particular order.
Screws, bolts, and nails? Yes, sure. Useful. Ordered without leaving behind so much as a note? Okay. Par for the course. But why so many?
She must have had a reason. She must have kept spreadsheets in her head to keep track of it all and, while Morgan could admire that skill, it was better to write everything down in an orderly fashion so other people, like himself, could make sense of it.
Also, the algorithm on his phone had seen that he’d been researching industrial windows, so when he glanced at it, his text message window was full of ads for windows.
He erased them because he already knew that to replace the windows on the first floor of the feed and grain, including the picture window at the front, it would cost around one hundred and fifty dollars per square foot of glass.
Add in replacing the upstairs windows, and the cost shot up into thousands, many thousands, of dollars.
The project was important because it would keep them both from freezing next winter, and was doable because there was just enough money from Aunt Oralee’s estate to provide a hefty down payment. Yellowstone Valley Credit Union would provide a loan for the rest, hopefully.
But Morgan had another idea. Something more important than windows.
He turned on the scanner and began to feed papers into it—much easier to do without a dog in his lap—saving each scan to the appropriate folder in the cloud and on his new external hard drive.
The repetitive actions gave him time to think.
About who to call to help him out. About how to keep Jack from finding out, because Jack was very good at reading every one of Morgan’s tells.
When he heard Jack clomping up the stairs to make coffee, Morgan hastily called Gus Odell.
“‘Lo?” Gus asked.
“Hey, Gus,” Morgan said, gripping the phone tight because asking for help still felt new to him. “It’s Morgan. I need a favor and don’t know where to start. Can you help me?”
“Start at the beginning, son,” Gus said. “Did you get the plans I sent for the Grange?”
“Sure did, Gus,” Morgan said. “I’m hoping for a late-summer build. But here’s the thing.” He lowered his voice, even cupped his hand over his mouth as he described what he wanted to purchase. How fast he wanted it.
“Instead of new windows?” Gus asked. “Surely you want to put those in sooner rather than later.”
Gus knew how many windows were currently covered over with plywood, and Morgan could just about see his eyebrows rising.
“This is more important,” Morgan said. “We’ll manage for the rest of the winter. I can reach out to the credit union about a full-out loan, instead of a partial one. Maybe I’ll ask them to bundle a loan for the windows with a loan for wood to build the Grange. In the fall.”
“I’ll talk to Joe at the credit union,” Gus said. “We go way back.”
Morgan took a long, slow breath. This was another layer of the connection between people in Hysham and the community surrounding it. One hand washed the other. Something Jack had known from just about the second he’d arrived in town. And now Morgan was a part of that.
“Thank you, Gus,” Morgan said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Tarp,” Gus said. “I need some. One of my ranch hands doesn’t know how to tie good sturdy knots and now, courtesy of that and the high winds we got a few days back, seven hundred and twenty square feet of durable canvas tarp has made its way to North Dakota.”
“I’ll order it for you,” Morgan said, scribbling down the information on the nearest scrap of paper, which, probably, was how Aunt Oralee had done it. Which had, very definitely, led to the current mess Morgan was still cleaning up.
“Any special color?” Gus asked, drawing Morgan back to the current project. The most important one.
“Shiny,” Morgan said. “Bright. Red or green or blue. Looking like new, that’s the key thing. I know the slightly older ones have more—I don’t know—heft to them. One of those. That’s what I’m thinking.”
“You want all the trimmings?” Gus asked.
“Ones that make sense in Montana,” Morgan said. “You’d know more about that than I would.” He paused. “I’d rather not wait till Christmas. He needs it now.”
“Let me find one for you,” Gus said, and Morgan thought he could hear the distinct pleasure in Gus’ voice that he’d been asked. “Can you pay cash?”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “Around twenty?” Twenty thousand, he meant. It was a lot of money, but it was only money.
“This instead of windows.”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “It’s for Jack. That was the most important thing.
“Consider it done,” Gus said. “Give me a day or so and I’ll call you back.”
They ended the call, and Morgan returned to scanning, and pretty soon, Jack appeared in the doorway, grabbing each side of the doorjamb and leaning in.
His smile was bright and his eyes glittered with pleasure, and Morgan left his task, unfolded himself from the chair, and went up to Jack to kiss him.
“We’re just about out of milk,” Jack said, kissing him back. “And the next storm is due in two days, so I’m going to need that list to go to the store with.”
“It’s on the desk,” Morgan said, melting as Jack nuzzled his neck and pulled their bodies closer together. Jack could go through any pile he wanted, rifle through any drawer. Morgan had written nothing down, so there’d be nothing for Jack to find. No clues. No information.
But Jack pulled back, forehead furrowed, because he was sharp and those bright eyes of his missed nothing.
“What’s going on?” he asked, cupping Morgan’s face.
“Well,” Morgan said. “I’m thinking of combining a loan for the Grange with a loan for the windows. That way, it’s just one payment. One tax write-off. Improvements to property, that sort of thing.”
“Boring.” Jack kissed Morgan’s nose. “I’m making mac and cheese for lunch, and I’ll bring your coffee down in a sec.”
“I’ll come up,” Morgan said. “It’ll give me a break from the scanner.”
Before his self-care revolution, he’d needed Jack to bring his coffee to him.
Jack hadn’t minded doing it, which was fine, but now they could sit together at the wooden table and and talk over cups of coffee and whatever baked good Mabel had provided, or delicious raspberry filled frozen donuts, which came from Donut King in Billings, or store-bought gingersnaps, which Jack had an odd fondness for.
The sitting together part, in that warm yellow-and-white kitchen, was domesticity of the highest order. Had anyone told Morgan six months earlier that this would be a source of happiness, he would have called them a liar.
It was at this table, over cups of coffee and gingersnaps, that Morgan, that very morning, found out that Jack wanted to be married at a place outside of Butte called St. Timothy’s Memorial Chapel. That he wanted a winter wedding.
“Do you mean a Christmas wedding?” Morgan asked, thinking of the fierce storms and the distance.
“The chapel’s already booked for that date,” Jack said. He sipped his coffee and looked up at Morgan through his dark eyelashes.
He was flirting, though he didn’t need to do that. If Jack wanted a church wedding in wintertime, then that’s what he would have.
“When, then?” Morgan asked. Maybe the credit union could give him an equity loan on the feed and grain so they could pay for the wedding. Whatever it took. Whatever Jack wanted.
“Thanksgiving, maybe,” Jack said. “Or the week after. Mabel says she knows a gal who used to be a clerk in their office. She can help us book everything.”
“She knows a gal?” Morgan asked. Just how far did connections in Montana reach?
“I figure we could go up there, you and I,” Jack said. “Bring two witnesses with us. We can have an overnight honeymoon at some hotel in the area, then come back here and have a little party here. Rather than drag everyone up there.”
“Everyone meaning the whole town,” Morgan said. It was not a question because it was obvious from Jack’s sweet smile that yes, Jack meant to invite the entire town to their wedding reception.
In his other life, before the accident, before he’d arrived in Hysham, he would not have thought any of this possible. That a green-eyed, wild-haired train-hopping boy would be sitting kitty-corner from him, making such romantic suggestions that Morgan’s heart just about couldn't take it.
“Anything you want,” Morgan said. “I mean it. Whatever you want.”
“I’m not planning all this myself,” Jack said. “You have to have some preferences, too.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about how to plan a wedding.” Morgan sipped his coffee and wondered if they could afford a wedding planner. Probably not, since all of their cash was about to be spent on Jack’s surprise.
“These are Mabel’s ideas,” Jack confessed. “I think she and her bridge-playing friends would be happy to take care of it. All you have to do is pick the hotel near the church.”
Unsaid, of course, was the idea that Morgan had already picked a hotel in Santa Monica for Jack, back when they both expected that Jack would leave town. That wasn’t going to happen, not anymore, not ever.