Chapter 8
Morgan
I sleep fitfully. Whenever I move somewhere new, I keep hoping the first night will get easier. It never does.
Tonight is exceptionally hard, though. Sawyer’s studio is comfortable, thanks to his impressive cleaning efforts. His neighborhood is quieter than West Hollywood. I just can’t get over the fact my new living space is now double-haunted.
I can’t see Kennedy, like Sawyer can’t see Zach, and she doesn’t make her presence known. No rattling doorknobs or floating furniture startle me during the night. Still, I spend every moment wondering whether I’m hearing spooky creaks or garden-variety creaks from the old guesthouse.
I would pull up my favorite dating reality show on Netflix, except I forgot to get the Wi-Fi password from Sawyer. I consider guessing passwords like hauntedandhappy or something, except I don’t want to piss off the home’s incorporeal occupant with my irreverent efforts.
When sunrise comes, my phone glowing 5:57 from the nightstand, I’ve had enough. I’m ready to chase the shadows away. Exhausted, jittery, and wishing I’d packed melatonin in the suitcase Sawyer found ridiculously light, I haul myself out from under the covers.
Ghost-related insomnia has left me with hours until I need to go work. Wanting to shake off my discomfort, I pull on shorts. I need distraction, and I know exactly where to start.
Outside, the morning calm relaxes me. The fog descending over Silver Lake will vanish when the sun heats the hillside in the early morning, but for now, the mist cools my shoulders while I unwind—
The guesthouse door slams behind me.
The sharp sound startles me, only for me to remember I’d left the door open when I stepped outside. Gravity, not ghosts, had swung the door closed.
Embarrassed, I let out my breath. I’m glad Zach couldn’t see that. He would have laughed. I would have said Not cool, man. He would have frozen the water bottle on my nightstand solid in response. How’s this for cool?
Pretending the incident never happened, I continue through the fog to Sawyer’s front yard, where I do damage control.
Like yesterday, the job overwhelms me. It’s…
so much. The size and scale are instantly intimidating.
I’m experienced in the garden, which got me my present job.
When I was growing up, gardening was something I could do with my dad on weekend mornings no matter where his work deposited us.
We shaped begonias in Baton Rouge, tended roses in Richmond, watered hydrangeas in Hartford.
It’s why I know just exactly how unmanageable Sawyer’s murder yard—must stop calling it this while I’m here—is.
The middle of the mess is what worries me. When I’ve sunk weeks into it and have weeks left to go. When Sawyer starts to depend on me.
The idea makes me shudder like no ghost ever has.
I can already imagine what kind of fucked-up self-fulfilling prophecy I’ll have locked myself into.
I’ll fear running out on Sawyer and his garden, disappointing him, and then the fear will make me want to leave.
To get it over with—the failure I know is coming.
I’ll yearn for escape, for a fresh start on something else, somewhere else.
Somewhere I’m not in deep enough to ruin everything.
Like I did with Michael Hanover-Erickson.
Like I will here, the voices in my head whisper.
No, damn it. I may have something to lose if I commit to Sawyer’s garden—what remains of my wounded self-respect—but I have more to lose if I don’t.
I remind myself of Zach spraying soy sauce everywhere in Street Noodle.
If he lingers for five years, or forever…
I need this chance to be free of my ghostly visitor.
Besides, I feel bad for Sawyer and his pained reminiscences. His desperation to make Kennedy content on the other side. I do want to help him. He hasn’t been able to move on from Kennedy. He hasn’t even been able to make her urn. It’s like he’s petrified in loss.
If I left here, how many more years would it take for Sawyer himself to wither like the weeds in his yard?
Determined, I venture forward, where I start on the dead shrubs. So, so many dead shrubs. I grasp them where they meet the ground, rip them from the soil, and pile them near where I’m working. It’s not like it matters if my mound looks ugly or disorganized.
Soon, I hit my stride. It’s cathartic, pulling up dead things that shouldn’t be there anymore.
The physical labor helps me shake off the night spent overanalyzing.
I find an abandoned and obviously unused shovel on the side of the house and get to work on some of the bigger desiccated bushes.
I move from patch to patch, working evenly, welcoming the soreness in my muscles.
Before I know it, hours have passed. The neighborhood starts to wake up. I stand, sweating, my shoulders aching, dirt coating my fingers. I feel good, though. Comfortable, even.
I pull out some of the shaggier bushes. With my confidence and determination growing, I set to the hardest obstacle I can find, the gnarled dead tree in one corner of Sawyer’s yard.
It’s formidably sized but unquestionably worse for wear.
Years of proximity to Sawyer’s street have coated the dry bark with grime.
It has to go. I drive my shovel under the roots in the fresh soil my morning efforts have upturned, jostling the metal spade to loosen the trunk where I can. If I keep going—
My heart seizes when I notice a figure watching me from the window. I’m thinking Haunting of Hill House until I realize it’s only Sawyer.
He…doesn’t look happy.
I wave, confused. What the hell, man? I’ve just spent hours working my ass off on the job I’m doing for him pretty much for free.
Sawyer doesn’t return the greeting. He only grimaces. He disappears from the windowsill.
Then, startling me, he storms outside. “What are you doing?” he demands. The sadness in his eyes hasn’t changed, but restless urgency has joined it. His gaze sweeps over his desolate yard, like he finds everything somehow damningly familiar and frighteningly unknown.
Still, hours of pro bono yard work have me not feeling super charitable for his chastisement. “Um, the job you wanted me to do?” I say. “I have to clear the dead plants out to landscape.”
“Not that one.” Sawyer’s reply is instantaneous. He’s fixated on the decrepit tree. “Can’t you”—frustration grasps in his voice—“nurse it back to health, or whatever?”
“I think that would require a necromancer,” I say. “Not a gardener.”
Sawyer scowls. He squints in the morning sun, focused on the tree.
Leaning on my shovel, I wait. I hold in my annoyance, realizing what’s probably happening here. This tree is somehow a Kennedy thing.
Of course, I didn’t move into a stranger’s haunted house without googling him.
I spent last night reconstructing Sawyer’s shattered life out of search engine results and social media.
His website for his pottery showed off the impressionistic, intriguing workmanship of a versatile creator.
Except in the details—the site’s copyright date, five years ago, which is when the photo gallery of commissioned pieces stops.
When Kennedy’s life ended, so did Sawyer’s creative one.
His name led readily to obituaries for Kennedy Claire Raymond. Social media pages for Sawyer’s late fiancée, now maintained in memoriam and full of commented condolences, revealed the woman who once shared this garden. Who still does, in her way. Or so says Sawyer.
Kennedy was what I expected. Vibrant, joyous, creative. Every photo she posted was magazine quality. Her and Sawyer on Joshua Tree getaways, her proud renovation handiwork combining antique flourishes with modern design, even just the Silver Lake sunset framed in the foliage I’m now clearing out.
A perfect pairing for Sawyer, in other words. They made a lovely couple, until Kennedy passed away. From natural causes—needless to say, I checked this detail carefully.
The more time I spend in Sawyer’s company, the easier it is to feel him searching the world in frustration for wholeness he can no longer find. Sympathy dulls my defensiveness. I set my shovel down. “We can return to this one later,” I concede.
To my surprise, Sawyer only glares harder. “Don’t pity me,” he snaps.
I narrow my eyes. “Okay…” I say. “Then don’t ask me to save the deadest tree in all of Los Angeles.”
Sawyer grumbles. “Landscape around it,” he insists. “Make it look intentional.”
“No.”
He frowns. Despite myself, I wince. Whatever this tree’s connection to Kennedy, I know it has to come out.
“Sorry,” I go on. “Just…you told me not to pity you.”
“And I meant it,” he says.
He’s not convinced; I hear it in his voice. Every word—or every day or every living moment—is ripping him slowly in half. “Are you sure?” I venture. “Because you seem…”
“I’m fine.” The same instant insistence. His determination is unflinching, like the sun coming up over the hill, shining in our eyes.
“It’s just—”
“Morgan,” he interrupts. “No pity.”
I meet Sawyer’s hardened gaze. The moment stretches in silence.
“Good,” I finally say, satisfied with Sawyer’s resolve.
Maybe he wasn’t pulling himself in half—maybe he was fighting a necessary fight, and the stronger part of him won.
“Well, then this tree is going to have to go,” I announce.
“It doesn’t have to be now. You can say your goodbyes.
But it’s dead and not great for the other plants.
And it doesn’t align with the artistic vision of anyone living. ”
Sawyer is starting to reply when an unseasonably chilly wind rolls over the morning hillside. The punctuating gust shakes loose twigs from the dead tree.
When my eyes catch the form they’ve fallen into in the fresh dirt, I shiver. It’s no jumble or cryptic pattern. The dislodged sticks spell words.
EXHUME ME
It’s very creepy, obviously. However, it’s also serving my creative choices.
“See?” I point out the words to Sawyer. “It clearly doesn’t align with the dead’s artistic vision, either. Cheeky word choice.”
Sawyer does look amused. His gaze darts over the garden, his fragile demeanor returning. “Is Zach nearby?” he asks.
“Don’t think so,” I say honestly. “Plus, I mean, ‘exhume’? I’m pretty sure Zach’s spelling isn’t that good.” When Sawyer only grunts one of his usual hmms, I know I’m making real progress. “I think Kennedy is on my side,” I dare to say. “She wants the dead tree gone.”
I’m hoping the mention of Kennedy cleanses Sawyer of his grumpy resistance. If he doesn’t want to listen to the random woman he invited into his guesthouse, fine. Maybe he’ll listen to supernatural signals from his dead fiancée.
Instead, the suggestion only worsens Sawyer’s mood. That frustrated fog descends over his eyes. “Let me do it at least,” he demands. “Later. I don’t have it in me right now.”
Without waiting for my reply, he stalks off, leaving me with the haunted sticks. Kennedy’s message.
“Thanks, girl,” I whisper to the wind.
Checking my phone, I realize I should start getting ready for work. Despite Sawyer’s unhelpful interruption, I’ve made progress on the ghostly gardening.
When I return to the studio, I run the shower in the unit’s small bathroom while my breathing evens out from the exertion.
I strip off my clothes and step under the water.
I have enough problems without my haunting, honestly.
Shitty sleep in my temporary living space.
Overwhelming gardening goals. Now my judgmental new landlord-slash-neighbor-slash-fellow-hauntee, who seems determined to slow down the job he wants—
Mid-shampoo, I scream when my water suddenly goes ice-cold.