Chapter 15
Sawyer
Dinnertime finds me fighting loneliness, hoping even for glimmers of Kennedy—tuneless wind chimes outside or doors drifting closed on their own—while my frozen lasagna spins slowly within my microwave.
I expected Morgan and me exhuming the withered jacaranda yesterday would summon signs of life after death, at least. Despite my outburst, I don’t regret the decision. Morgan and Kennedy were right. It needed to go.
Of course, I understand the contradiction here. It’s one of those ruthless equations of grief, I think. Letting go of some parts of them just makes you cling harder to others.
Suddenly, the power cuts out. It happens enough in a haunted house that I’m not startled, merely prepared to eat a half-frozen meal. I remove my lasagna, inspecting the microwave’s lack of progress mournfully. When I set it on the counter, though, I hear knocking on my back door.
I abandon my lukewarm dinner and open the door, where I find Morgan and Zach.
Morgan and Zach. The latter startles me. I’m still getting used to having two houseguests instead of one.
Zach’s mood has worsened since offering me his detective services yesterday. He stares glumly forward. I think he seems somewhat more translucent today than when we got home from yesterday’s drive out to the hardware store.
The very not-translucent Morgan has showered since her gardening today. Her hair hangs slick over one shoulder. She is fully clothed this time, however.
“I need to use your stove,” she announces. “Zach is moping and he keeps accidentally cutting the power. My hot plate cannot compete with his mood swings.”
In keeping with her habit of wandering freely into my house, Morgan steps inside past me. She’s holding packaged mac and cheese. On the counter, she spies my lasagna.
“Bringing Zach here has only killed my power, too,” I explain.
Morgan looks undaunted. “But how is your stove?” she asks.
I gesture to the oven. “Be my guest.” I guess Zach hears Be my ghost, because he rematerializes in my kitchen next to Morgan. He remains distracted, unmoved by his interference with our dinners.
Morgan clicks the knob. When the stove whooshes softly with gas, she lets out a surprised little cheer. “Zach, stay away,” she warns him as she pulls out a match and lights the burner.
Zach slouches. “I’m not trying to cut the power,” he protests. “I’m sorry that me mourning the great life I had that is now over because I’m dead is getting in the way of your mac and cheese.”
Morgan’s shoulders slump. “Ugh, Zach, I’m sorry,” she concedes. “I’m trying to help, but I’m not dead, so I do need to eat in order to, you know, stay that way.”
She reaches down into my cabinets, rummaging through cookware until she finds my largest metal pot. I watch her, intrigued despite myself, while she makes herself at home in my kitchen. She dumps her orange cheese sauce mix into the pot, and soon the room fills with the heavy scent of cheesy goo.
My stomach grumbles. “Do you…have enough for two?” I venture. Honestly, mac and cheese—and company—sound pretty great.
Morgan grins. “I got you,” she says, stirring the sauce.
“No one cares about me,” Zach declares. “I’m nothing compared to mac and cheese.”
“Buddy, what happened?” I ask him. “You were thrilled yesterday. Remember how relieved you were to learn that you had family who loved you?”
“I didn’t realize it would make this…worse,” Zach confesses. “It would be easier if I was just some dead miserable loser. But I had a great family. I had things I loved.”
I nod, not expecting how well I understand Zach’s sentiment.
Sitting down with Bill Harrison was nice, yes.
It was confusing, though, too, in ways I haven’t shared with Morgan—not that I need to.
Long before I met Kennedy, I wanted to distance myself from my parents.
Growing up, I struggled with my father’s impatience and unpredictability, my mom’s glorified indignation and weaponized fragility. I couldn’t wait to leave home.
I managed to graduate, found my way to Los Angeles, to art school. Found Kennedy. I shared her with my parents on infrequent, controlled conditions, short visits, enough to keep up the semblance of an ordinary relationship with my family.
Then Kennedy died. Foolishly, I visited home, groping for something like stability. Reassurance, even.
What I got was razor-wire smiles and claims of packed schedules.
I persisted, spending time near them if not with them, until one night I found myself having dinner with my mom while my dad worked late, still his custom despite being in his sixties.
I ventured to explain how I was feeling, how I was struggling to reshape my life.
Cheer up, my mother exhorted me. Did you drive up here just to mope?
I knew my mom wasn’t cruel. She wasn’t oblivious. She was just…emotionally limited. She couldn’t manage my pain except to flippantly, dismissively distance herself from it. To mope. The word she used for my grief.
I left the next day politely but with certainty. I didn’t need them.
I remember feeling relief hiding in my misery. Kennedy’s death and their response was the final, irrefutable push I needed to reject the shitty parental hand I was dealt. Out of sight, out of mind, out of my life.
Zach has no such luck. He lost people worth holding on to. His frustration hides sadness, the cheated hurt of one robbed of his entire life.
“Now I just have watching you make mac and cheese while I accidentally kill the power,” he says.
On cue, the kitchen lights dim. The room grows darker.
Having dealt with the electrical manifestations of unhappy ghosts, I reach into the drawer where I keep my candles. “It’s unfair,” I say. “I understand. I would be unhappy, too.”
Zach nods. He seems grateful. Some of the lights flicker on.
Morgan notices. She gasps indignantly, twisting to face us at the stove. “I totally gave you sympathy,” she chastens Zach, “and I didn’t get any electricity!”
While she unceremoniously dumps the macaroni into the cheesy pot, I shrug. “Guess he likes me better.”
Zach nearly smiles. The lights hum louder. “It is nice to be able to talk to someone else,” Zach says.
“Dude, I’m right here,” Morgan complains.
I feel the sudden responsibility to keep the peace before Zach escalates drastically by exploding our cheese sauce. “Morgan doesn’t seem like that bad of company,” I say.
She pauses in her stirring to meet my eyes. Something unfamiliar lights them. Like sunlight past garden vines.
“She snores loud enough to wake the dead,” Zach comments. “Literally.”
Morgan spins, aghast, with enough momentum to fling cheese on the wall. “That is not true!”
I can’t help myself. I laugh. So does Zach. The light bulb overhead surges and then shines steadily.
“She does listen to music way too loud,” I concede. “I mean, it’s not college.” Morgan won’t mind if I partake in some supernatural reassurance via making fun of her. Probably.
“Yeah, and it’s, like, only 2000s millennial iPod rock,” Zach corroborates. “Have you not listened to new music since middle school?”
The lights stay on, the power holding strong. Morgan shakes her head.
“Oh, I see,” she says. “Teasing me is the only way to liven you up. I expected it from Zach, but for you to partake of it so gleefully—”
She points to me with her cheesy spoon.
“I’m surprised,” she chastens.
“Hey, when you’re dealing with the paranormal, you have to play by their rules,” I reply.
Morgan shakes her head, offering no concession to my defense.
“One thing that’s been bothering me, though,” Zach says. “If just getting to know me better let you see me, then why couldn’t my dad see me?”
The light bulb dims momentarily, fading with Zach’s sadness.
Morgan pauses her stirring.
I say nothing. It’s a good question.
While our dinner bubbles, Morgan leans back on the counter, considering. “You’re obviously haunting me for some mysterious reason, and it’s not like I really knew you,” she says. “Maybe it’s not just that Sawyer got to know you. Maybe it’s—” She stops herself. Pink invades her cheeks.
Zach, caught up in his malaise, doesn’t notice.
I do. “It’s what?” I prompt.
Morgan returns to stirring. “Maybe it…has to do with me and Sawyer. I got to know him better because he opened up to get your dad to trust us. And he also got to know you,” she says.
I study her, surprise settling over me. She’s right. I did open up. I spoke of the pain and fear and longing I haven’t shared with anyone in years.
Morgan heard me. Not just in service of Zach.
She listened to what I had to say, and now this stranger I met in ghost support group understands me like few people in my post-Kennedy existence do.
We only entered each other’s lives last week—now, like I’ve started to know Zach, Morgan has started to know me.
Honestly, I…don’t know how it makes me feel.
I’ve gotten used to the walls of stone I use to conceal my emotions, my haunting, my functional-dysfunctional life. Don’t all lonely people want someone like Morgan—vivacious, funny, optimistic—to penetrate those walls? It’s how these stories go.
But those happy endings presume I want to change, even deep down, even subconsciously. I don’t know if I do. It’s comfortable in my haunted fortress of solitude. In fact, it’s the only comfort I’ve found since life ripped my greatest love, my greatest hope, out of my grasp.
Morgan has dislodged the quiet complacency I’ve found, just as she uprooted my yard’s somber monument to Kennedy. In Morgan’s persistent company, I not only feel seen. I feel…vulnerable.
I muster the best smile I can manage, wan and noncommittal. If Morgan notices my hesitation, she doesn’t react or comment.
“So, you’re saying…the three of us have a special connection,” Zach summarizes proudly.
His enthusiasm pulls me from my rumination. Honestly, Morgan could have done worse for supernatural company. Zach’s a genuinely cool ghost.
“Looks like,” I reply, grateful for the change of topic.