Chapter 27
Morgan
Zach’s unfinished business can’t be simply moving his car. If it were, wouldn’t he haunt someone with a tow truck? Or maybe even a friendly car thief?
No. It has to be more than that. The car is a clue.
We peer into the dark and dusty windows of the van.
Maybe the glove box contains a letter to a loved one he needs to deliver, or a key to a safety deposit box is stored in the armrest, or hidden under the seat, his laptop holds an unfinished novel no one ever read.
Something, anything, worthy of Zach’s purgatory.
It’s impossible to make out much through the windows, though. There are some papers that look like receipts on the passenger seat and a sweatshirt balled up on the floor. In the expansive back, we can make out several large unusual shapes, but they’re covered with a Mexican blanket.
Zach even drifts through the van’s doors to get a better look, but being unable to lift or move anything, he doesn’t discover more.
Ten useless minutes later, we postpone our efforts. If we don’t want to risk having to explain to Ari why we’re breaking into her deceased brother’s car, we’re going to need to find the keys.
We resolve to do just that. For the next week, we search everywhere.
Sawyer and I divide up Zach’s frequent haunts—living, that is.
Sawyer returns to the hardware store to scour the back room.
I talk my way into Zach’s lifeguard tower.
I was prepared to fake a jellyfish sting in order to be taken inside for first aid, but it turned out all I had to do was imply I was Zach’s girlfriend, and his coworkers were more than happy to show me around.
While we don’t turn up the keys, we do manage to uncover more leads—the coffee shop the lifeguards all go to before their shifts, the gym across the street from Zach’s former apartment, the surf shop he worked in when he wanted some extra hours.
I drive from Palms down the coast to Hermosa Beach, from Brentwood to Koreatown.
It’s a scavenger hunt of Zach’s life scattered across all of Los Angeles, a city that, I’m realizing, has a little bit of everything.
It’s fun, if unsuccessful. I haven’t explored much of LA’s sprawl beyond my own neighborhood since moving here.
Zach explained when we were stuck in traffic on “the 10”—this nomenclature for freeways, instead of “I-10,” is mysteriously very important to locals—that he must have really liked my profile to drive out from his place in Playa Vista to West Hollywood for our date.
I laugh, even if I don’t share his frustration with the traffic. I’ve always liked driving, and it’s sort of amazing to see how these highways, these veins, course and splinter through the city.
Eventually, we find Zach’s apartment listed on rental websites, courtesy of one of the lifeguards with whom Zach carpooled—in the vexing van, no less. The small studio has already been cleared out and is being shown to potential renters.
Sawyer and I decide to investigate together. If the property manager is on the premises, one of us will need to distract him while the other snoops.
I plan to meet Sawyer outside the Playa Vista complex one evening when I get off work.
Zach won’t be joining us. Whenever I pulled up the pictures online, he would get melancholy and spooky.
He informed me he wouldn’t manifest until I got home and put on the Hunters of the Deep documentary he found on streaming.
I understood. No matter how many times I’ve moved, looking back one last time on the empty view of where I no longer live is depressing—and that’s without the dying part.
Unfortunately, Zach’s absence means I have no help parallel parking on the street where he used to live. I somewhat successfully wedge myself in, managing not to scrape my fender, sorely missing my supernatural companion.
Sawyer waits outside the complex’s front steps, framed in the sun setting over the concrete. The sky surrounds him in dazzling gold.
He’s not scrolling his phone or lost in thought. He simply stares out into the sunset, until he notices my approach. “Hey,” he greets me. “Hope traffic wasn’t too bad.”
“Not terrible. Only forty minutes,” I reply.
“Spoken like a true Angeleno,” he comments.
I smile lightly, not hating the unexpected compliment.
I never stay in the cities where I live long enough to feel like a native, long enough to say “the 10” or discover date spots more original than repetitions of rock climbing.
Instead, I’ve acted more like Zach or Kennedy, with one foot in my next life.
I wonder how long I’ll stay here.
The question makes me a little sad. I hide the feeling, following Sawyer up the chipped slate inlaid steps to Zach Harrison’s old apartment.
Sawyer holds the door open for me, and we walk into the lobby.
“We’re here to see 409,” he says to the woman behind the glass in the small property manager’s office, who is perusing Us Weekly.
“It’s open,” she replies with the droning disinterest of someone who’s repeated this exact conversation more often than she’d like. “Just let me know if you want to fill out an application when you leave.”
She waves us toward the elevators.
“I guess I didn’t need to drag you out here after work,” Sawyer concedes when the elevator doors open for us.
I step in next to him. “I don’t mind,” I say honestly as the doors slide shut.
The compartment isn’t spacious. I find myself standing close to him as the elevator rises.
Its uninterrupted ascent half surprises me—we make it the whole way up to the fourth floor with no flickering lights, worrisome lurches, or unexplained stops.
I laugh quietly, and Sawyer responds inquisitively with a raised eyebrow.
“I think this is the first time we’ve actually been alone together,” I explain. “No ghosts.”
In the echo of my words, his eyes catch mine. His gaze lingers.
Only the elevator door opening interrupts us. I step first into the silent hallway.
“Clearly, this is our chance to talk about Zach behind his back,” Sawyer says, following me out.
His easy humor surprises me. I laugh, enjoying how the sound rings out in the empty hall. Sawyer is…different right now, in ways hard to put into words. Relaxed. Slyly charming. Outside his haunted home, with no specters hanging over him, he’s just himself.
It’s nice. I wonder if he knows.
“You’re right,” I say, playing along. “Hmm. Only problem is—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—I sort of like Zach, honestly.”
Sawyer grins. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”
We reach 409, where the unlocked door opens easily. I fight discouragement when we see what’s inside. It’s empty—in every sense. Clean, unfurnished. Exorcised of personality or life. The place feels like…nothing. No scrap of Zach remains.
Of course not, I know. It’s not his home anymore. A haunted house in Silver Lake is.
Still, we owe him every effort to find his keys.
“Looks like everything was professionally cleaned,” Sawyer ventures when we walk in and close the front door.
He’s practiced in hiding dismay under his withdrawn emotionlessness.
I get the feeling it’s what he’s doing now.
“The odds of finding keys here are…low,” he adds in the murmur I remember from our first support-group meeting.
I’m not convinced. “If the cleaning crew had found keys, surely they would’ve told someone,” I say. “We should check the places that are hard to reach. Under the fridge, behind the stove.”
Sawyer doesn’t debate me. He continues down the short hallway, which opens up after a couple feet into the studio.
It’s small but recently updated, with modern lighting over the clean countertops.
The view from the main window would let in welcome sunlight in the daytime, even glimpses of the ocean.
“He probably could have checked the swells from his bed in the morning,” I can’t help noting.
Sawyer smiles sadly. While I’m not sorry we’re here, the reminder hurts—that Zach was his own whole person. I felt the same when Kennedy visited me the other night.
“If things had worked out with him, would you have moved in here?” Sawyer asks.
I snort. “God, no. I mean, this place is nice. No disrespect for the dead. No offense to Zach, either. I just haven’t had the urge to cohabitate with a man since…” I swallow, realizing I’ve strayed onto a subject I didn’t mean to dig up. “Well,” I say with weak finality.
Sawyer kneels down next to the stove.
“Your fiancé,” he says in his low, measured way.
I nod. Shining my phone flashlight, I peer under the fridge. While it’s definitely dusty, my search yields no Volkswagen keys. I straighten, forcing myself to concentrate, but Sawyer’s nonchalant reference has my mind stuck on Michael Hanover-Erickson.
“I really screwed him over when I left,” I can’t help commenting.
The sudden force of Sawyer’s reply startles me. “You didn’t screw him over, Morgan,” he says firmly. “You know it wasn’t my plan to live in a half-finished house alone. It’s not Kennedy’s fault, though.”
I peer behind the fridge so Sawyer doesn’t see my frown.
It’s just, well-meaning or not, his reply is the kind of naivete it’s not easy to take to heart.
“Kennedy died,” I say. “I bailed. It’s different.
” I move to the kitchen cupboards, opening them to rummage on the high shelves.
“It’s easier if I just keep my life unattached and uninvolved,” I insist. “Then I can pick up and leave whenever I get cold feet, and no one gets hurt.”
Sawyer has started pulling the oven out from the wall. He pauses with my explanation. “Except you,” he replies.
I stop short.
Slowly, I close the cupboard. I’ve never…
In years of deliberate noncommitment, of resenting my shitty decision-making, of feeling guilty for the people I disappointed, I’ve never considered myself the victim of my choices.
No, the wretched honor goes to Michael, my parents, his parents. The people I let down.
But…I did get hurt, didn’t I?
Except you.
Yeah, well, whatever. Fuck my hurt. “I deserve it,” I remind Sawyer, repeating the words I’ve rehearsed on so many sleepless nights in different cities, holding on to my reasons for running from my destructive patterns.
Sawyer just shakes his head, impossibly calm while he reaches past the oven. “You can’t think like that,” he says.
“Like what?”
Finding nothing, Sawyer uses his shoulder to force the oven back into its proper position.
“We don’t deserve the sad things that happen to us.
Zach and Kennedy didn’t deserve to die. I didn’t deserve to lose her.
Believe me, I went through years where I was sure I did, where I was convinced her death was somehow cosmically my fault. ”
He faces me. His eyes lock onto mine.
“It wasn’t, though,” he says with sureness I sorely wish I felt. “And you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” He paces to the window. “I know you feel guilty for your parents’ finances or disappointing your fiancé or whatever it is you punish yourself for,” he says quietly. “You shouldn’t.”
His reassurance makes me want to scoff. “I made such a mess,” I say to him instead. “Of everything.” I feel like I’m pleading with him. Like if I can get him to understand why I need to be this way, I’ll know I was right to spend my nights lonely and my days restless.
But Sawyer won’t let me.
“You needed help, Morgan,” he says. “You needed people to care for you when you were struggling or when you made mistakes. That doesn’t mean you forfeit your right to commitment or connection.
Or I hope it doesn’t.” He gazes out, illuminated in sunset.
“You deserve to be happy, Morgan. You deserve real, great love. You don’t lose the right to happiness just because you need help. ”
I face away from him, not ready for him to see the tears in my eyes. “Thanks, Sawyer,” I whisper.
“People aren’t just the sum of their mistakes. If you woke up tomorrow and said you couldn’t finish the yard, I want you to know I wouldn’t be upset. You’re your own person.”
Now I dare to look up, letting him see my fragility. “I’ve thought about quitting a couple times,” I admit. Not that I need to. With everything Sawyer knows, he’s probably expected my hasty, shitty retreat for weeks now.
“I know,” he says.
“I haven’t, though.”
“No,” Sawyer says. “You haven’t.”
For once, I try holding on to my quiet pride. Not even my growing closeness to Sawyer, with all its complications, has driven me from his home or his city. I’ve even endured ghostly earthquakes and haunted water heaters. I haven’t run out on Sawyer or Zach or even Kennedy.
“I don’t want to let you down,” I finally get out, feeling Sawyer’s expectant eyes on me. I think sometimes recognizing your worth, your goodness, is harder than recognizing your flaws. Sawyer is pushing me to rise to the challenge. Not letting me undervalue myself.
He moves to the kitchen counter. The evening half-light seems to hum with his fragile closeness to me.
I don’t move. He hesitates, then takes my hand.
“You’ll never let me down, Morgan,” he says.
His words stop my breath for a moment. His calloused, experienced palm is electrifyingly warm. No lights flicker overhead, though. No closets rattle. No cupboards slam. There are no ghosts between us.
“I owe you more than you could know,” he continues. “You’ve already changed…my whole life.”
How? I desperately want to know.
Sawyer denies me the satisfaction. He withdraws his hand, not waiting for my reply. “Shall we?” he says softly.
Startled, I flush. He’s near enough to…Shall we? His words repeat in my head, laden with meaning. I’m fixated on his hand at his side, the one that was just touching mine. “Shall we what?” I manage.
Sawyer gestures casually into the studio’s living room. “Zach’s keys aren’t here. Shall we go? I could pick up Thai on the way home,” he offers.
The heat rushes from me, welcoming embarrassment in its place. Of course he meant “Shall we leave?” I chastise myself fiercely. “Oh. Yeah, yes.” I recover. “Thai sounds great.”
Sawyer smiles. He heads for the front door, making no indication whatsoever that he recognizes the new longing clutching unrepentant in my chest.
I follow him out, hitting the lights in Zach’s former home on my way, forced to admit to myself just how much I wanted to kiss Sawyer in the dying daylight, when no one was crying. When it was just for the living.