Chapter Ten
The positioning of the sun in the sky as it beamed through the bedroom window allowed light on only one half of the room, leaving the other half in a dim haze.
Lee concluded that she was the lighter half at that moment, which, by default, meant that Morgan was the darker side.
When the sun was no longer visible, and the stars had taken over, that was what kept Lee up at night, clutching at her sheets, desperate for relief. How dark was Morgan Finch?
If she ever wanted to sleep soundly again, next to Morgan, no less, that was a question that needed answers.
As Morgan lay pressed against her last night, it affirmed Lee’s love for her, and it was because of this affirmation that she decided there and then that her emotional purgatory was not going to cut it.
Before she could regret waking a sleeping lion, Lee reached over to her girlfriend’s darker side of the bed and tapped her gently. “Babe?”
The woman stirred gradually, her eyes still shut as she turned towards Lee, opening them only when they were face to face. “Mhmm? What time is it?”
“Early,” Lee responded immediately. “I couldn’t sleep. Can we talk?”
Morgan nodded, her body stepping into motion like a toy that needed winding as she lifted herself gradually from the covers and stretched her arms out high above her head. “I’ll go make us some coffee.”
Lee wasn’t sure if she could even wait as long as it took for the coffee to brew before she got the answers she craved, spurring her own body into motion as she followed her girlfriend out of the bedroom and into the kitchen like a new puppy desperate for attention.
The clock on the kitchen wall read 6:24am, ticking much like the one in their bedroom, when it was all that she could focus on.
At present time, all that Lee could focus on was the question that had been on her mind ever since a knife entered the body of a man in her living room. Who was Morgan Finch?
Lee hadn’t sat inside the living room since—had barely stood.
Whenever she walked past the door frame to the room in which her life had changed she felt a chill, as if walking past a graveyard, filled with souls all competing for the same breath of air.
The kitchen was her space now, as she sat upon one of the bar stools and threw her elbows onto the counter.
“Could you sit with me when you’re done, please? This can’t wait.”
Lee’s leg tapped anxiously against the kitchen tiles, her eyes diverting to the clock, acknowledging that the both of them would have to leave for work soon, before diverting her attention back to Morgan, her calm demeanor only aggravating Lee’s own panicked state.
Morgan opened one of the kitchen drawers, retrieving a teaspoon from its contents.
Upon stirring the appropriate number of sugars in both cups, she offered an affirmative “sure,” in response before taking a seat on the unoccupied bar stool as she placed a black coffee to the right of her where Lee sat.
Lee wrapped her hands around the mug, not taking a sip, yet enveloping herself in its warmth as if it might provide her with just the slightest piece of comfort.
“I know it’s early, and I know you’re tired, but God, Morgan, it’s not just that night itself that’s playing in my mind on repeat.
It’s the notion that I might not even know who you are.
Waking up in a sweat isn’t normal. This isn’t normal,” she said, gesturing her hands between the both of them.
“I can’t sleep until I know exactly who it is that I’m sleeping next to. ”
Her girlfriend gently blew on her coffee, as she always did, and took one small mouthful. She sighed, placing her cup down now, putting a hand on Lee’s arm instead. “Tell me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. All of it. None of it. Whatever you need.”
The warmth of Morgan’s touch felt oddly contradicting, like knives brushed against a velvet sheet.
Her girlfriend was capable of such tenderness, and yet she was also capable of things far too sinister for Lee to comprehend.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself upon the stool, she took a sip of her own coffee and exhaled.
“Who was that man? How many times have you done this? Why do you do it?”
Lee took another intake of breath, her questions falling out of her like a snowboarder caught in an avalanche. Morgan was the avalanche. “Okay, that’s a lot of questions.”
Without a second of hesitation, Lee batted back. “Not nearly enough.”
Morgan sighed again, allowing her arm to fall away from Lee as she played with the corner of the counter.
She seemed more like a timid child at that moment, than a killer.
“His name is—was, Edward Beckett. Believe me when I tell you that no one, not even his family, will miss him. I’ll tell you who he is, but it might be hard to hear. ”
Lee surprised even herself when she rolled her eyes at the remark.
At present time it felt like her girlfriend knew less about her than what she had previously thought.
What she was capable of handling, and what she wasn’t.
“I’ve been listening to murder podcasts for years, Morgan.
I know what people like you do. I can handle it. I just want answers.”
Her girlfriend simply nodded, her fingers still playing absentmindedly with the kitchen counter. “To put it bluntly, he was a piece of shit. Do you remember that teenage girl, Summer Roberts?”
“I remember,” Lee confirmed. “I read about her online. She went missing a few years ago about forty minutes away from our apartment, didn’t she? No one knows what happened to her.”
“I do,” Morgan exhaled theatrically, taking a sip of her coffee. “Edward Beckett happened to her.”
Lee was putting the pieces of the puzzle together now, much like she did whilst listening to her podcasts. Figuring out the ins and outs of each crime before the final reveal could peak its head. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Morgan glanced down at her coffee, and then at the counter, looking anywhere besides at her girlfriend.
For the first time, Lee felt more like the predator in this situation than the prey, cornering Morgan into a room where only truths lay.
“We can skip the details, but yes. Next question, how many times have I done this? That was the question, right?”
Lee nodded, feeling much like a bobblehead at present time, making her own internal assessment that the more she spoke, the longer Morgan had to conjure up an answer.
Lee didn’t want a carefully thought-out dialogue.
She wanted the haphazard of words that she got from Morgan when she’d had one whiskey too many.
She wanted the lazy truth she only got at the bottom of a glass.
Morgan shifted on her seat, her lips a firm line. It seemed like an eternity to Lee before she spoke again. “Are you sure this is something you want to know? I mean, once you know, you realize you can’t simply un-know any of this. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” Lee said, plainly.
Another swift answer. Another bid for the lazy truth.
The atmosphere in the room changed at that moment, as if another side of Morgan appeared that Lee could sense almost instinctually through her own newly found predatorial approach.
And yet, her fierceness dulled when she stared directly into her girlfriend’s eyes and made the conclusion that there were now two predators in the room, as opposed to one.
“Perhaps you do understand the repercussions, but perhaps I’m not ready for you to know this side of me.
Is it not enough, for now, for you to know who Edward Beckett was and why I did what I did? ”
Lee Holmes, regardless of the consequences, would not back down.
Her own face shifted at that moment as her patience waned.
“How the fuck would that be enough? This isn’t like not knowing what your favorite color is, Morgan.
This is a catastrophe beyond any comprehension I’m capable of.
I want to know who I’m sleeping next to! ”
If she didn’t know now, perhaps she would never know. Perhaps she would be destined to spend every night in a sleepless nightmare, terrified of peeking behind the curtain of her relationship whilst simultaneously not being able to look away.
Morgan’s eyes shifted, and suddenly the predator Lee had sensed previously had quieted.
She exhaled slowly, her throat bobbing ever so slightly with nerves that she swallowed down alongside her coffee.
“We literally celebrated our anniversary last night, Lee. Perhaps I’m being naive, but everything just seemed so…
normal. And yet, at the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that your body literally tenses now at my touch.
You’re already on high alert around me since that night.
If I tell you everything, God only knows how you’d react around me. I don’t want to push you further away.”
Lee’s own mask fell too, revealing the scared gazelle underneath as a tear escaped through the corner of her eye.
Despite her inner conflicts, desperate to reach out towards her, Morgan knew better than to wipe it away.
“You know all of me, Morgan. You know how many sugars I like in my coffee. You know each and every freckle on my body. I thought I knew all of you, too, only to find out that there’s a part of you that frightens me. ”
Morgan’s lips parted, as if unsure as to what to say next, desperate for her brain to catch up to her mouth and say the correct thing. “Fuck, Lee,” she said, the words coming out in an almost-whisper. “I never want you to be fright—”
A ringtone startled them both back to earth, their bodies jolting in unison whilst Morgan pulled her phone out of her pocket and stifled the noise with the press of a button. “Hey, Mom. Sorry, now isn’t really a good time, can I call you back?”
Lee watched as Morgan nodded whilst the room fell to a dull silence. “I see. I didn’t realize that’s why you were calling. We’ll be there within the hour. Speak soon.”
Morgan placed a cautious hand on Lee’s thigh, ready to retract it should the need arise. “Before I say anything, I don’t want you to freak out, okay? Nothing is going to happen. Not to you, not to me. Especially not to you.”
Just as Morgan had made it clear earlier, Lee’s body tensed ever so slightly at the touch.
Now that she was aware of it, she told herself that perhaps she could prevent it from happening in future.
She was fooling herself, she realized. The only way she could stop it was if she knew the inner workings of Morgan’s mind, the very thing that her girlfriend was blocking her from.
“Stop stalling and tell me what’s happening, Morgan. ”
Morgan pinched her nose with her other hand, an act she often committed herself to when she was overwhelmed, or anxious, and Lee found herself mimicking the anxiety back at her through a harsher gulp than she was accustomed to.
“My mother wants us to come down to the station to answer some questions.”