Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
It had come to Lee’s attention three days later that the essence of Morgan Finch was beginning to dissipate.
Having taken her leave the morning after their altercation with one another, Lee Holmes had been left to her own devices.
Her own devices at that moment consisted of sitting in her living room in one of Morgan’s hoodies feeling sorry for herself.
Despite it being one of the more recently worn garments of hers, just like the air in each room had started to feel colder, the scent that had once lingered that reminded her of Morgan had come and gone.
She acknowledged that Morgan’s perfume was still sitting upon the dresser in their—her—bedroom.
She acknowledged that she could just as easily stand, and apply that perfume to the hoodie that she was currently living in.
And yet, she also acknowledged, strangely, at the same time, that painting a picture of an orange wasn’t the same as eating one.
Applying Morgan’s perfume herself was the equivalent of painting an orange—at least to her, and she didn’t feel much like painting.
Admittedly, she didn’t feel like doing much of anything, if she was being truly honest with herself.
Despite this, doing nothing felt like resigning herself to the notion that she was nothing when she wasn’t being loved by another person.
Albeit, she was under the impression that Morgan Finch still very much loved her.
Regardless, at present time, it mattered not whether Morgan loved her, or if anyone loved her for that matter.
What mattered was allowing herself to be independent for the first time in five years—to finally not be the sidekick in her own story.
Lee Holmes showered not long after having her epiphany, changing into her own clothes, and sprayed her own perfume.
Upon entering the kitchen for a snack she would designate as a meal, she found herself taken aback by the mess that had accumulated—takeout containers with most of the food still untouched inside them, chocolate wrappers splayed across the counter after having sat in a drawer for months in the event that she needed a pick-me-up.
Looking at the haphazard of colored wrappers upon the counter now, she had apparently needed multiple pick-me-ups within the last few days.
Shaking her head, she sighed and retrieved a trash bag from underneath the sink, piling wrappers and containers into it in rapid succession, trying not to think about the fact that only a week ago she had been the kind of person that people made podcasts about.
Now, she was the same old housewife she had always been without the ‘wife’ to accompany her.
The tap against the front door had been so gentle, so quiet, that Lee had debated to herself if she had even heard anything at all.
A bird against the window, perhaps, or the sound of another door closing in the apartment beside hers.
Ordinarily, she would ignore it, but given the fact that her life had been anything but ordinary these past few weeks, she instead decided to put her trash bag down in order to step out into the hallway and take a look.
Should it be a detective that she opened the door to, she deduced at that moment that with the little energy she currently held, it would be likely that she would leave her apartment in handcuffs.
Should it be Morgan, she would likely dissolve into the floor beneath her feet and become one with the carpet.
As much as neither option filled her with enthusiasm, she pulled back the door regardless, acknowledging that facing her monsters head-on was preferable to hiding from them.
Only, when she opened the door, her heart pounding in her ears at such a trivial action, she was greeted with nothing more than air.
Her monster had been nothing more than a concoction devised in her mind to plot against her.
It was only when she looked down that something resembling a monster, but not quite, appeared in her line of vision—a black box.
The box wasn’t particularly large in size, and it was seemingly plain, with no labels to indicate where or whom it came from. Due to the fact that no address adorned its front, it was likely that it was delivered directly from the individual whom of which intended for Lee to receive it.
The idea that someone had been here only moments prior, dropped off a box, knocked upon the door, and departed, left her wishing a face truly had been there to greet her on the other side.
Anything seemed preferable to picking up an ominous unknown box and opening it.
Suddenly, she wished that the person behind the door had been Morgan, and she tried at that moment not to appreciate the irony of such a thought.
The woman that she had perhaps been afraid of was the one person in the world who also made her feel safe.
She also reminded herself that she had been the person who disposed of a body, the person who had lied to detectives and sabotaged evidence.
If she could be that person during all of those times, she could be the person who picked up a box and brought it into her apartment.
And so, after providing herself with various affirmations in her mind, she did exactly that.
Lee Holmes inspected the packaging between her fingers, half-expecting the box to leak blood or other various bodily fluids.
Placing it down upon the counter now, she pulled back the opening of the box, only to find another, smaller box, in its place.
Her hand extended towards the ribbon that lay on the top of the box, taking solace in the fact that body parts likely didn't come adorned with such decorations on top.
Undoing the ribbon, she let it fall away onto the marble countertop, painting it a shade of orange.
Closing her eyes for just a moment, she exhaled, preparing herself for the worst possible outcome.
Upon opening her eyes, she, too, opened the box, peeling away the lid as she placed it on the countertop beside the orange ribbon.
She was met with a purple shade of crinkled paper, her favorite color.
Alas, she couldn’t feel relief, couldn't exhale entirely, not just yet.
Not without knowing what was wrapped up inside it.
She approached the crinkled paper with caution, a single finger hovering over the box.
Placing a thumb against the paper now, she positioned her finger and thumb to pull back a thin sheet of paper, revealing what she now believed, based on what little she could see, to be some kind of porcelain item underneath.
Acknowledging that the package no longer seemed sinister, her caution faltered, and she extended an entire hand to pull the rest of the paper away from the item in question.
It was at that moment that she allowed herself an opportunity to smile, as her cheeks dimpled underneath the dim lights of the kitchen.
Upon the countertop within the box sat a traditional teapot, similar to the one she had previously donated to the thrift store, although, admittedly, this one was far more beautiful.
A woven design of blue flowers occupied the exterior white porcelain.
Lee Holmes placed the teapot in her hands now, inspecting its outer features as she pivoted it around her fingers.
Finally, she lifted the lid in order to discover whether the inside was equally beautiful. Whilst it was too dark to see as to whether the interior of the teapot housed the same external pattern, it was not dark enough to hide the piece of white card that had been folded carefully inside.
Lee Holmes could not have retrieved the card faster if she tried, and yet upon placing it in her fingers, she simply stood and stared.
She had seen Morgan Finch only two days prior, and yet something had been aching inside her since, something she couldn’t quite explain.
Sometimes, she thought, feelings didn’t have an explanation, they simply just…
were. As she stood there within the kitchen, holding the piece of card within her fingers, there was a closeness she felt to the woman she had loved for five years.
This piece of card was not Morgan Finch, but it was a piece of her, and Lee was holding it, just as she had once held Morgan.
She exhaled gradually, allowing the air inside her lungs to release the weight off her shoulders, if only momentarily. When the atmosphere felt somewhat lighter, she unfolded the card and indulged in its contents.
“Thank you. For everything. M. x”
The ink blotted as the weight inside of Lee came loose, falling down her cheeks and onto the card below.
She closed her eyes, attempting to stop the tears from falling, to preserve that little piece of Morgan as much as she could.
With shaky hands, she placed the card onto the counter, steadying herself against the countertop's edge upon doing so.
The word ‘everything’ was not vast enough to describe the multitude of intricacies that had developed amongst the course of their five years together.
Perhaps it was the largest word of all in the human language, encompassing all things on the planet, but to Lee Holmes it was nothing more than a microscopic particle floating in the infinite expanse of the universe.
And, as a result of their five years being everything, she herself felt like a particle, only the universe as she had known it had been sucked into a black hole.
The ghost of Morgan Finch lay upon the countertop, now, but the thing about ghosts was that you couldn’t hold them.
Any attempt to do so would be like standing in front of the mirror and reaching out, desperate to touch the reflection looking back.
She couldn’t touch her own reflection, just as she could not touch the spectral presence she felt in that very room, but she could touch her own skin, and so, she did.
She traced along her right arm with the fingertips of her left hand, acknowledging that Morgan had traced her own fingers along these same patches of skin. Doing so now was like driving down the same road at different times; like standing beside a monument hours after one another.
And yet, there was that underlying feeling that she had made the decision that they both drive in separate cars, and now, being in the driver's seat felt underwhelming, the touch of her own fingertips against her skin was nothing more than a doused out cigarette, when Morgan’s touch had been a forest fire.
It was then that she worried that anything, or anyone, for that matter, to come into her life now would merely feel like a counterfeit—a subpar replica of what she had already experienced.
As Lee Holmes went to bed that night, pulling the covers up over herself, she felt haunted by the silence.
She was no stranger to it, after all, the silence had lingered even when Morgan had slept beside her, and yet, it felt louder now.
Like a child pulling at her trouser leg, it begged for her attention.
Finding positives from a negative, she told herself that perhaps at least now Morgan was no longer sleeping in the same bed, the nightmares would stop, and that whilst the silence haunted her, it would only do so until she fell asleep soundly, becoming a part of it, instead of being possessed by it.
But after an hour of tossing and turning, as her eyes grew heavy and she had finally started to rest, the nightmares greeted her once again.