13. Crossing Thresholds
Crossing Thresholds
Nora
The number had changed again overnight.
Nora sat on the edge of the hotel bed with her phone in both hands and watched it the way you’d watch weather—sixty-one thousand views on the Bean There video of her new song, up from the forty-something it had been when she’d finally made herself stop looking and go to sleep.
Someone had set the song to footage of a coast she’d never been to.
Someone else had used eleven seconds of it under a video about their dog.
It was loose in the world now, doing things she hadn’t agreed to and couldn’t call back.
She didn’t know how she felt about it—a bit of triumph, but also vertigo.
Three texts from Adrian sat stacked under his name, each a variation on one word: momentum. She thumbed past all of them and opened her thread with Morgan instead.
Good morning. Okay if I come by after lunch? I’ll bring food.
The reply came fast.
Morgan
Yes. You don’t have to bring food.
I want to. Turkey or cheese?
Cheese. See you after lunch.
Nora set the phone down and let herself smile at the wall for a second.
Then the phone rang and her father’s name lit the screen, and the smile went out.
She’d known this call was coming. He’d been texting for days—careful, indirect things about the estate and practical timelines—and she’d been answering with one word or not at all. She picked up because not picking up had stopped working.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Eleanor.” Relief, faintly. “You’re a hard person to reach lately.”
“I know. Sorry. It’s been a strange couple of days.”
“Yes, your mother showed me the video.” A beat. “It’s good. You sound like yourself in it. More than you did on the last record, honestly.”
“Thanks. That… means something.”
“Well.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk about the property. The lawyer left another message. He needs to know which direction you’re going so he can stop holding things open.”
Here it was. She moved to the window and stared down at the street, August light lying flat and gold across it.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“It’s been four months, Eleanor.”
Irritation stirred in her. “I know how long it’s been.”
“I’m not trying to rush you. I’m trying to be practical, which I realize is not the most popular role.
” A pause, and when he went on his voice had shifted into the register he used for things he’d already worked out the math on.
“Have you actually looked at what holding onto it means? The property taxes alone. That roof won’t last another winter—I had someone out there in July, it’s a full replacement, not a patch.
The well’s old. The whole place needs systems brought up to code before it’s anything but a liability.
You’d be pouring money into twenty acres and a house that hasn’t seen a renovation in a decade. ”
“Gramps lived in it.”
“Gramps was a stubborn old man who let it fall down around him because he wouldn’t accept help.
” It came out sharper than he probably meant, and he heard it; she could feel him pull back.
“I’m sorry. I just mean—sentiment is expensive, and right now, of all the moments in your life, you are not in a position to be careless with money. ”
That stung, because it was true. The inflow had dropped, though it hadn’t stopped, because she had four albums to her name. “I’m aware of my situation, Dad.”
“Then you know that selling makes sense. A clean sale gives you capital. Flexibility. Something to land on while you figure out whatever this”—she could hear him choosing not to say something dismissive—“whatever this next chapter is. The land isn’t going anywhere in your memory just because it goes out of your name. ”
Nora pressed her forehead against the window glass, warm already from the morning sun. “I hear you,” she said. “I do. I’m not saying you’re wrong about any of the practical stuff.”
“But.”
“But I haven’t been out there yet. Not really.
I drove up to the house once with—” she caught herself before Morgan, “—I went up once, but I didn’t go through it.
I didn’t sit in it. And I don’t think I can sign it away to someone who’s going to bulldoze the porch for a view lot without at least doing that first.”
Her father was quiet for a moment. “That’s fair,” he said, which surprised her.
“I’d just ask that you do it soon, and that you go in with your eyes open.
Don’t let the ghost of it make the decision for you.
Your grandfather would be the first to tell you a house is just a house.
” A brief pause. “Though I suppose he’d have said that about most things, when it suited him. ”
She wasn’t sure that was true. She wasn’t sure Gramps would have said that at all. But she said, “Okay. Soon. I promise.”
“All right.” A breath. “I’ll tell the lawyer you need a little more time.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She stood at the window a while longer with the question turning over in her, unresolved, heavier than when the phone had rung.
Then she picked up her keys and went to find lunch.
The radio reached the parking lot before she did—something with a lot of guitar in it, conviction turned up loud.
Both bay doors of Livingston Auto stood rolled open to the heat, and a pair of work boots stuck out from under a sedan, crossed at the ankle.
Rusty lifted his head from the cool concrete by the toolbox and thumped his tail twice, the old dog’s whole hello.
“Hey,” Nora called, soft enough not to startle anyone holding a wrench.
The creeper rolled out. Morgan sat up, wiping her hands on a rag already dark with grease, a smudge of oil high on one cheekbone. She looked, Nora thought with the helpless honesty that kept catching her off guard, genuinely gorgeous.
“You’re early.” Morgan didn’t make it a complaint.
“Brought provisions.” Nora lifted the bag. “And I talked to my dad. Actual conversation, not the texting kind.”
Morgan got to her feet, crossed to the utility sink, ran the water hot. “How’d it go?”
“Not how I thought.” Nora set the bag on the workbench and boosted herself onto the stool that had, by some unspoken agreement, become hers.
“He wants me to sell it. Says it’s practical.
Smart. Gives me capital to put back into the music.
” She picked at a frayed thread on her jeans.
“And the thing is, he’s not wrong. That’s what’s doing my head in.
The roof’s shot, the well’s ancient, it’s all taxes and repairs and money I don’t exactly have flooding in right now.
If some stranger laid it out for me on paper I’d probably tell them to sell. ”
Morgan dried her hands carefully, not looking at her. “But it’s not a stranger’s land.”
“No. It’s Gramps’.” Nora exhaled. “And every time I get close to saying fine, sell it, be practical, something in me just… digs in. I don’t know if that’s grief or instinct or just me being stubborn because my dad told me to do the opposite.
” She glanced up. “I haven’t even been through the house properly.
I think I have to do that before I can decide anything.
Sit in it. See if it still feels like his, or if it’s just a building now. ”
“That sounds right,” Morgan said.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to know yet.” Morgan set the towel down.
“People act like not deciding is the same as being lost. It’s not.
Sometimes it’s just… you don’t have enough information, so you go get the information.
” A small shrug, like she was talking about a diagnostic and not Nora’s whole life.
“Go sit in the house. Then you’ll know more than you know now. ”
Nora felt something in her chest loosen, just slightly. “When did you get wise about this stuff?”
“I’m not. I just don’t like watching people decide things while they’re scared.” Morgan’s mouth did its near-smile. “Decisions made scared are usually wrong. And if they end up right, then you might trust the next scared decision, which can end really badly.”
It was then that Nora noticed it again: the tension Morgan was carrying high in her shoulders, the kind no transmission put there.
Twice since she’d arrived, Morgan’s eyes had cut to the desk in the corner—to a drawer—and away.
Some weight she was hauling around her own shop and not setting down anywhere.
Was it the publicity? Nora knew that people were still calling her, that social media was full of comments about her.
And just because Nora was used to it, didn’t mean Morgan was. Quite the opposite.
“You okay?” Nora asked.
Morgan glanced at her. “Yes. Fine.”
Nora wasn’t sure if she should push or not, but decided on a more physical route instead. She crossed the distance between them. Morgan peered down at her, and Nora smiled before kissing her, warm and steady.
When they came apart, Nora rested her forehead against Morgan’s and stayed there a breath, in the grease-and-warm-metal quiet.
“I should let you work,” she said.
“Probably.” Morgan didn’t step back. “You can stay, though. Got about two hours left on this one.”
“I’d like that.”
So Nora took out her guitar and played low under the radio while the boots disappeared back under the car—a new thing, still rough, a song circling the words foundations and staying. Her phone buzzed against the bench. Adrian. She turned it face-down and kept playing.