Identity

He lifted his drink, watching her as he sipped. “Nice pour on the Bombay. So, I’m telling you, you won’t have any trouble on my end.” He put the paper back in his pocket. “It’s not your debt to pay. Didn’t seem right to add that to your list of troubles, so you can cross it off.”

He drank some more. “He gave me a sad story. He’s got a way with a story. No need to go into it. Pisses me off. Your name, your address, where you work. Both jobs. Anything about him you know I didn’t read in the news reports and such?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t read any of it. I couldn’t.”

He just nodded. “I read about your friend, saw her picture. Beautiful girl. Only sick fuckers do that to beautiful girls.”

He took out a money clip, peeled off two fifties.

“We’re clear, you and me. My word on it, and my word’s good. I’m sorry for your troubles.”

“Mr. Castle.” She nudged the bills toward him. “This is too much.”

He shook his head. “I pay my debts,” he said, and walked out.

When she stepped out of the house the next morning, Nina’s car had four new tires.





Chapter Five



Summer rolled into autumn without any of Morgan’s usual pleasure in the change of seasons.

Reality had to be faced.

Juggling, juggling, juggling, she’d tried to hold on. But the lawyer fees mounted to beyond what she’d asked her grandmother to lend her.

She couldn’t bring herself to ask for more, not when she so clearly saw her life become an endless cycle of work, bills, debt, worry.

They wanted to come, her mother, her grandmother, but she couldn’t face that either and put them off.

Even working nearly eighty hours a week, she fell behind. Nina’s car—it would forever be Nina’s car—needed more work, and though she knew Larry bottomed down his price for her, it cut into the budget.

Her washing machine decided to revolt and flood the day after she’d stolen enough from the budget to replace the balding tires on her bike.

Then her lights went off.

She’d paid the bill, but it seemed Gavin Rozwell had taken one more shot. Using her account number, he’d discontinued service. As she worked to straighten that out—with the power company rep insisting turning the power back on required a fee—she learned he’d canceled her homeowner’s insurance and filed a huge fraudulent claim against her medical insurance.

It could all be fixed, the lawyer assured her. For more legal fees, more court costs, more money poured out in hopes of recouping it later.

By November she accepted she was in over her head, and she’d never come up for the third time.

With Sam, she visited Nina’s grave with its pure white stone. The wind blew hard, scattered dead leaves, and overhead the sky held thick and gray with a rain that would come icy when it fell.

They hadn’t brought flowers. They’d agreed Nina would hate for them to lay flowers that would wither and die in the cold.

“I know she’s not here.” Morgan tipped her head toward Sam’s shoulder. “I still feel her in the house sometimes. It helps. Is that weird?”

“I don’t think so.” He slid an arm around her. “I go over for family dinner every few weeks because it helps. I haven’t seen you there for a while.”

“I barely have time to catch my next breath.”

“I’m so sorry, Morgan. I keep hoping it’ll level out for you.”

“I’m putting the house up for sale.”

“Oh, come on.” Stepping back, he gripped her arms. “There has to be something.”

“I can’t hold on to it. If I pay the mortgage, I fall behind on something else. If I pay the something else, I miss the mortgage payment. I’m buried in legal fees, but the hits keep coming.”

She breathed deep. “Can we walk? I feel like I’m dumping this on Nina, and that is weird, since I just said she’s not here.”

“We’ll walk.” He took her hand as they did. “There’s got to be a way I can help. You have a lot of people who’d help, Morgan.”

“I know that, but he didn’t just ruin me, he’s ruined this place for me. He sucked all the joy out, Sam. The house is a burden now, not my home, just another weight to try to lift every day. I don’t know how long it would take me to get back on my feet, but I know it’ll take years for me to get back to where I was.”

“The son of a bitch. Why can’t they find the son of a bitch?”

“I don’t know. Way back, when he first started coming into the bar, Gracie—you know, head waitress at the Round—she said he was smooth. And she didn’t trust smooth. God, she was right.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Sell the house. The Realtor advised me to wait until March or April, and that it might take that long to sell anyway. But I’ve got to get started on that. I’ll stick it out until it sells because I don’t have a choice, but I have to get started.”

She looked out at the headstones, the monuments, the flowers that would wither and die.

“Then I’m moving to Vermont.”

“Ah hell, Morgan.”

“I can’t stay here, going backward. Moving into an apartment, knowing everything I had is gone. Seeing that every time I go to work, to the grocery store, put gas in Nina’s car. I can’t.”

“I get it, Morgan. I do.”

“I talked to my mother, my grandmother last night. They’ll take me in. I guess they don’t have a choice either.”

“Maybe you could wait until after the first of the year on the house, give yourself a little more time.”

“It’s not home anymore,” she said again. “And the jobs, they’re just jobs now. Get up, go to work, turn around, go to work, go to bed, do it all again worried, all the time worried. I don’t want to live like that.”

“Take a break from all this. Come with me to family dinner.”

“I can’t, really. They’ll push about Thanksgiving—they already are. And it’s easier to make excuses over the phone. I can’t pretend to be thankful this year. Don’t tell them. Please don’t.”

She stopped, turned to take both his hands. “I’ll tell them when the house sells.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“It is. I’ve got to get back. I’ve got a long list of things the Realtor suggests I do before she shows it.” Her eyes filled. “I have to paint over the lilac walls. Nina’s bedroom.”

“She wouldn’t mind.”

“No.” Morgan looked back toward the white stone. “She’d understand.”

Paint was cheap, and so was her labor. She painted the walls a neutral off-white she decided she personally hated. Taking her cues from HGTV, she went sell-this-house neutral everywhere.

She removed personal items, boxed up photographs, some sweet and silly knickknacks.

She cleaned every inch of what had been her home and now represented a fight she’d already lost.

The house sat on the market for six weeks without a single offer before the Realtor advised a slight price reduction.

Morgan agreed, and cleaned the house again for what the Realtor called a postholiday showing. By the middle of January, and a second slight price cut, she’d sold her living room furniture, which helped pay bills and allowed her one deep breath.

And she started researching bankruptcy.

An offer came in.