Page 47 of Too Old for This

Morgan is on my porch.

While I was pretending to be dead Norma and texting the man who tried to arrest me forty years ago, Morgan has been waiting for me. I ease myself out of the car, trying to look more exhausted than I am.

“I’m so sorry. The meeting at church ran late. I should’ve called you.”

Morgan is sitting in an old chair that has seen better days. Her hair, makeup, and outfit don’t look quite as polished as they did this morning. She has kicked off her heels, and the bottoms of her feet are dirty.

“I had to answer some emails anyway.” She doesn’t look annoyed, though she should be. We agreed to meet at a certain time so she could get her bags out of my house. I’m thirty minutes late.

Her lack of anger makes me a little sad. It’s like she knows everyone will be rude to her and she accepts it.

I felt the same way when I first moved to Baycliff. A single woman with a seven-year-old boy and no sign of a husband. I thought long and hard about making up a story about a dead husband, playing the widow card for sympathy to keep people from wondering who Archie’s father was.

In the end, I didn’t. I prepared myself for what came next.

It wasn’t much different from how people treated me when I was pregnant, except now I had to deal with the mothers at his new school.

I bet I looked like Morgan does right now.

Resignation everywhere. It’s one thing to be treated like an outcast, but it’s another thing to believe you are one. Morgan is starting to.

But maybe her way is better. She doesn’t get angry about the way everyone is judging her. I did get angry, and look at me now. I’ve got a chopped-up body in the freezer and a detective who’s been hunting me for decades.

“Are you okay?” Morgan says.

I’m standing in the same spot, halfway between my car and the door.

“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” I say. “We can talk more about the wedding.”

“I couldn’t—”

“Of course you can. And you still have to show me how to use that stun gun.”

Now she smiles. And she follows me inside.

—

It turns out that Morgan has taken several classes in gourmet cooking and is quite the chef. One more thing I didn’t know about her. No, that’s not right. It’s one of the many things I don’t know about her. I hardly know Morgan at all.

She whips up some kind of frittata with egg whites and all the vegetables in my fridge.

It might be the healthiest meal I’ve had in a while.

Over dinner, I ask about her life, her childhood, and how she came to be a flight attendant, and I try my best to listen to her answers.

But my mind keeps drifting back to Burke.

He has been working in the background for weeks.

From what I can tell, his involvement began after Cole contacted Norma.

He told her Plum had been here to try and interview me for her docuseries.

Norma, so anxious to make up for all those years of neglect, started digging, eventually finding her way to Burke.

It’s a bit depressing that my life always leads back to that man.

No, that isn’t right. It’s not depressing; it’s horrifying.

“…how Archie and I met,” Morgan says. “He told you that story, didn’t he?”

I blink back into the conversation. “Of course. He said you met on a plane.”

“And?”

“And that’s it. You were working as a flight attendant and he was on the flight.”

Morgan shakes her head. “That’s not how it happened.”

“No?”

“I wasn’t working,” she says. “Archie had gone to L.A. to see a client and was on a flight back up to San Francisco. I had just finished my shift, which left me in L.A. because of a cancellation, but I was able to get an empty seat on a flight back up north. I was sitting right next to Archie on the flight.”

This is all new information to me. I nod, motioning for her to continue.

“Archie was trying to use the Wi-Fi, but he was having problems connecting. He started getting really frustrated, and I offered to help.” She reaches over and taps me on the hand. “He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, either. Just so you know. He and Stephanie had already broken up.”

That’s the second time she has told me this. She really wants me to know that they did not have an illicit affair. “So that’s how it started? When you helped him get on the internet?”

“No, not at all. Nothing started that day. Two weeks later, he was flying down to L.A. again, and I was one of the attendants.”

“Let me guess. He had another problem with the Wi-Fi?”

She smiles. “He pretended to, yes.”

That’s my Archie. Somewhere along the way, he learned that acting a little dumb could be useful. Must be a family trait.

Morgan collects our dinner plates and stands up. “Hope you left room for dessert!”

“Dessert? But all I have are some store-bought cookies.”

“Now you have store-bought cookie sandwiches with frozen whipped cream and chocolate drizzle.” She walks into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the dining room.

We drink sparkling water because of Morgan’s pregnancy. She threw together a three-course meal with a salad first, then the frittata, and now dessert. The food isn’t fancy, but she makes it feel that way.

I hear her in the kitchen, setting down the plates and opening the refrigerator. My mind returns to Burke, though it’s never really left.

According to that retirement article, he would now be around eighty-five. And here he is, still trying to catch me, enlisting Norma in his plan. His obsession might be impressive if I wasn’t the object of it.

In the kitchen, Morgan screams.

I rush in and find her pointing at the floor. Her mouth is wide open, lips trying to move, but nothing comes out. As if she can’t form words.

On the floor, a small plastic container.

Norma’s finger is inside of it.