‘All in good time,’ smiled Tegan as Marley jumped up onto Morgan’s lap to join in the conversation. ‘I’m thinking Marley will be staying here with you,’ she laughed. ‘Lucky you, Marley. Jaimie would’ve been a bit much as you get older. He’s a ball of energy. Permanently.’
Marley seemed pretty content with the arrangement and purred as Morgan tickled him beneath his chin.
‘Will you be okay financially?’ Tegan asked.
‘I should be. The sale of my flat helps.’
‘Good, I’m glad.’ She reached over to fuss Marley too.
‘Right,’ said Tegan, getting up from the sofa. ‘We still need to sort this place out, no matter whether you’re staying or not. And I’m all yours for forty-eight hours, so why don’t you get back to work and I’ll get on with some sorting out. How does that sound?’
‘That sounds like a terrible idea,’ Morgan laughed. ‘Let’s do it together.’
‘I’d really like that. Start at the top in the loft and work our way down.’
Morgan stopped off at her bedroom to at least pull on some day clothes: a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Tegan was happy to be the one on the ladder and everything she passed down they put on Elaina’s bed, which was still covered over.
‘We’ll have to decide what we can bin, then what each of us might want to keep,’ said Morgan.
‘Agreed. How did you even fit all of your things into this house with all of Mum’s stuff here already?’
‘I’ve never hoarded much and because we intended to move; we sold off items of furniture before I got rid of the flat.’ She shrugged.
‘I think things worked out for the best, didn’t they?’
‘In a funny way, they really did.’
‘Nate… Nate Greene,’ her sister repeated, looking at Morgan for more gossip. Although Morgan was giving her nothing.
‘Focus, Tegan.’
‘Okay, I’ll grill you about him later.’ She sat on the other side of the box that Morgan had placed on top of the bed.
It took them an hour and a half to go through a few boxes but they filled three bin liners with items neither of them wanted and that held no sentimental value: there was a box filled with old maps, another one filled with old bedding that Morgan knew they couldn’t even try to sell and wondered why her mother hadn’t got rid of it, and a few boxes contained the girls’ things they’d never taken with them.
‘What’s this one?’ Morgan opened up another box they’d dumped on the bed for their attention. It looked like it was filled with old magazines and she drew one out to flip through.
‘Intriguing.’ Tegan brushed dust from her fingertips and peered over Morgan’s shoulder. ‘Recycling?’
Morgan was about to say yes when she picked up another magazine to confirm but saw a familiar title on the front. With her heart in her mouth, she flipped to the index and then the appropriate page. And there before her was an article she’d written more than a decade ago. She put the magazine on the bed and rummaged through the rest. Sure enough, magazine after magazine had a feature written by Morgan Reese. There were even pages removed from newspapers that dated back some ten years – one about a motorcycle group who’d taken it upon themselves to brave the snow and deliver Christmas presents to the hospital, one on a local restaurateur who’d returned from Vienna and opened up his own restaurant – Morgan could still remember the exquisite food she’d had during their face-to-face interview – and another that tugged at her heartstrings as she remembered researching it and putting it together. It was about a foster carer who, because of a long-term health condition, could no longer do the job she loved. Morgan could remember feeling absolutely spent after the interview that had all but broken her heart.
It wasn’t long before Tegan took the magazine from her sister’s hand and saw what had her so discombobulated. ‘I remember you telling me about this one.’
‘You do?’
‘Of course. It broke my heart too. That woman with all that love to give.’ She gulped. ‘You never knew Mum had these?’
‘I had no idea. She never really said much about my writing. Well, apart from telling me I should get my head out of the clouds, get a real job, train in something.’
‘She was proud of you, Morgan.’
‘Sometimes I doubted it. But I see now…’ She gulped. ‘She really was,’ she said, eyes misting over.
‘You know, I think she probably encouraged you to do something with stability because of what happened to her. When Dad left, she fought to make ends meet; she didn’t want that to happen to either of us.’
‘I wish she’d told us that rather than making us feel as though she didn’t approve of our choices – well, mine at least.’
‘Easy for me,’ Tegan smiled. ‘I got an office job before we took on the farm and was never the creative type, so she didn’t nag me.’
