It wasn’t long before the smell of good coffee wafted through the cool air of that part of the store, and heavy footsteps and the tap of a cane could be heard coming down the stairs.
Morgan led the way, looking a bit sweaty and stressed, probably in reaction to having strangers in his home.
Behind him, beaming with curls of wood on their shoulders and in their gray hair, were the three men that Morgan had been calling old geezers. This was all they’d wanted: to be needed. Jack was pleased that they felt useful—and that there was an entire truckload of wood in the place.
With sighs and happy sounds, the three made themselves at home around the table and reached for the donuts, talking fast, as if they’d not sat down together in ages, though it seemed likely they’d spent most of the day in one another’s company.
They all smiled at him like it was Christmas morning and he, Santa Claus.
“Are you giving them the good coffee we just bought?” Morgan hissed, leaning close, his mouth almost on Jack’s ear.
“You want me to serve them old coffee that’s been sitting here for months?” Jack replied, feeling for a moment like one half of an old married couple. The idea made him smile.
“Yes.”
“Too bad,” Jack said. “They deserve the best, after all.”
With a huff, Morgan stepped back, his eyes on the array of donuts, glaring as if he simply could not believe they were giving it all away.
Taking pity on him, Jack whispered one more time. “I saved the rhubarb crumble for us.”
He brought the coffee pot over and poured for each man, frowning at the paper cups and thinking that they might order some real mugs in to make it nicer. The three old guys seemedplenty happy with what they had and insisted that Jack and Morgan join them.
“Come on,” Ambrose said. “Take a load off. Can’t let these donuts go to waste, after all.”
Dismay curling his mouth, Morgan sat on one of the two chairs. Jack sat next to him, not smiling, not teasing, because at least Morgan had stayed.
Maybe it was because Morgan worked in an office or whatever that he didn’t understand how to take care of a customer. And maybe Jack, having been raised behind a service counter in a smallish community, did know and couldn’t keep himself from wanting to be a good host, to pour a decent cup of coffee.
Morgan seemed to be enjoying his cake donut, at least, and the cup of coffee Jack poured for him.
“We should get real mugs,” Jack said.
“No,” Morgan said, but his irritation didn’t go any further than that, because the wind suddenly hit the long bank of windows with a huge whomping sound, shifting the panes of glass as a cool burst of air swirled around the room.
“That’s our cue,” Ambrose said, speaking for all three, as he tended to do. “Leastways, you’re all set for firewood.”
“Yes, we are,” Morgan said, looking like he hoped it was a very long time till they needed more. “What do I owe you for the wood?”
“No, thanks anyway, Morgan,” Ambrose said, flapping a hand at him. “That’s what neighbors are for.”
When the three old guys got up, Morgan and Jack did as well.
“We’ll wrap the rest of these and keep them for your next visit, okay?” Jack asked.
With happy nods, the old guys grabbed a donut each for the road and sallied out the front door, chatting happily, leaving the store still and empty behind them.
Morgan tapped his cane on the wooden floor as if to fill the silence. “They wipe me out,” he said, a bit of sweat on his temples, hair mussed. “They just do.”
“You did good,” Jack said.
He nodded, meeting Morgan’s gaze, and let out a long breath. He still wasn’t sure he’d fully recovered from the wave of panic that had gone through him when the sheriff’s SUV had pulled up behind him that morning, its red and blue lights rolling.
CHAPTER 19
jack
He’d just left Mabel’s, feeling pleased about helping her and meeting her sweet dog, thinking back on how Morgan had described her with such ire and irritation that he’d imagined she’d be some kind of witchy woman cursing at Jack and making hex signs to ward him off the second she saw him. And that her dog would growl and be horrible.
