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“Coffee will be just a minute,” Corinne assures me. Then she leans in and delivers a knowing look. “It’s true, you know. What the girls are saying.” She drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s been singing… a lot.” She checks over her shoulder to where the hallway disappears.
Jack’s bedroom is down there.
Somewhere, not too far away, Jack is getting dressed.
Corinne catches my eye. “We’re just really relieved to see him this happy. I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but the whole Jess thing caught him totally off-guard.”
What ‘Jess thing?’ I wonder.
Before I can dwell on it, she goes on. “It’s like he’s been walking on clouds since you two connected.”
“Mommy, what’s connected?” Ophelia leans her thin frame way over the table to reach for a donut.
“Missy, whatever one you touch is yours,” Corinne reminds her daughter. “We love you, but we don’t want your sticky fingers on our food.”
Ophelia seems to find this hilarious. She tips her head back to giggle, then plucks up a chocolate-iced donut.
“We’re working on manners,” Corinne tells me.
Jasmine politely reaches past me. She gestures to the display. “Hazel, which one do you want? You can pick before me and Mommy and Daddy. You’re the guest of honor.”
I thank her and choose a croissant. Brett sashays out of the kitchen, a full pot of coffee in one hand and a bouquet of mugs in the other. He places one of the mugs in front of me and fills it to the brim.
“So, you’re a whiz with marketing, is what we’ve heard.”
“Jack is very impressed,” Corinne says.
“I’m definitely not that good,” I say before gratefully bringing the cup to my lips. Mmm. Instant coffee is helpful in a pinch, but it just doesn’t compare. “I was a journalist for a while for a local newspaper. I started pitching in when the advertising team was short-staffed… I guess that’s what got me into the whole world of copywriting.”
“Is that right?” Corinne sips from her cup.
Brett lowers down into a chair with an old-man-style grunt. “Oof… my knees. They’re not made for surfing. That’s cool, Hazel, that you were with a newspaper for a while. We love our local rag. I mean, online media is great, but there’s nothing quite like newsprint and ink.”
“Why’d you transition to the digital side of things?” Corinne wants to know.
Jasmine hands me a napkin.
Ophelia’s leg lilts to the side until her bony knee rests on my lap. She munches her donut distractedly.
And… just like that, I am sitting at a breakfast table with the Morgan clan. They’ve swallowed me up in this warm embrace, and I feel less like an alien and more like… well, like a friend.
It’s incredibly nice.
Sitting at the kitchen table with my parents back in Windsor hasn’t felt this warm and cozy in ages.
“I guess it was the salary, if I’m honest,” I admit.
“Local papers are pretty shoestring, budget-wise,” Brett agrees. “Makes sense, too, with the way print is falling off people’s radars.”
“I use newspapers for making hats sometimes,” Ophelia says. Then she waves her fingers. “Hey, I do have sticky fingers!”
Jasmine gets out of her chair and races to Ophelia’s. “We all love Lia’s sticky fingers!” she quips before tickling her sister’s waist. Both girls dissolve into giggles.
I find myself laughing, too.
I’m not sure how this happened. Technically, I am very far away from my apartment and the town I grew up in.
But as I let my back relax into the chair behind me, I feel an odd sense of being right at home.
