Wood & Iron

Chapter 3

The Saturday morning headache was no stranger to Morgan Offan. Almost every Friday night, she rushed to get Quinn and Nora to bed before Quincy got done with his end of the week Zoom calls. She loved hearing his footsteps coming out of the home office because that meant that he was heading out to pick up their weekly takeout: Pork Belly Ba Mee soup from the amazing Thai food truck downtown. They'd sit on the back porch eating in the blissful silence that only came once the girls were asleep until they could smell the beginnings of a burning oak log coming from the area right in front of their house. That was their cue to open the garage and roll their "Friday cooler" down the driveway.

The smoke, the contents of the "Friday cooler," and the fact that they rarely left the Adirondack chairs before 2 a.m. shared to blame for the Saturday morning headache. And sure, it had been a late Friday, but there had been no smoke and no cooler, and despite the headache, Morgan was feeling surprisingly good for the beginning of the weekend. The smell of her Saturday morning coffee and the memory of the night before put a smile on her face.

"To Morgan." Quincy leaned in and practically yelled over the now fully lubricated 20-somethings while holding his bottle toward the middle of the table. Moments before, she'd walked offstage at The Go-To Laughing Room to wild applause and fell into the sixth chair that had just been pulled up around her friends.

"I was wrong," Quincy continued, smirking and pausing for effect. "She is freaking hilarious."

"To Morgan!" The sound of five voices in unison and six glasses clanking together could barely be heard in the noisy bar.

Morgan smiled from ear to ear as she looked around the table at her friends. She was freaking hilarious on that stage, but the joy she felt from her husband's toast was from so much more than simply getting through the seven minutes with a microphone in her hand.

These were her people, and she'd do anything for any of them. She closed her eyes, wishing that she could live in this moment forever.

Alex and Liv were like sisters to her and had been for years. If there was any doubt before, it had been demolished on the day Nora was born. No one should see what those two saw that day and be able to look her in the eye, but it had only made them closer. The Wood boys had been a part of her life since she became a teenager; Henry and Meg had practically taken Morgan in when her mom died the summer before eighth grade. It was 14-year-old Adam who sat with her on countless nights while she processed, through tears or words or screams, the loss of the only parent she had. Adam had even been the one to introduce her to her husband. At least half of her smile was his fault. Losing her mom had been hard. She'd struggled through the childbearing years. But now, it seemed like everything was perfect, and these were her people.

The sound of her daughters' Saturday morning cartoons was now threatening that perfection, so she grabbed the coffee from the still shiny new granite kitchen countertops and walked out the back door onto the back deck that had always been her favorite part of this house.

The spring morning air was cold on Morgan's bare feet, and the dew glistened off the green grass that was finally full after three years of seed and water and sweaty summer afternoons. Man, she loved this view. The yard, the landscaping, the forest that sat a few feet on the other side of the back fence, the patio sectional sofa that she'd arranged to perfectly frame the perfect scene... it was all perfect.

She'd written the seven minutes of last night's set sitting on this deck, scribbling all over her brown leather notebook for days until it was just right. That journal was with her every moment of every day, and it wasn't uncommon for her to pull it out mid-conversation and scratch a few words that she might be able to use.