by Carter Ashby
“I would care that you were happy.”
He leaned forward. “Why not me, Maggie?”
“I think I’ll go.”
He took her by the hand, gently. “Please. I just need to understand. What’s wrong with me? Why am I not good enough for you? Twice, now. Twice you picked someone else over me.”
She withdrew her hand. “You’re thinking about it all wrong. It’s not about good enough. I’m just not the right woman for you, is all. I don’t even understand what you’re doing to yourself. You are this together, confident, successful man. Why, in this one area in your life, do you get in your own way?”
“I love you, that’s why. Always have. And I can’t…it’s like an itch I can’t reach…I can’t stop thinking how wrong it is that you’re with him and not me. It’s not right, and it’s driving me crazy. I can’t eat. Can’t sleep. I’m miserable. And you’re over there all happy and beautiful and perfect.”
He slumped back in his chair. Everything she thought of him as—together, charming, smooth-talking, successful, mature—it all slid away and she saw just a boy. A sad and lonely boy.
She leaned forward and looked into his eyes. “What did you do before I got here? I mean…after I married Josh, and before I came back?”
“What do you mean?” He asked, listlessly.
“I mean—how did you live? I’d married Josh and moved away. Surely you haven’t been pining over me for all those years?”
“I’m not pining,” he pouted as he took another drink of his beer. “And I lived my life, Maggie. I do what I do. Buy up properties, make them better, lease them. Go around and see to it everyone’s happy.” He shrugged like none of it mattered.
“And dating?”
“Sure, I date. I just happen to know there’s no one around here I’m going to marry if not you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He glared at her like an angry child.
Maggie sighed. “If I were the right one for you, we’d be together. I’m just not. Maybe I came pretty close. Closer than anyone you’ve met before. But there is at least one other woman out there who is better for you than me. And you’ll know it when you meet her, and you’ll be glad I didn’t go out with you.”
He leaned forward, his eyes intent on her. “I love you. Only you, Maggie.”
She ached a little for him. What if she’d gone to all the trouble to love Logan only to find that he didn’t love her back? What if she’d decided he was the only one for her, and his only response was to wish her the best of luck on finding someone new.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Then give me a chance.”
“No. It would be unkind of me to let you believe there was a chance. There isn’t. You need to let this go. And now it’s time for me to go, because this is just prolonging everything.”
He stared straight ahead of him like a man in shock. She got up and left because if she didn’t, she’d want to comfort him and he would take it the wrong way.
She got in her car and dashed away a few tears.
What if Logan hadn’t come? She would have gone out with David. Would likely have married him. And she’d have loved him. She’d have been happy with him.
But Logan had come, and now she was going to love and live with him. And she was going to be happy.
It occurred to her that there weren’t only two choices in life. Sometimes a fork in the road offered several paths. And maybe none of the paths were wrong…only different. Maybe she would have been just as right to go with David.
But at the moment, she could only feel how grateful she was to have chosen Logan. He felt like a part of her, now. Like her missing piece. Maybe there were other right paths, but she had chosen the best one.
Dinner at Frank and Eleanor’s was almost an every night thing as the cancer slowly sapped her of her energy. Nobody wanted to miss a moment with her.
A few days after picking out countertops, Logan played catch with Nate in the backyard while Frank and Brandon grilled burgers and hot dogs. It was a warm day for November. Jacket weather, but plenty warm enough to play outside.
Logan would much prefer playing catch with Nate to being anywhere near Frank. There hadn’t been any more uncomfortable conversations, but then, Logan had gone out of his away to avoid Frank. Be a pretty awkward life, if he had to do that all the time.
Logan remembered something Maggie had said a few days ago. She’d told him to ask Nate about something next time they played catch. What was the name again?
“Hey,” Logan said, “who’s Chad…Chad…”
“Chad Daniels?” Nate asked.
“Yeah.”
“He’s my best friend at my old school.”
“Oh.” Okay. Well, what did that have to do with anything? “Your mom said I should ask you about him. About how you dealt with him.”
“Oh, you mean when he was a bully?”
“He was a bully? To you?”
“Yeah. He used to be real mean. He’d walk real fast up behind me and slam into me and knock me over, then laugh. He did that to a lot of people. He’d ask to borrow my pencils, then break them when I let him borrow one. I got in a lot of fights with him, and it made Mom cry because she thought it was because of Dad dying.”
“Huh. So…how did you get him to stop being a bully?”
“It was really hard. I did not want to do it. But I just knew what I had to do.”
“What was that?”
“Be nice to him.”
Logan hadn’t expected that. He’d thought it would be an epic fight. Or something clever. “Just…be nice to him?”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “He’s got a real bad dad. I think it makes him mean. But when you’re nice to him, he’s actually pretty cool. Mom says he’s doing the best he can, is all.”
Logan caught the ball. Threw it. Caught it. Threw it.
Be nice to him?
Not possible. That wouldn’t work. That didn’t work on everybody. Especially not a sixty-eight-year-old man who’d been steeping in his own hatred most of his life.
Be nice?
The thought of it made Logan want to punch something. Why should he have to be nice to someone who’d been so shitty to him? How was that fair?
“Hey, bud, I gotta go talk to your mom.” He threw the ball to Nate one last time.
“Okay. I’ll go play with Wolf.”
Logan jogged up the back porch steps, casting a quick glare at Frank, who returned the look, as he passed by. Maggie was pouring tea into ice-filled glasses at the table. “Can I talk to you?” Logan asked.
“Sure.”
“Outside.”
“Oh.” Her smile vanished. She shrugged to Charlie and Jill who were in the kitchen watching the whole exchange.
Logan let Maggie lead the way. Once on the porch, he turned to her. “I asked Nate what you said to ask him. About Chad Daniels.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He said the kid was a bully. And the only way to make him not be a bully was to be nice to him.”
Maggie smiled. “Pretty impressive for an eight-year-old, huh? He came up with that all by himself. Mostly.”
“The whole context of you telling me to talk to Nate about that was me complaining about Frank, so now I feel like you’re preaching at me I should be nice to that bastard. And I wanna know how that’s fair or right? I never did anything to deserve how he treats me, and now you want me to be the one to…to what? Be nice? What does that even mean?”
“Whoa, big fella, why are you jumping down my throat? I just said ask Nate about Chad.”
“Because you wanted an eight-year-old to make me feel like a big, stubborn jerk. But Maggie, I’m not making this shit up, he hates me. And it don’t matter how nice I am, he’s always gonna hate me.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling patiently.
He huffed. “So that’s that, is all.”
“Okay.”
He stared at her, getting more and more frustrated. “
What exactly is your vision of this? I’m not mean to him as it is. I don’t really see how I could be any nicer. I’m polite. Civil. I stay out of his way.”
“You’re having a conversation with yourself…you realize that, don’t you? I have no idea what’s happening right now.”
“You know. You know damn well. You’re going to tell me some shit about how I have to be…kind…to Frank because I’m kind to everyone. Because I’m a kind person, and I can’t be a kind person if I don’t extend that kindness to everyone, regardless of how they’ve treated me. Because this isn’t about him, it’s about me and how I can be…free of all the negative shit I blame him for simply by not allowing it to change me. And you’re standing there all smug about how you knew the answer all along, and I had to learn it from a small child.”
She bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “I’m not smug…I was pouring tea and you dragged me out here. I’m still trying to catch up with what’s happening.”
The ire was slowing draining. He felt his breathing regulate and the heat leave his face. “I have so much, here, with you and my family. I don’t want it all going to hell because of one bad relationship.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said.
He looked her over. She had on tight jeans and a loose, beige sweater. Her hair was down in loose waves over her shoulders. A beautiful woman. Mature but playful. Wise and understanding. “Sorry for interrupting you,” he said, as he pulled her in close and wrapped his arms around her.
“It’s okay. I’m here for you.”
He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. It was nice, having someone say that she was there for him. That he could count on her.
She’d already told him she loved him. They hadn’t addressed the topic in the days since then, nor had she repeated herself. But he knew she loved him.
Such a responsibility, having someone put that kind of trust in you. He hadn’t made her any promises, hadn’t told her he loved her…with no evidence whatsoever, she’d chosen to love him. She was risking a lot. Risking him blowing up at Frank and leaving again. She didn’t know that wouldn’t happen.
And up until this point, neither had he.
Up until this moment, a bad fight with Frank would be enough for Logan to go running back to Montana. Throw everything good away because of one man’s opinions of him.
But holding Maggie, hearing her words in his head…I love you…
Right in this moment…
“I’ll do everything it takes,” he whispered into her hair. “Everything.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LOGAN STARTED WAKING up earlier in the mornings because Eleanor was having more difficulty getting moving. Frank would help her into the living room, and Logan would go downstairs and make breakfast or coffee or whatever sounded good to her.
It was easier to do this work side by side than to talk, and Logan was relieved that Frank seemed to be more focused on keeping Eleanor comfortable than on getting rid of Logan.
And then on the first cold morning in December, Logan went downstairs to find the living room empty.
He didn’t think much of it, but given the circumstances, he was a little concerned. He went down the hall, intending to knock on their bedroom door. But the door was cracked open.
Logan found himself listening to the two voices. He peeked in. Eleanor lay in bed, skin and bones, and smiled up at Frank. She reached up a shaking hand and brushed his cheek with her thumb. She was brushing away a tear. Frank’s hand rested on her abdomen. His other hand he used to take hers and hold it. Two aged, shaking hands connected.
It hit him.
His mom and Frank were in love. Frank loved her. She loved him.
Logan backed away and went to the kitchen, and he stood at the refrigerator not really thinking about food, but instead wondering about how Frank’s love for Eleanor could exist within the same body as his hate for Logan. Maybe in Frank’s mind it was the same thing.
Logan supposed that if he viewed someone…even a small child…as a threat to Maggie, he might feel enmity toward them. He doubted he could ever behave toward a child the way Frank had behaved toward him. But maybe he would have hard feelings toward the kid.
Then again, Logan knew—just as Frank should have—that a child is helpless and no threat to its mother. That Logan had been just as much a victim as his mother.
“You refrigerating the whole house?” Frank asked as he came to the bar.
Logan shut the refrigerator door and turned to the coffee pot. “How is she?” he asked as he prepared a new filter.
When Frank didn’t answer, Logan turned to find the old man sitting on a bar stool sobbing into his hands.
Logan’s heart sank into his stomach. “Hey, is she awake?”
“Yeah,” Frank said. He cleared his throat and dashed his tears away. In a lower voice he said, “Yeah. I put the TV on for her. I’ll take her breakfast in bed. She’s not up for getting up right now.”
“I can take it to her,” Logan said. He pulled out the blueberry bagels she loved and put one in the toaster.
“I’ll do it, I said.”
“I heard you,” Logan said. “But I haven’t seen her this morning, and I’d like to. So I’ll take her breakfast.”
“You’re just bound and determined to rob me of every second you can, aren’t you? She’s my wife, goddamnit, and I’ll take her her breakfast.”
Logan had spun, crossed the kitchen, and found himself standing toe-to-toe with Frank before he even realized he’d moved. “You don’t get to tell me when I can and can’t see my mom. I’m done with this, and I’m done with you. This has to fucking stop because I don’t want my mom’s last days on this earth to be spent in the middle of this goddamn hate war or whatever the hell this is. You hate me, fine. I got it. Message received. Now can we move on?”
Frank had murder in his eyes. “I wish it was you who was dying and not her.”
Logan felt a lump in his throat. Damned if he hadn’t thought Frank was beyond ever hurting him with words. He remembered all the times he’d been crushed by Frank’s hateful words. Remembered almost two years ago at Joshy’s funeral, Frank looking at him and saying almost the exact same thing. How could it still break his heart? How could the words of someone he had so little respect for still hurt him?
“What did I ever do to you to deserve this?” Logan asked.
“You were born, that’s what.”
“That’s real nice, Frank.”
“She was in love with me, and she was going to get away from that piece of shit you call a father and marry me until she got pregnant with you. And then it seemed like every time I ever got close to getting her away from him, somehow you got in the way. Boy, and don’t you look just like your daddy. Got the same evil in your eyes. You’re a poison. You like to killed her coming out of her, and then she was stuck with you, you just kept killing her slowly, a little bit at a time. Every bruise on her face, every cut, every hurt or injury…those are on you. You weren’t nothing but a demon spawn…”
Frank spewed his venom endlessly. Logan feared it would go on forever. Halfway through he was about to punch the old man in the teeth…but then something started to change. Frank’s eyes welled with tears. As he said the most hateful, vile things he could, the tears started pouring down his cheeks. He started shaking and stumbling over his words.
And then he was sobbing so much he couldn’t speak clearly. Logan backed away as Frank crumpled to his knees and wept.
What was he supposed to do with this? This broken human on the floor in front of him?
By all rights he should kick him while he was down. Take the opportunity to speak his own truths. But it seemed too late for that, if there was ever a time at all. It seemed somehow…unnecessary.
Frank, small and broken, wept into his hands for the second time that morning.
Logan knelt in front of him. “I’m gonna take Mom her breakfast. Okay?”
Frank nodded but didn’t loo
k up. Logan hesitated, then reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze. He stood and buttered the bagel, poured some coffee, and took it to Eleanor.
She smiled wanly and thanked him. He sat with her awhile as she ate. She didn’t eat much. Something had changed…shifted. Logan suspected Frank understood it and that was why the old man had broken down. Logan didn’t feel so great about it, himself. He put on a brave smile for his mom, but when he stepped out of the room, carrying her partially eaten bagel, he felt heavier. Sadder.
Frank was no longer in the kitchen, which was a relief. Logan washed up the dishes, then headed out back to fetch Wolf and take him for a walk. There was Frank…this time sitting on the porch steps with Wolf at his side. He was resting a hand on Wolf’s back, occasionally patting the dog or rubbing his ears.
Maybe he could walk Wolf, later. Logan backed up and started to go back inside.
“She’s dying,” Frank said.
Logan stopped and turned. Frank’s back was to him.
“I don’t guess I’d ever be ready for this,” Frank said. “Even if I’d gotten those years with her that I missed because of you. Even if I’d gotten fifty more years with her. A hundred. I wasn’t ever gonna be ready for this.”
Logan sat on the edge of a wicker chair.
“I blame you,” Frank said, “because it’s easy. If I don’t blame you, I gotta blame God. I gotta ask God how he coulda done something so cruel as to make her pregnant right when she was about to be mine.”
Logan stared out at the sea of red and orange and yellow leaves as the brisk autumn air chilled him. “You must’ve loved her,” Logan said, though he didn’t feel overly enthusiastic about the idea. Though he didn’t want to give Frank credit for that kind of humanity.
“I loved her more than anything. Still do.”
Logan wasn’t sure what to say. If anything. But he decided to say, “I love her, too.”
Frank didn’t answer or look at him. Logan rocked in his chair for a few minutes. Seemed like maybe their conversation was over. Frank stood, and Logan assumed the old man would go back inside. But he didn’t. He just stood on the porch facing Logan.
