And then…Boss barks.
I head out into the living room, and he’s climbed up on the chair by the bay window. The same chair where I waited for Logan when he was coming to see the apartment. Boss is snarling and barking, but his tail is wagging a million miles an hour. Just on the other side of the glass, with his wet, wide nose against it, is Chewie. But I’m more interested in Logan, who is standing just to the left of his dog. He looks like hell. His hair is disheveled, his beard unkempt, his skin pale except for under his blue eyes where he’s got some serious dark circles. “Can I come in?” he mouths.
I nod and walk to the door and pull it open. Chewie comes bounding in, right past me to Boss, who yaps and jumps in pure glee. The excitement of our dogs is a complete juxtaposition to the mood emanating from both of us.
“Chewie, calm down,” Logan says sharply. His dog looks up, big brown eyes confused. I rub his head and look back up to Logan.
“We need to talk.”
“Yes. We do,” I say, and he closes the front door. I motion for him to follow me into the living room. Neither one of us sits down though. We just stand there, him in front of the couch and me by the chair. “Better late than never, I guess?”
“I’m sorry.”
I wait for more. For something that takes this sickening feeling from the center of my heart. He shoves his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “I had a panic attack.”
“That lasted almost two weeks?”
“No. But kind of. I’ve been struggling to keep it together since that night. Really struggling,” he says.
“Why? Because I didn’t tell you I was a widow? That’s a deal breaker?” My voice is strained.
“No. It’s complicated.” He stops speaking and takes a step closer to me. His skin is pale, his eyes filled with pain. I can feel it, whatever is eating away at him, like it’s an object in the room. It’s that intense. And now that sickening feeling in the deep center of my heart, the feeling I thought was caused over his repulsion and rejection of me, is now shifting into something else. Something much more ominous.
“I can handle your pain. Your struggles with money or horrible ex-relatives or anything else,” he says, and his voice is so tight it’s like a guitar string about to snap. He’s struggling to hold himself together. “We’re adults. Life gets complicated and messy, and I won’t run from that. Not when staying put means being with you.”
He steps toward me and reaches for me but I step away. “Then why the hell have you evaporated from my life? You didn’t answer texts or calls. You didn’t come home. Why?”
He steps into my space again and reaches out and wraps his fingers around my wrist, gently tugging my hands from the pockets of my cardigan. He instantly laces his fingers with mine and despite everything, I step closer. Now our bodies are almost touching. His body relaxes, shoulders dropping, fingers loosening. But his expression looks fearful, like he’s in the front car of a rollercoaster cresting the monstrous peak before a plummeting drop…and his safety belt is broken. And that makes me feel like the girl in a horror movie heading upstairs to check out a noise. I’m moving towards something horrible. I canfeelit.
He takes a deep breath and exhales. “You poured your heart out to me that night, and I owe you the same. I’ve been keeping secrets from you too. Some I knew about…others were being kept for me.”
“Logan, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say and then it hits me. “Is this about your alcoholism? Did you…are you drinking again?”
“I’m not off the wagon,” he promises and squeezes my fingers laced with his. I reach up and cup the side of his face. He closes his eyes momentarily, like a flutter, and then looks me straight in the eye. “When I was off the wagon, when I was in the throes of alcoholism, I was in a car crash.” He pauses and closes his eyes, gently untangling his hand from mine. After taking a deep breath he continues. “I was in the car that hit you and Jackson.”
I drop my hand from his cheek. “No you weren’t. Why would you say that?”
“I was,” he replies, and I am about to open my mouth and tell him he’s insane because I was there. I know who killed Jackson. I know he was alone in the car. But then Logan speaks again. He speaks the name I have only ever heard once and never wanted to hear again. “You were hit by Bryan Liddel in Wells Beach, on Route One at approximately four thirty the afternoon of October tenth. I had been drinking with Bryan all day. I was the one who wanted to go to the bar in Wells because they never cut us off. I was in the car with him when he hit you.”
“How is that…no. It’s not possible,” I say firmly. Why would he say such lies? What the hell is he trying to do—destroy me? “No. No one ever mentioned a passenger. The police would have said something.”
“The police decided I wasn’t of importance in the case because I was passed out,” he says. “But Jackson’s familydidknow. And my family paid the Turner family two hundred grand to help with medical and funeral costs and to keep my name out of the media. I was in medical school. Our family has a business that relies on the community. They were trying to save me and the family from being branded by this mistake forever.”
My chest is so tight I can’t take a deep breath, and my skin feels too hot, like you can cook an egg on it. “Jackson died and money was the answer?”
I can’t just stand here. I have to move. I step away from him and start to pace around the room. I feel helpless and angry and so filled with rage. Logan is being ripped from me. My life…the happiness I had with him, is being savagely torn away with every word he spills. “My family didn’t know what else to do.”
“They could have stopped it from happening. Stopped you from drinking with him that day. You could have stopped him from driving. From destroying my life!” I’m screaming now. Tears spill onto my cheeks. Boss jumps to his feet from where he had curled up next to Chewie and starts to growl.
“I was passed out in the car, so I didn’t know Bryan decided to drive, but if I was conscious, I might not have stopped him. I never did before.” He looks like his own words might make him throw up and I don’t blame him. I can’t…I can’t absorb them myself without wanting to be sick. He takes a deep breath that makes his shoulders shake and continues. “But I didn’t know anyone was in the car with your husband. No one told me, and then I was shipped off to rehab in Florida, so I never saw any newspaper reports or anything,” Logan says and lifts his hands to his lips, almost like he’s praying. “I’m not making excuses I’m just telling you the facts.”
“You passed out in the car?”
“I was passed out after I puked in the bar and got kicked out. Bryan must have just gotten in the car and driven off without waking me up,” Logan says. “I know that means nothing, and I have always told myself it doesn’t let me off the hook. My guilt over that day has never left and never will. Now I’m more crippled by it than ever. That’s why I couldn’t face you. You deserved to know the truth but I was too much of a fucking coward to say it. I needed time.”
His eyes are swimming in unshed tears. He reaches out to me, but I back away. “I am spinning out of control emotionally,” I tell him in a hoarse, quivering voice. “I don’t know which way is up. I need time to process this. Alone.”
“I understand.” He nods and walks toward the front door. Chewie follows. “I love you.”
