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The first time Logan meets Lianne Mars, she's drunk.
Logan isn't terribly interested in Lily's pep squad friends; none of them wear black eyeliner or push-up bras. But he lets himself be cajoled into dinner at Veronica's house because Lily's "cool mom" -- the one who approves of her incessant experimentation with boys and red lipstick -- wants to meet the boy she likes. Logan would have gone anywhere with Lily after she said that.
Mrs. Mars opens the door with a tray of brownies in her hand. To a boy raised by housekeepers, this spectacle is fairly exotic, and he stares for a minute before he remembers why Lily's brought him here.
"Hi, Mrs. Mars!" he chirps, too smarmy but eager to please.
"Call me Lianne," she says, leaning down to offer him a brownie. That's when Logan smells the whiskey on her breath, and he instantly feels more at home.
At dinner, Logan's about to make a wisecrack about setting Lynn and Lianne up for a play date with a bottle of Jack when Lily leans over and whispers in his ear. Her breasts brush against his shoulder, and his thirteen-year-old brain promptly short circuits.
"Sssh," she breathes. "Veronica doesn't know her mom's a drunk."
She rolls her eyes toward Lianne, who's laughing too loudly and dancing to a song on the radio. Veronica's laughing with her, bumping their hips together while they bring dessert to the table. Keith Mars is looking on with a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.
So, for the second time that evening, his brain short circuits. How could anyone not know that their mom is an alcoholic? He can't remember a time when he hadn't known about Lynn's drinking. But then, he'd always had Trina to shove it in his face, and Aaron was only the overprotective type if a camera was around to record it. Keith Mars is apparently a different species of parent.
Mr. Mars gently but firmly pulls the beer can out of his wife's hand when she's had too many. Maybe after dinner he says, and Lianne smiles and says okay, honey even though she takes a sip of something in the fridge when she thinks nobody's looking. When dinner's over, Mr. Mars says why don't you let me wash the dishes like it's some magnanimous gesture to his overworked wife, and she says I think I'll turn in early. She kisses Veronica's forehead and slides an airplane bottle of tequila into her pocket on the way out. That's when Logan gets it: this is all some pre-arranged conspiracy to protect Veronica from her mother's drinking.
Logan finds the whole arrangement very exotic, even moreso than the Leave It To Beaver fantasy with the brownies at the front door. He's never been in a house like this, where the problems are obvious, but everyone functions like a family anyway. That, he thinks, must be what real love looks like. Becoming friends with Veronica is suddenly more than a way to get to second base with Lily; he wants to spend more time with the Mars family, just in case he can take them apart and see how they work.
***
Getting invited to the Mars house is easy. The summer after eighth grade, Call-Me-Lianne throws little parties where she gossips with the pep squad girls and never makes them turn the music down.
"You're mom's the coolest," one of the girls sighs, and Veronica answers with a smug, "I know."
Logan guesses that he and Lily are the only one who notice the little nips Lianne takes everytime she pops into the kitchen, ostensibly to get another tray of snacks.
"Any chance we could borrow a few refreshments?" he whispers. He figures a mom as determinedly cool as Lianne might be willing to share a wine cooler or two.
"Not a chance," Lily says, rolling her eyes as Lianne sprinkles parsley onto their spaghetti with an overlarge flourish. "This is the Sheriff's house, remember?"
***
When ninth grade starts, spending time with the Mars family gets more complicated. For one, Lily becomes Logan's girlfriend for real. The queen bed and the loosely guarded liquor cabinet in the Echolls poolhouse are a hell of a lot more interesting than the squeaky-clean get-togethers where only Mama Mars is allowed to have fun.
"You know I love you forever, right?" Lily asks Veronica when she turns down the third invitation of the school year.
"But I can't compete with orgasms, right?" Veronica says glibly, snapping her yellow locker shut.
"Nope," Lily agrees, threading her fingers through Logan's. Logan can feel himself blushing -- the whole macho thing is still new to him then -- but mostly he's proud he can do that to the hottest girl in school.
In October, Lily gets busted drinking at a party, and her social life dwindles to a few approved acquaintences, the Sheriff's daughter among them. That's how he and Lily end up at Veronica's Halloween party (with vodka in their water bottles, natch). That night, Call-Me-Lianne is drinking openly in front of Veronica's friends for the first time Logan can remember. Every time she finishes a can of Bud, she announces loudly that it's time for another beer. A few of the girls snicker, but most of them don't notice -- except Veronica, who looks at her mother with a furrowed brow when she laughs too loudly.
"Think she notices?" Logan asks. Veronica watching has become something of a hobby for them, though not in a mean-spirited way. They've both agreed she's oddly fascinating in comparison to the cynical attitude adopted even by the tweens of their zip code.
"Our little girl is growing up," Lily says with a sigh. She shrugs. "Guess you can't stay innocent forever."
Still, Logan takes the candy bowl when Lianne's effusiveness starts weirding out the trick-or-treaters, and at the end of the night, Lily clutches Veronica's wrist and says, "Come on, Ronnie, you're sleeping over at my place tonight."
The next time he goes to the Mars house, there's a refrigerator magnet with the Serenity Prayer, and no more beer in the fridge. The magnet stays there through the winter, but Logan finds a bottle of vodka under the kitchen sink when Call-Me-Lianne asks him to take out the trash.
That January is the first time he hears Veronica mention her parents and divorce in the same sentence.
Lily just rolls her eyes and says, "Frankly, Veronica, I think the world could use a little more divorce. Celeste might wake up a little if she got a new man inside her. Right, Duncan?"
"Excuse me?" Duncan asks, turning red, and Lily shakes her head.
"Don't mind him, Ronnie," she says. "Duncan just wants to grow up and marry his high school sweetheart. Boring." Then she loops her arm around Veronica's shoulders, pulling her close until their heads are touching over their copy of Seventeen. "It'll be okay, Veronica," she says. "You'll see."
***
It's spring break, ten o'clock on a Monday morning, and Lianne Mars is wasted.
"Phew, Mama Mars!" Lily exclaims when Lianne opens the door. "Looks like you've been a busy little bee this morning!"
Lily brushes past Lianne and pulls Logan aside in the hallway. "You distract Lianne, I'll take Veronica," she says.
"Plan Alpha engaged," Logan says with a smirk. The truth is, he doesn't get what would be so terrible about Veronica seeing her mother drunk; if he cried into his Cheerios every time Lynn was drunk (or high, or half passed out) at the breakfast table, he probably would have committed suicide by now. Still, he wanders obediently toward the kitchen, where Lianne is making a stumbling attempt at pancake batter.
"You know, you really ought to save some of this for lunch," he says, gesturing at the bottle of kahlua on the kitchen counter.
Lianne shoots him an exasperated look. "Very funny, Mr. Echolls," she says, one hand on her hip. "I must've left this out last night."
While she puts it away, Logan pours out her cup of coffee and makes a fresh one with enough cream and sugar to make her believe it's filled with Bailey's.
"I refilled your coffee, Lianne," he says, saccharine sweet. He expects an absent-minded thank you, but Lianne smiles beatifically.
"Well, aren't you sweet?" she says, and Logan can almost believe she would have been that nice even if she were sober. "I'll make you kids some pancakes," she says, reaching for the bowl of batter on the counter, but Logan takes it hastily.
"Uh, why don't you let me do that?" he says even though he doesn't have the faintest clue how to go about it. Lynn pretty much never gets the urge to cook, drunk or sober, but Logan has a feeling that drunk people and hot stoves don't really mix -- and so, for the first time in his life, Logan makes something more complicated than microwave popcorn.
As drunks go, Lianne Mars is pretty easy-going, nothing like the raging egomaniac that Dick's dad turns into (though, to be fair, Richard Casablancas, Sr. prefers his scotch with a couple lines of coke on the side). And, unlike Lynn, Lianne doesn't seem to anesthetize herself with booze. She chatters away at Logan while he cooks, alternating slightly disjointed tales about her freshman year with reasonably coherent cooking tips.
To be honest, he'd be willing to do this every morning -- which is probably why he can't resist making a crack as soon as Lily and Veronica emerge from the back of the house.
"Thanks Lianne," he says with a smile too wide for any (sober) person to mistake as sincere. "This is really going to come in handy next time our housekeeper has to take the day off."
As Logan Echolls insults go, this one barely even stings, but Veronica's face still falls, and Lily punches him in the arm. Honestly, he's not sure why he should feel bad. Veronica's not really his friend, just someone he hangs out with because of Lily. Yeah, she lets him copy her math homework sometimes, but Logan puts up with her near-constant presence when he'd rather be fooling around with his girlfriend. They're even, as far as he's concerned.
Of course, when Lily's pissed off, she really doesn't give a shit how logical Logan's reasoning is.
Celeste picks them up later that afternoon, and Lily wheels around to face him on the front porch of the Kane house as soon as her mother's gone inside.
"Apologize, asshole," she says, with arms crossed over her chest and fire in her eyes.
"I'm sorry I insulted Veronica," he says dutifully.
"Not to me, dumbass," Lily says and goes in the house, slamming the door in her face. Then, to make sure he's punished as thoroughly as possible, she calls Trina to pick him up. All in all, it's a lot of fucking trouble for a one-liner, and what is Logan supposed to say to Veronica anyway? Sorry I only need to cook when our housekeeper's not around, and by the way, would you like to trade drunks with me? See if you prefer the indifferent Echolls model to your friendly family alcoholic.
Of course, if he actually says that, it’s just going to be him and his right hand from now on, so it’s not much of a choice. The next time he sees Veronica at school, he leans against her locker and says, “Sorry for that thing I said last week.”
Veronica shrugs and says it’s fine in that special girl way that means nothing is fine. But, hey, he’d done his job, right? It’s not his fault if Veronica refuses to accept the apology.
Lily accepts his token offering -- probably because she doesn’t like being alone with her right hand anymore than he does -- and it seems like everything is good. For a couple days, anyway. Then he takes her hand in the hallway, and she storms away with an eyeroll and a muttered as if. He tries to make eye contact with Veronica -- she’s usually the one who helps out with these sorts of situations -- but she pretends not to see him. Shit, he thinks.
It’s sixth hour before he swallows enough pride to apologize for real. He catches up to her on the way to English and hands her a chocolate chip cookie filched from Dick’s lunch (no way was he giving up his own dessert, even to get back into Lily’s good graces).
“I’m sorry for what I said last week, Veronica,” he says, giving her a pleading look.
“Why?” Veronica shoots back. “Because you don’t know how you pissed off Lily?”
“Yes, that,” Logan says, figuring that there’s no point denying the truth. “But also because I was being an asshole when your mom was being nice.”
“Hmm,” Veronica murmurs, nibbling on the cookie.
“So do you think you could, you know…”
“Forgive you? Tell you how to get back in Lily’s pants?” Veronica asks, smiling sweetly. She stops in the doorway of her classroom and shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
Okay, so sweet little Veronica Mars has more backbone than he thought. Lesson learned. In the morning, after Lily's hung up on him twice, Logan's waiting at Veronica's locker.
"I need your help, Veronica," he says, not even trying to hide his desperation. "Please."
Veronica gives him a self-satisfied little smile. "Lily says you're welcome ogle as many girls as you like at pep squad practice, but you'd better make sure you stare at her ass for twice as long as anyone else's."
"What? Does she have a stopwatch or something?" Logan asks.
Veronica shrugs, looking sympathetic. "I didn't say it was reasonable," she says, shoving her books into her locker. "But that's how Lily feels."
Later, Logan will look back and realize that was the first time he owed Veronica Mars.
***
The summer between freshman and sophomore year is when Logan really starts to think of Veronica as his friend, not just Lily's BFF or Duncan's perpetual crush.
That summer, Logan gets his license and a car with a roomy backseat...that he can't use because Jake and Celeste keep quarantining their offspring for family game night, which Lily insists is a front to keep Duncan away from Veronica.
Logan's playing video games by himself when his phone rings. He dives to retrieve it from the couch cushions, thinking that Lily had somehow escaped, but when he picks up the phone, it's Veronica's voice.
"Hey, Logan?" Veronica's voice is small. "Could you, um, come pick me up? I-I didn't know who else to call. "
In the background, Logan thinks he hears someone crying, and possibly the sound of dishes shattering.
"Yeah," he says hastily, shoving his feet into his sneakers. "I'll be there in fifteen."
Logan arrives at a very different version of the Mars house than he's seen before. Veronica only opens the door the door a few inches, but it's enough for him to see a red-faced Lianne standing in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by the remnants of several broken plates.
"Veronica! You are not leaving this house! Do you hear me?" Lianne's voice is slurred, but it's still plenty loud.
She's walking purposefully toward Veronica, so Logan pushes the door open and positions himself between them without thinking about it.
"Actually, Veronica's leaving now," he says. He spins Veronica around as gently as he can manage and gives her a little shove through the door before Lianne has time to react. Then, as an afterthought, he snatches Lianne's keys off the kitchen table before he follows Veronica onto the front porch. At the bottom of the steps, Veronica turns and looks back. Lianne is standing in front of the still-open door, practically doubled over with the force of her sobs.
"Is she going to be okay?" Veronica asks. Her eyes fill up, but none of the tears spill over.
Logan takes breath, fumbling for something better than a platitude. "She'll sleep it off," he says finally. He nudges Veronica gently. "Come on, let's get out of here."
In the safety of his car, he asks, "Does that happen often?"
Veronica licks her lips. "Dad's had to work the night shift a lot."
So yeah, then. That happens every time Mr. Mars is away. Suddenly Logan can see what an idiot he's been: he's fallen for the Aaron Echolls routine. Put on a happy face for visitors, and all the kids will believe you're parent of the year. They'll be so jealous in fact, they'll wish they had someone at home just like you.
"It's not usually that bad," Veronica says, and Logan sees her wipe her eyes. "I just...thought Dad shouldn't have to be the only one to talk to her about her drinking, you know?" She smiles wryly. "I guess you can tell how well that went."
"It's good you tried," Logan says, trying to remember if anyone had ever had an intervention for Lynn. He comes up blank.
When they arrive at the Echolls house, Logan leads her straight back to the pool house, not bothering to even go through the front door.
"Are you going to get in trouble for this?" Veronica asks, standing uncertainly in the doorway.
"Ah, no," Logan says, repressing a laugh.
"Are you sure?" Veronica asks, still hesitant.
"In theory, having girls in the pool house is against the rules. In reality, my mom's going to pass out in, oh, thirty minutes if she hasn't already," Logan says.
Their eyes meet, and he watches Veronica's understanding slowly dawn. He's afraid for a minute that they're going to have to talk about their mothers' shared affliction, but Veronica just nods and curls up in a corner of the couch. He tosses her the remote and doesn't even complain when she turns on something with Audrey Hepburn.
Holly Golightly is looking for her lost cat when Veronica suddenly asks, "Do you not care that your mom drinks?"
Logan looks over at her. She's not looking at him, but he can see that her eyes are puffy and red again. He takes a breath, considering. It's not that he doesn't care that his mom drinks; if he had the choice, he'd rather see her happy and sober. It's more that other things bother him more, like her tendency to sit idly by while Aaron beats the shit out of him.
"I think this is the only place she doesn't have to put up a front," he says, looking out across the bright blue pool and the thick iron gate beyond it. It's not really an answer, but it's as deep as he can go without talking about Aaron.
Veronica nods and passes him the remote. "Your turn to pick," she says.
When Veronica falls asleep in the middle of "Apocalypse Now," he covers her up with an afghan and stays awake through the next Scorcese flick. By then, the first golden rays are looming on the horizon, and Logan gently shakes her awake.
"Hey, do I need to sneak you back before your dad gets home?" he asks.
Veronica shakes her head, rubbing sleep from the corner of her eye. "He knows I'm here," she says. "I called before I left."
Logan has a hard time envisioning Sheriff Mars letting his precious daughter spend the night in a boy's pool house, but he shows up to collect Veronica at six fifteen and his gun isn't drawn and the sirens aren't blazing.
When Veronica is safely ensconced in the patrol car, Mr. Mars pulls Logan aside.
"Thank you for taking care of my daughter," he says, looking more tired than he should, even after an overnight shift.
Logan fishes Lianne's keys out of his pocket. He notices for the first time that a silver cross and a little inscription of the serenity prayer is dangling from the chain.
"I took these," he says, feeling awkward. "So she wouldn't..."
Mr. Mars nods, taking the keys from Logan's outstretched hand. "You're a good kid, Logan," he says, squeezing Logan's shoulder. "Let me know if you ever need anything."
***
After that night, picking up Veronica becomes a more than occasional job.
Sometimes Lily calls him and says, "Be a dear and pick up our little sister?" Her voice is barely above a whisper, and Logan can guess that Celeste has confiscated her keys and her phone for some real or imagined sin.
Other times, Duncan calls and asks if he can check on Veronica, who became persona non grata at the Kane house the instant that she and Duncan went on their first official date. Nobody really understands the reason, but it's obvious that Celeste won't let him out of the house for late night errands to the Mars house.
Eventually, Logan just gets in the habit of calling Veronica when her dad's working the night shift. Whole weeks will pass when everything is happy and good. He'll here music playing in the background and Lianne laughing, and at school Veronica will confide that she's gone to six AA meetings and there's no more vodka under the kitchen sink.
And then, just when Logan will think he can stop calling, Veronica will answer the phone with a hushed "hang on," and he can picture her going in the bathroom and closing the door before she hesitantly asks for a ride.
That's how she comes to be at the Echolls house the night his mom almost OD's.
His parents are in one of their rare phases of enforcing rules, so he leads Veronica into the living room. He figures his mom might be good for one half-hearted reminder that it's too late to have girls over before she passes out, which won't actually be such a big deal.
Instead it's Trina who interrupts Logan and Veronica's movie watching routine.
"Hey, little brother," she says. "You might want to go see why Mommy Dearest is barfing her guts out."
"Trying to get me to leave so you can steal another Faberge egg?" Logan asks. He only bothers to look at her to make sure she won't refocus her attention on Veronica, who's curled up in the corner of the couch.
"Suit yourself," Trina says with a shrug. "But when she's dead tomorrow morning, just remember that I tried to tell you, okay?"
Logan has a hard time imagining that anything bad is actually happening; his mom's quite the pro with pills and alcohol, so she probably hasn't barfed since high school. Even so, he finds a barf bowl in the kitchen just in case she needs it.
He's not prepared for the scene he finds in the bathroom. There's an orange pill bottle on the floor and a few pills scattered on the white tile in front of an empty bottle of Tanqueray. His mom is lying next to the bathtub, pale and barely breathing, surrounded by a pool of vomit. Logan knows he's supposed to be doing something, but he can't think what.
He dimly registers hearing footsteps behind him, and then Veronica is pressing a phone into his hand, saying, "Logan, you need to talk to my dad."
Logan puts the phone to his ear, still not quite sure what he's doing. It's like he's the one who's high and passed out on the bathroom floor, because it doesn't seem like any of this is actually happening.
Mr. Mars' voice is calm and firm. "Logan, listen to me. This is very serious. An ambulance is on its way. You need to turn your mother on her side and monitor her breathing. Stay with her, and send Veronica to unlock the front door and open the gate."
The rest of the night passes in a blur.
He tries to follow the ambulance, and Veronica forces him to pull over and give her the keys.
Adjusting the seat and the mirrors for someone a foot shorter than him takes for fucking ever, and afterward, Veronica insists on driving twenty-five miles an hour while swearing she's going as fast as she can. He remembers laughing, and Veronica shooting him concerned looks at every stop sign.
A doctor tells him that his mother will be fine and something about a psych hold. He calls the family lawyer and his dad's manager because apparently those numbers are in his speed dial.
Veronica stands at his elbow, and Keith Mars shows up just after two o'clock. Apparently law enforcement officials who barely know him can leave their jobs, but his own father can't leave the set.
He walks out of the hospital in a haze of flashbulbs, pushing his mom's wheelchair toward an anonymous town car.
Back at home, he flushes pills down the toilet and pours out every bottle of liquor he can find. Then he falls asleep on the floor next to his mother's bed just as the sun comes up.
***
Logan wakes up with his face mushed into the carpet and a wet spot of drool on the floor next to him. He rolls over to look at his mom, but the bed is empty, and he hears faint conversation and silverware scraping against plates downstairs.
He makes his way toward the dining room with sandy eyes. His father is sitting at the head of the table. There are pancakes and bacon and sausages and fruit and waffles -- all prepared by the housekeeper, naturally -- and his mother is sitting ramrod straight next to Aaron, her face pale underneath all her lipstick and eyeliner.
"I didn't know you were coming home, Dad," he says, sharpening the last word till it's a barb. His mother tenses, but Logan doesn't really care.
"How could I not?" Aaron says, looking affronted, as if he hadn't been angry to have been interrupted on set last night by a troublesome phone call about his almost-dead wife. Logan sees a National Enquirer folded next to his father's breakfast plate. AGING STARLET OVERDOSES, the headline reads. So that was why his father was home: damage control.
Aaron shifts the paper aside and casually drops a napkin on top of it. "Now tell me what happened here last night," he says.
People say his mom's a shitty actress, but they've never seen her perform at the breakfast table. She smiles and squeezes Aaron's hand. "It was nothing, darling. Logan just over-reacted."
"I didn't over-react, Mom," Logan says carefully, like he's explaining something a child. "You almost died."
"I am so sorry I scared you that way," his mom says, reaching out for his hand. He pulls it back even though he can feel his father watching him. She shakes her head and turns to Aaron. "It's just what I said. I had a couple glasses of wine with Sadie Casablancas, and I guess I had one too many. Then I took my Xanax like usual." She shrugs her shoulders and giggles, the same way she did when she'd totaled the Jag last summer. "Accidents happen, I guess."
Aaron nods, satisfied, and Logan hears him say something rousing about keeping thier heads up and not minding what the tabloids say. His mom stacks a plate with waffles and bacon and fruit slices and puts it down in front of him.
"Well, whatever the circumstances, I'm glad to see you both," Aaron says. He lays a hand on top of his wife's.
"How touching," Logan says, sawing his waffle into perfect squares. His father looks at him sharply.
"How's school, son?" he asks. Logan knows a warning when he hears one -- not that he ever heeds them.
"Is this what we're doing?" Logan asks, his voice halfway breaking. "Acting like everything is normal?"
"Everything is normal, sweetie," his mother says, sounding a little desperate. He can hear the layer of meaning underneath: don't antagonize your father.
"Mom almost died last night," he says, and hasn't he said that once this morning already? He's standing up now, even though he didn't mean to, his whole body coursing with adrenaline and anger and something else that feels like it's going to break him in two. "She's an addict, Dad! She's high all the time - you'd know if you were ever here. We need to get her help or she's going to die!"
Then Trina is downstairs, looking gleesful, and his father is standing up, looming. Maybe he says don't talk about your mother that way, son, or maybe Logan just fills in the blanks because they're repeated variations of this scene so many times over the years. It ends just like it always does: Trina cackling, his mom looking confused, and Logan picking the biggest belt out of his father's closet. Just another Sunday morning at the Echolls house.
***
Logan ditches school for three days after that. He doesn't want to face Duncan's bland facade, or Lily bitching about his man periods when he doesn't feel like fooling around. But most of all, he doesn't want to face Veronica, whose father takes off work for other people's children. Veronica who can be so nice no matter what kind of drunk she comes home to every night. Veronica who gets to keep hoping her mom will get better because her whole family loves each other so damn much and golly gee, they're just going to keep on trying.
On Wednesday, when he comes home from surfing, unabashedly dripping water all over the carpet, his mother's waiting on the couch with a drink in her hand. Her dress is red and tight, wholly inappropriate for sitting around in the house, and shopping bags are laying at her feet. He can guess what she's been doing: out showing the paps how normal her life is.
"Logan, the attendance office called," she says, posing on the sofa like some nineteen fifies photograph of booze-soaked domesticity. "Don't you think it's time you went back to school? Put this little incident behind us?"
"Normal is the watchword," he mutters, and his mother smiles beatifically.
"Glad to hear it," she says. Then her brow furrows -- or at least, Logan thinks it does. It's hard to tell with all the botox. "And honey, could you try not to drip all over the carpet? It makes so much work for Leticia."
***
At school, Duncan claps him on the back and says, "Everything okay?"
Logan says, "Yeah, man," and they appoint Duncan's bedroom as the location of their next video game and junk food binge.
Lily kisses him on the mouth long enough and hard enough to earn whistles and applause, which could mean I'm sorry your mom OD'd or I want to fuck in the janitor's closet now, please. Or both, Logan thinks. The two aren't really mutually exclusive.
And Veronica leaves rehab brochures in his locker, just like she'd promised back at the hospital, when they both assumed a treatment program was the next logical option. He sweeps them out onto the floor and watches his fellow sheep trample them. Then he refuses to even look at Veronica for the rest of the week.
Saturday rolls around, and Lily's grounded twice over for getting caught hotwiring the family car after Celeste had taken the keys away. Duncan's staying in to help Lily not kill their mother, and Logan's about to go out to some party when he remembers that Veronica's dad is working tonight. He picks up his keys and walks out to the car. Then he sighs and dials her number on his cell.
"Is your mom okay?" he asks.
"Yeah," she says brightly. "She's going back to meetings, and if it doesn't work this time, she says she'll go to rehab."
Logan tries to picture how that had gone down. Had there been a healthy, wholesome family meeting around the dining table? Did Keith and Lianne talk behind closed doors and inform young Veronica of their decision? He really wants to know, but if he asks, it'll only sound sarcastic, and he didn't call to start a fight.
"How's your mom?" Veronica asks when the silence has stretched on too long.
"Alright, I guess. Fairly pickled." He looks back toward the kitchen window, where he can see his mom silhouetted with a few of her fellow Stepford Wives, no doubt discussing the latest in lip injections.
"Are you alright?" Veronica asks, and Logan leans against the door of his car and tries to figure out the answer.
"Dandy," he says finally, and hangs up the phone.
***
The week after, Lily cancels their plans for some bullshit reason -- again -- and he kisses whats-her-face at a party. And Veronica just has to come back for her fucking handbag and witness the exact thirty seconds his lips are pressed against someone else's.
"Fuck," he says because he already knows what's coming.
So it's not like he didn't know Veronica would tell Lily. With Lily, you always had to pick sides, and Veronica always chose Lily. Lily was a girl; Lily was her best friend; Lily had been there the longest and they painted each other's nails and braided each other's hair. Most of all, Lily did not forgive lapses of loyalty among her followers. And Logan accepted this, because he of all people knew what it was like to spin in Lily's orbit.
Still, after everything he and Veronica have been through, he had expected something -- if not a chance to confess to Lily himself, at least a warning about what Veronica plans to say. Mostly he expects a little sympathy, some acknowledgement that after all the cheating he'd ignored, a little kiss at a party was actually not all that bad.
Instead he gets nothing except an occasional regretful look in the hall.
It's the kind of teenage disagreement that would have blown over in a few weeks, if Lily hadn't died and Logan hadn't been there to save her. There's no satisfaction in blaming a dead girl for her own fickleness, and there's no credible murder suspect to take his wrath, so he turns all his fury on Veronica. Because her betrayal still stung, because he could have been there if she hadn't told, and most of all because it's easy.
***
Years later, when he calls Veronica cold and hard and unforgiving, he knows it's a lie. She'd forgiven him for everything he'd done the year after Lily died: telling half of Neptune about her mom's little problem, bringing date rape drugs to the party, laughing while strangers licked salt off her body instead of calling her father or the police.
Of course, he doesn't really think about that until the Navy makes successful completion of anger management training a condition of enlistment. Apparently, they don't let hotheads fly eighty million dollar aircraft packed to the brim with explosives. After that comes the substance abuse prevention course because surviving his first deployment without alcohol is way harder than it should be, and he walks into a Navy shrink's office and says, "I think I might have a problem."
So do a lot of people in the Navy, apparently. Logan is not the first dysfunctional orphan with daddy issues to wash up on their shores. There's a procedure to stop being a tempermental asshole and a borderline alcoholic, and Logan follows it, and then the Navy forgives him for everything he's ever done. It feels like the first time anyone has forgiven him for anything, and then he remembers Veronica.
Four years and uncountable therapy sessions later, he wonders how much stress his drinking put on their relationship, if she held him to impossibly high standards because she was already overlooking the wobbly line he was walking in their mothers' footsteps. He knows one thing for certain: they were children pretending to be adults, and they had been since they were about twelve. He can barely remember a time when the only problem in their lives was their mothers' drinking and Aaron's ready fists. In a single year, Veronica had solved her best friend's murder, her own rape, and the murder of eight of their classmates. Was it any wonder if she couldn't forgive him anything? She already had to forgive the world for a lot, just to keep on living in it.
The Navy encourages writing letters at the beginning of every deployment, just in case you don't make it back. The thing with Veronica is unfinished business of the worst kind, but he can't bring himself to write any of it down just yet. Instead he starts writing letters to the people he's lost.
The first one starts, Dear Lily, but he doesn't get any further than that. Lily's probably already reincarnated and raising hell somewhere, and anyway, he'd lost her so long ago that he'd let go of everything he might once have said.
The next one is for his father.
Dear Dad,
The truth is, I never stopped loving you, no matter what you did to me or Lily. But I still hope you're burning in hell.
He doesn't sign it, and he burns it with his grandfather's LIVE FREE lighter. Symbolism and all.
The one to his mother is harder.
Dear Mom,
I want you to know that I forgive myself for being angry with you right up until the day you died. Aaron wasn't easy on either of us, but you could have done more to protect me. But I forgive you too because I never could win a fight with him either. I think you did the best you could for me, even when it wasn't very much. Most of all, I wish you had told me how bad things were for you. If I had known, I could have helped you -- or at least I could have tried, and you would have known how much you were loved. Maybe a little part of me will always be mad at you for not giving me that chance, but I'm old enough now to know that even while you were trying to be my mother, you were also a person who hurt very badly, and you were very ill. I don't honestly know what happens to people when they die, but I hope that wherever you are, you know that you're more than your money and your reputation -- and I choose to believe that you can hear these words somehow, and they make whatever burden you carry a little lighter.
He decides not to write to Veronica. He believes they'll see each other again.