Chapter Text
I. Monday
Logan would have been just as happy spending Christmas alone. He would have been just as unhappy spending Christmas with his grandparents. In a discussion of quantum singularities, where everything squeezed down to nothing, the little distinctions didn't mean much.
Except he'd promised.
He wasn't sure what to expect after that bombshell, but it sure wasn't an invitation for Christmas. He blinked at the phone.
"I can't leave," he repeated. "Did you miss the part where —"
"I won't have you spending Christmas by yourself," Grandma Isabel cut him off. As if Logan's ankle locator was no more an obstacle than his making with the, "Oh no, I couldn't possibly!" out of politeness; like he was turning down a second piece of cake. As if he'd ever be that polite. "Don't worry," she added. "Your Uncle John is an attorney. We'll sort something out."
He was silent.
"Logan?"
"Yeah."
"Promise me you'll come for Christmas. Please?"
"Sure," Logan said, knowing he wouldn't, that they wouldn't really try all that hard, that there was nothing they could do anyway — and being very surprised three days later, when a thick packet of legal papers arrived via Fed Ex, certifying his grandparents had posted a hefty bond and assumed full legal custody of him over Winter Break.
How the hell had they pulled that one off? Black magic? Possibly. He wouldn't rule it out, considering where they lived: Arkham, Massachusetts, a tiny college town nestled amid darkly wooded hills. Parallel universe; nexus of all things ephemeral and bizarre.
On Monday, Deputy Sachs came over to the Neptune Grand. While Logan propped himself on the arm of the couch, the deputy crouched down and unlocked Logan's locator cuff, looking like he'd caught a whiff of something truly nasty.
"I knew someday my prince would come," Logan sighed.
Sachs eyed Logan balefully as he got to his feet. "You make a run for Canada, and your grandparents wind up in jail. For the one or two seconds when you're not thinking about yourself, remember that."
"Right. Like I'd flee to Canada. Besides — lest we forget — I'm innocent, and your star witness is a liar."
"We'll see about that."
"Yeah. We will."
By evening, Logan was on a red eye out of San Diego International.
***
II. Tuesday
United Airlines Flight Seven touched down at twenty after ten in the morning. The walk to the terminal was hideous. It was cold. Incredibly cold. Grandma Isabel warned Logan it would be cold. She'd told him to bundle up. Logan himself had endured a few shivering minutes of a Massachusetts snowstorm last summer, and yet the balmy California "winter" still lulled him into forgetting how cold the cold could really get. The suede jacket that was fine for walking from the lobby of the Neptune Grand to his car with his fists balled in the pockets — that wasn't doing shit. Wind sliced across the tarmac, through his jacket and his heaviest sweatshirt, through his skin and into his muscles. His jaw hurt from clenching his teeth to stop them from chattering. He'd always thought those numbers at the bottom of the thermometer were just there for show. But, freezing and below? All quite useful to measure exactly how unbelievably fucking cold it was.
He made it to the terminal. Barely. The heat inside Arkham International Airport was cranked up so high, all the windows were veiled in steam. Logan continued to shiver. His muscles ached from being held tight; his face and his hands stung as the feeling returned. He glanced around the terminal, and he spotted his Aunt Eleanor.
"Sh-shit," he whispered.
She'd never been anything except polite, but she didn't like him. Last summer, her children had nearly gotten drowned, eaten, and lost through a rip in time, all thanks to Logan. He wouldn't be hired for any babysitting gigs chez Crane, that was for sure. Not to mention he was a constant reminder of his dead mother, Eleanor's sister. That had never seemed to bother the grandparents, but Logan was their long-lost grandbaby, and they were, well... out of their minds, for starters.
Eleanor Crane was almost as tall as Logan, rosy-cheeked from the winter air and, as far as he could tell, not the slightest bit cold. She smiled when she saw him, and hurried over with a shaggy, brindled monster-dog loping beside her on a leash. It made Backup look like a teacup poodle, but it sat down on its massive haunches and gazed up at Logan gravely, tail sweeping the floor.
"Logan, you poor thing." Eleanor bussed him on the cheek. "You're half frozen!"
"Nine-t-tenths."
She held out a brown wool coat with a heavy sheepskin lining. "Mom said you wouldn't have any proper winter clothes. You're just about John's size. This ought to fit you. Gloves are in the pockets."
Logan slipped the coat on over his own jacket. The more layers between him and the ice planet Hoth, the happier he'd be. "Thanks."
"Don't give it a thought. This is Farley." The dog scrambled up at the sound of his name, ears pricked. "Don't worry. He won't bite."
Logan reached down (he didn't even have to lean over) and tussled Farley's floppy ears. The dog pressed himself against Logan's side, wiggling and panting ecstatically. Eleanor handed him the leash. "Here, you hang onto Farley, and I'll get your suitcase."
"No, I can —"
His aunt tossed her blonde hair over one shoulder and strode off to collect his luggage with a brisk purpose that reminded him of his cousin Jeanette, her daughter.
Never mind, he thought.
Logan and Farley followed Eleanor. Farley looked slightly insulted at being on a leash at all. He kept pace beside Logan without lagging or yanking. Nothing in the terminal distracted him, except for an elderly lady in a puffy turquoise parka who passed them cradling a massive ham in both arms like a baby. Even then, the dog only turned his head. (To be fair, so did Logan.)
Eleanor issued a firm, "Put your gloves on," hustled Logan out of the airport, and into a silver Ford Explorer. Farley leapt into the back, and immediately squeezed himself between the two front seats, perching his gigantic head on Logan's shoulder like Long John Silver's parrot.
What is it with me and the dogs? Logan wondered.
"Farley, sit!"
"I don't mind." Logan scratched the wolfhound's muzzle.
"He'll drool all over you."
"It's your husband's coat."
"Good point." Aunt Eleanor pulled out of her parking space, dodged around a blue Jeep with its hazards flashing. The Jeep's driver, a kid about Logan's own age, beeped his horn, and Logan expected him to flip Eleanor the bird — but the two of them exchanged cheery waves; his aunt rolled down her window and shouted, "Merry Christmas, George!"
"Merry Christmas, Mizz Crane!"
Eleanor pulled out onto Highway One, and headed for Arkham, threading a narrow canyon between broken escarpments of gray, dirty snow. She drove like The Transporter. Obviously, this was where Logan's younger cousins had inherited their total disregard for personal safety.
Pot, meet kettle, he thought.
"How was your flight?"
"Plane didn't crash."
"Is that good or bad?"
"I'll let you know."
Eleanor snorted, then said, "I'm sorry Jeanette and John Ross weren't able to come along. They're in school. But, there was some fierce lobbying, believe me. Of course, your grandfather is still teaching classes, and your grandmother won't drive in this weather."
"What weather?"
"Give it five minutes," his aunt replied." Logan, you know... I think we got off on the wrong foot last summer."
"The wrong foot?" Logan repeated. "I almost killed your children."
"They're a bit headstrong. You didn't ask them to go after you to Innsmouth. I know that. And you brought them both home in one piece. I was only... well, you know how parents can when they're worried about their babies."
"Not really, no."
"I don't want an armed truce with you, Logan."
"Okay," Logan said. "Sure."
His aunt didn't press the point. Farley, no doubt uncomfortable with the awkward silence, whuffed a hot breath over Logan's cheek, and then slopped him wetly in the ear.
"Augh!"
"Farley, get down!"
"Hey, forget it." Logan scrubbed his ear with the heel of his hand. "That's the most action I've gotten in weeks."
Eleanor laughed. "Warm enough?"
"Yeah," he replied. Curled inside the gigantic coat, Logan felt deliciously snug; the heat pouring out of the Explorer's vents had started to make him drowsy.
"Good."
"It's winter," Logan said. "Isn't it supposed to be snowing?"
She shook her head. "We had a couple of inches earlier this month. I don't think we'll have a white Christmas this year. Too cold to snow."
Logan had only seen snow once, briefly. He'd assumed it arrived hand in hand with real winter weather. "Too cold to snow" was just flat-out weird, especially since places like Antarctica appeared to be covered with the stuff. He'd looked forward to watching white drifts pile up from the warm comfort of his grandparents' house. Possibly while drinking hot chocolate and wearing a reindeer sweater. This was a bummer of a development.
"Too cold. How is that possible?" he asked her.
"Alchemy?" Eleanor made a face, then smiled. "I don't know. We get more when it's a little warmer." She shrugged, then glanced over at him. "So, Logan..."
"Yes?" Logan answered warily.
"Jeanette tells me you're a writer."
Your daughter's got a big fucking mouth, he thought. And I'm going to kill her.
"No," he said curtly.
Jeanette was one of the reasons he hadn't communicated much with his cousins since his last visit. Her brother John Ross was the other reason. It was awful, knowing Jeanette knew everything about him. Or, maybe it was that she knew everything, and she still apparently liked him. Maybe that was what he had the most trouble with. She e-mailed him all the time (though not as often as John Ross). How are you doing? How is Veronica? What happened when you got back? We love you. We miss you. When are you coming to visit? Please write back soon. (((Hugs!))) Ironic, since Jeanette couldn't actually hug him without learning the sordid denouement to The Veronica Story. Oh, fun.
With a shake of his head, Logan said, "I used to think I wanted to be writer. I don't have anything to say anymore." He winced; he'd gone on talking one more word than he should have. Per usual.
"I see," Eleanor replied.
"If nothing I say makes a difference, then I should just shut up. That's logical, right?"
His aunt hesitated a moment, as if trying to figure out which response would be the least likely to turn the conversation in a worse direction. Then, she said, "Maybe you could make an exception. We have a Christmas Eve tradition. We tell stories around the fire."
"Oh, of course. How else?" Logan said sarcastically. But, now his curiosity was piqued and it was too late. "What kind of stories?"
Aunt Eleanor gave him a sideways look. "The best kind."
"Mmmm..." He gave himself a twee little squeeze. "The heartwarming kind."
"Hell no," Eleanor replied. "The scary kind."
***
III. Wednesday
"Do you ever think about reincarnation?"
"King me."
John Ross made a face — but no other protest — and stacked one of the red checkers he'd captured from Logan, on top of the checker Logan had just hop-scotched to his cousin's end of the board.
"You're the guest," John Ross advised Logan. "I'm letting you win."
"Sure you are." Logan leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms up over his head, lacing his fingers together. The wooden chair creaked, as did the tense muscles in his back.
John Ross laid his chin on his palm, frowning at the checkerboard. Outside, the wind lashed icy rain at the windowpanes like handfuls of small stones. Rattle and silence. Rattle and silence. Then, for variety, it shrieked across the yard and throttled the skeleton trees, shaking down the last few leaves. And back again: rattle-rattle-rattle.
"Maybe," John Ross said, "in a previous life you were somebody really bad."
"Huh?" Logan roused himself out of contemplating the bleak ink-wash of Saltonstall Street.
"Maybe you killed people."
"Maybe that's why Fate enjoys fucking with me?"
"Yeah, maybe." John Ross shrugged. "Maybe you were Jack the Ripper."
"What exactly are they teaching you in fifth grade?"
"Nothing that interesting. I saw a show on The History Channel."
"You get nightmares?"
"No," John Ross scoffed.
"Hmm..." Reaching to the plate beside the checkerboard, Logan picked up a gingerbread girl. "So." He held the cookie in both hands, slowly increasing the pressure between its head and its neck. "I was Jack the Ripper in a past life." The cookie's head snapped off with a small pop, sending crumbs flying. "And now I'm paying for my hideous crimes?"
"Stop trying to scare me."
"I don't know what you're talking about, John Ross. You're not an eighteenth-century prostitute. Logan leaned forward across the table. "Wait. Are you?"
His cousin leveled an exasperated look at him.
"Maybe..." Logan paused, then dropped his voice dramatically. "...you're a reincarnated one."
"Quit it!"
Grandma Isabel stuck her head out of the kitchen. "What's going on?"
"Nothing!" John Ross hollered.
"Do I have to come in there?"
Logan tipped back in his chair so he had a direct line of sight to his grandmother. "We are running low on the cookies."
"If you fall over and split your skull open — "
"On the carpet? I should be so lucky."
"Your chair has four legs, Logan. Kindly use all of them."
Logan thumped his chair back onto the floor, and then stood up, grabbing the empty cookie plate. He pointed at the checkerboard.
"No cheating," he told John Ross, who looked absolutely scandalized by the idea.
Logan crossed the dining room, and walked into the kitchen. His grandmother was hard at work. Cooling racks crowded the big wooden table; most of the racks were full of cookies, gingerbread and otherwise. It looked like that scene in Gone With the Wind with the wounded Confederate soldiers laid out in endless ranks, the camera pulling away slowly as Scarlett stood in the midst of them. Magnificent holiday carnage.
"Stop teasing your cousin," Grandma Isabel said, as he came into the kitchen.
"He started it," Logan said.
"I don't care who started it. And hands off. Those are still hot."
"John Ross thinks I was Jack the Ripper in a previous life."
Grandma Isabel looked like she was trying very hard to keep her expression stern. She gave up and laughed. "You could put your imagination to better use." She took the plate from him. "Have you given Christmas Eve any thought?" She laid the plate in the sink, and turned on the faucet.
"Grandma! You're cutting me off?"
"I think you've had enough sugar."
Logan's shoulders slumped. "Aw."
She added, "And you could use a little distraction. You don't seem..."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You haven't smiled once since you got here."
"I'll make up my quota next week."
Why are you doing this? he thought. Stop being a fucktard.
His grandmother was pretty much the only person who soothed the confusion and anger inside him, put everything into perspective, made him not feel like a complete asshole. He'd come three thousand miles to see his grandparents, making his escape from Neptune, flipping the bird at the Sheriff's Department as he yanked the ripcord — Ha-ha, psyche! He might as well have spent Winter Break holed up in the Neptune Grand, drinking himself comfortably numb.
He couldn't talk about what had happened since last summer. Even to his grandmother. What could she possibly say to make it better? This too shall pass? The sun will come out tomorrow? Suck it up? No; it was enough to be here. Even for only two weeks. Just to get his feet under him.
"Logan, please talk to me."
I don't even know where to start. "I told you I'm fine."
She waited.
He added, "It doesn't matter. Talking won't make any difference."
"It might make you feel better."
"I don't want to feel better. There's a lot to be said for apathy. You should try it."
Grandma Isabel reached for him; Logan pushed her hand away, and moved around her, intending to walk out of the kitchen. But his grandmother stepped into his path.
"Logan," she said again, the undercurrent of frustration very clear in her voice, "stop it."
Don't do this, he thought. Please don't.
"You know, it's funny," he said to her, "last summer when I was a complete asshole, you didn't get pissed off at me once."
"Last summer, you talked to me."
"I'm minding my manners now."
"Although, not your language, evidently."
"I'm a teenager. We're supposed to be difficult."
His grandmother sighed, and moved out of his way. "All right, Logan."
"All right what?"
"Do what you want. I'm not going to twist your arm."
"No? My dad always found that method really effective."
He stood behind her for a moment longer, then he turned and walked out of the kitchen.
John Ross looked up from the checkerboard. He'd obviously heard the entire conversation. The expression on the ten year-old's face was a mixture of hurt and disappointment; it was perfectly clear to Logan that he'd just fallen off the hero-worshipping pedestal his cousin had built for him, with a resounding crash.
"I'm going to go home now," John Ross said quietly. "I'll see you later, Logan."
"Sure," Logan said. "Whatever."
***
IV. Thursday
Logan didn't see much of his grandfather at the beginning of the week. Miskatonic University final exams kept Grandpa James at the school until late, and when he came home, he was tired and exasperated. Grandma Isabel treaded lightly. Logan did likewise. He thought for sure this would be when the Currier and Ives print would peel away and show him what was really going on underneath. But, Arkham wasn't Neptune; and this house wasn't the Echolls house.
"He's had a difficult semester," Grandma Isabel told Logan at breakfast. The first thing she'd said to him since Wednesday afternoon. "A few scuffles with administration."
"Why?" Logan asked, watching his grandmother carefully. Her expression was as unreadable as her back had been yesterday. "What's going on?"
"They're a tad resentful."
"Is he retiring?"
"No; he accepted another offer," Grandma Isabel replied, and then added briskly, "I don't know much else about it. Would you like more bacon?"
Don't want to talk to me? he thought. Well, that's fair.
M.U. finally closed its doors to the faculty and the staff on Wednesday evening. The heat and the electricity were turned off, and the university settled in for a long winter's nap. Thursday morning, Grandpa James was in his study with the door only half closed for a change. Logan took this to mean his grandfather wouldn't object to an interruption, unless it was stupid. In any case, he wasn't going to bother his grandfather for very long.
He tapped on the door.
"Come in," his grandfather said.
Logan looked into the study. The drapes were drawn, shutting out the gray December day; warm lamplight buttered a chaotic swirl of papers and books — everywhere, all over the floor, the chairs, stacked on top of each shelf of the bookcases. In the middle of this, Grandpa James sat at his huge desk, paging through a stack of yellowed newspaper clippings, his brow furrowed.
"Hello, Logan."
"Uh, hi." Logan said. "I'll come back."
"No. Come in; come in. I've barely had a chance to see you."
Lucky you, Logan thought, and stepped into the study, edging between the piles of papers, easing the door shut behind him. "What are you doing?"
His grandfather smiled. "Organizing. Finally, I have some time at home, so I can get all my paperwork straightened out."
Logan thought back to the previous summer, when his grandmother had told him what Grandpa James was working on. "For the book? Phoenician fish-gods?"
"No; good memory, though. Finished that in March. How are you, Logan? Staying warm enough?"
Logan rubbed the back of his head, and then said diffidently, "Can I talk to you for a sec?"
Grandpa James set aside the newspaper clippings, and gestured at one of the oxblood leather chairs in front of the desk. "Go ahead and put all that on the floor."
Lifting a pile of leather-bound books stuffed with slips of paper, Logan sat down. "Look, about the transfer of custody; I just wanted to say thank you."
"You're welcome."
"And about the bond you posted. It's a lot of money. I have a trust fund. I can pay —"
"Logan," his grandfather cut him off gently, "no. The subject is closed. I was glad to do it. I'm not as well-off as your father, but I manage all right. "
"You're a college professor."
"I'm a tenured college professor.
"If you're tenured, why are you leaving?"
Grandpa James raised his eyebrows, then replied, "Changing circumstances. It doesn't matter. Let's just say I have alternate financial sources." Leaning over the desk, he stage-whispered, "Pirate treasure."
Logan blinked in surprise; a playful remark like that, he'd expect from Grandma Isabel, but not from his grandfather. A second later, he wasn't sure if Grandpa James actually was kidding. Especially since according to John Ross, the Miskatonic Valley had been Pirate Central back in the sixteen hundreds.
Grandpa James added, "Don't worry about the legal matters. I imagine you have enough on your mind. If there's anything else you want to talk about, go right ahead."
Logan squirmed uncomfortably in the chair, leather creaking under him. I guess you're entitled. For posting that bond. For taking me in and feeding me. For not kicking me out after I made your wife cry yesterday. For asking me. So, this is my story. This is how it all started. Once upon a time. It was a dark and stormy night... If he could just open his mouth and say it. If there even were words to talk about it.
His grandfather picked up the fat pile of newspaper clippings again, and tapped them together into a neat stack. "So. What are you up to today?"
That was that, apparently. Logan eyed his grandfather. "I don't know."
"Nothing planned with your cousins?"
Nope; already alienated the one who likes me. The Logan Echolls Action Initiative for 2006 is going ahead like gangbusters. He shrugged at the stacks of paper on the floor.
His grandfather asked, "Would you like to help me?"
Logan lifted his head. "You're on vacation."
"I'm not really... I don't know how much help I'd be."
"Can you recognize English? As opposed to, say, Greek or Arabic?"
"I guess."
"Well, that's more helpful than most of my grad students. What do you say?"
Logan hesitated, feeling suddenly, painfully grateful to his grandfather for extending the offer, for not forcing him to open up and share and care; for not leaving him by himself. "Yeah. Okay."
"Stupendous," his grandfather said. "Start anywhere."
He and Grandpa James worked without talking. Pretty much the same thing Logan had done for detention last year. The similarity didn't escape him. But, that was just fine. He was perfectly happy to sit on the Oriental carpet and not have any conversations more complicated than, "Pass me the stapler," and, "Do you want Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle filed under H, U, or P?"
A knock on the door roused him out of his narrow concentration. He heard his grandmother ask, "James, have you seen Logan?"
"Yo," Logan said.
Grandma Isabel stuck her head into the study. She looked into Logan's eyes and smiled in the slight, inscrutable way that never failed to fill him with paranoia. Logan shifted his attention to the carpet.
"Off to Kingsport?" Grandpa James asked her.
"I've gone and come back, dear. It's after five."
"Is it really?" Grandpa James turned in his chair and pushed back the drapes hiding the window behind his desk. Outside, the sky had turned the deep blue of late twilight.
"You and your grandson didn't even step out for a little fresh air, did you?"
"It's below freezing, Isabel."
"Oh, it is not. It feels a bit warmer."
"Relative to what?" Logan asked. "Liquid nitrogen?"
Grandma Isabel replied with amused exasperation, "Do you boys want meatloaf or spaghetti for dinner?"
Spaghetti was unanimously voted in, and as soon as Grandma Isabel shut the door to the study, Logan's grandfather steepled his hands under his chin. "So. Jeanette says you're a writer."
"Uh," Logan said. Dead. She is oh-so dead.
"You know, Hearst College has an excellent creative writing program. Right there in Neptune."
Logan shook his head, and focused on the pile of papers in front of him.
"How about the near future," Grandpa James said. "Christmas Eve?"
Logan sighed. "Ah, everybody's on me about that."
His grandfather laughed. "You don't have to participate if you don't want to."
"Maybe," Logan replied. "If I think of something."
"All right," Grandpa James said with a smile, and dropped the subject.
***
Logan had a few Christmas stories he could tell around the fire. Like last Christmas, when his father had gotten stabbed (sadly, not fatally) by the caterer he'd fucked and discarded like a condom wrapper. Or, this Christmas, when he'd paid fifty thousand dollars for the privilege of watching his father's home movies. Knowing the tapes existed wasn't enough. He had to see them. He had to keep picking that same fucking scab. Keep hurting himself. He couldn't feel anything, otherwise. He was just walking around dead, waiting for somebody to notice the smell.
Or, that one Christmas when he'd been about John Ross's age, and his father flipped on the overhead light, stripped off the covers and pulled Logan off the bed by one arm, through a litter of action figures and school books on the floor. Logan was already accustomed to his father's unpredictable temper, expecting a sneak attack at any moment, yet his father always managed to outsmart him.
He was caught completely off-guard, sleepy, squinting in the bright light, half-convinced he was dreaming, until his father by accident or design wrenched his arm up over his head and dislocated his shoulder. Logan, wide awake in one painful second, screamed at the top of his lungs — doing nothing except incensing his father even more. Aaron had cuffed him hard on the ear, and that was when he got an upside down, swimmy glimpse of his mother running into the bedroom. His parents screamed at each other, and then he remembered being driven to the hospital in the middle of the night, holding his arm against his side and biting his lower lip until it bled, so he wouldn't cry. As many times as he went back to that moment in his memory, he never came up with a reason why his father hand punished him. Maybe he'd broken one of the tree ornaments. Maybe he'd whined about not getting a Red Rider BB gun, so he could shoot his eye out. Maybe his father didn't even have a reason.
After that, Logan slept light. Even after his father went to jail. Even now that he kipped in the spare bedroom of Duncan's suite at the Neptune Grand. He woke up and prowled around, or lay staring up at the ceiling until sleep swept him under again. Even in his grandparents' house, sleep slipped away from him in the middle of the night, like a furtive lover. However, it turned out that the bed in the east guest room (unlike the bed in the attic), was big enough that his feet didn't hang over the edge, so he didn't insist.
Every night, he slept under a huge mound of afghans, with his nose and cheeks a little bit cold because the thermostat was turned down to sixty, listening to the wind, and the sleet ticking on the windowpanes. He was warm and comfy. Ah, bliss. Exquisite. He still woke up, but he rarely bothered getting out of bed.
Except at three-thirty on Friday morning, he was baking like a chicken. He sat up, flopping back the heavy pile of blankets. Opposite the bed, a curtained bay window with a window seat and tartan cushions. A low bookcase. All the authors had M-names. He'd checked it out earlier. His grandparents' library spilled into nearly every room of the house. He sat listening, sweat cooling on his scalp and spine. No noises, except the wind, and old Victorian creaking and sighing as it settled. Wasn't he supposed to sleep ten or eleven hours a night, plus afternoon naps on the couch? Neptune was three thousand miles away; his father was three thousand miles away, and he was still waking up in the middle of the night, and nothing changed.
***
V. Friday
"Logan?"
"Uh?"
"Wake up, sweetheart."
Logan opened one eye, to see his grandmother bending over him. She was dressed already. Figured. She'd probably been up for hours and hours.
"Whutimezzit?" he mumbled.
"Eight-thirty."
"A.M.?"
"It's morning; yes."
"What's wrong?"
"Well, I'm sorry to tell you this," Grandma Isabel replied, "but you're two days early for Santa."
"Huh?" As Logan woke up more fully, he realized he was still curled in the wing chair by the fireplace. "Aw, goddammit."
"Would you like me to put a blanket over you?"
"Uh-uh." He rubbed his hands over his face. "M'okay."
Grandma Isabel touched his head. He didn't pull away from her this time. He hadn't wanted to the time before. Stupidity, or self-preservation. Maybe they were the same thing.
He uncoiled himself from the chair, grunting as the blood rushed into his cramped muscles. "I couldn't sleep."
She asked, "Are you awake-awake, or do you want to go back upstairs?"
"No," he said. "I'm awake."
"Should I make you some coffee?"
"Sure. Yeah." He added, "Thanks."
Several hours later, Logan met Jeanette at the Starbucks because, while his grandmother did make very good coffee, what he really wanted was a double mocha with extra foam. It wasn't any less Arctic outside. Just wishful thinking on his grandmother's part, or maybe some subtle New Englander sense he hadn't inherited from his mom.
Since last summer, Jeanette had cut her hair short, and the Audrey Hepburn bob made her look older and emphasized her eyes more than her long hair had. She'd sprouted up a bit, and actually she looked a lot like Logan, now; except that Jeanette was pretty. He wasn't going to tell her that. He suspected she wouldn’t take it as a compliment.
They sat at one of the high tables in the Starbucks. Somehow Jeanette had managed to get her skinny butt and one of her feet on the tiny stool at the same time, and she perched there quite comfortably with one knee drawn up and her arm wrapped around it. Several of the townies had come over to say hello to Jeanette, but really to get a look at this unknown person who was very obviously related to her. Jeanette typically identified him, with a casual flick of her chin, as "My cousin Logan."
"That's what you need to tell people," she said to Logan. "If anybody says hello to you, or asks you if you want fries with that — what they really want to know is if you're a vacation-person-or-college-person — or part of the Borg Collective."
"Uh-huh," Logan said.
"You're a native. You're related. That's what you say. 'Hi. Put that on my no-limit Visa. By the way, I'm Isabel and James Lester's grandson.' So they treat you like you belong here."
"Which I don't."
"Trust me. There's nothing more deeply lame than being a tourist," Jeanette replied. "Besides, if somebody finds out you're a native later on, they'll take it like a personal insult that you didn't tell them yourself. And New Englanders are famous grudge-holders. You'll never live it down."
"Jeanette," he cut her off, "why did you tell everybody I'm a writer? What is wrong with you?"
"I have you for a cousin, Emo Boy. That's what. And anyway, you are a writer. So, why don't you ever e-mail me back?"
"I'm busy working on my novel."
She squinted at him intently. "Why won't you talk to me, Logan?"
"Why don't you just grab me and find out, like you did last time?"
Jeanette made a huffy noise. Logan said nothing. He watched Jeanette moving a stirrer around in her Gingerbread Latte, drawing patterns in the foam. Then, his cousin flipped a hand at him. "Fine. Have it your own way. Hey, did Grandma Isabel tell you about Christmas Eve?"
As prickly as his cousin typically was, Logan was surprised that he hadn't pissed her off even more. She'd apparently dismissed the subject completely. He frowned then took a sip of his mocha.
"Yeah," he said.
"So? Any ideas?"
"Maybe."
"Like what?" Grinning, Jeanette reached a hand across the table. Logan snatched his arm out of her reach.
"I'm kidding," she said. "I won't cheat."
"No, please. Be my guest." He laid his arm back on the table, but Jeanette made no move to touch him.
I never should have come here, Logan thought. I should have stayed in Neptune. It doesn't make one goddamned bit of difference anyway; I've just brought Neptune here with me.
"You know," Jeanette said, "it's Christmas. Maybe Santa will bring you the perfect gift."
Oh, but what could possibly make this holiday season more magical than spending an evening alone in a hotel room, watching the tapes of my father fucking my dead girlfriend? Golly, that was the bestest Christmas present ever!
He said, "Santa already stuffed my stocking this year."
"How about a yacht?"
"Already got one."
"Really, that's not a lot," Jeanette pointed out. "You've been an angel all year."
Logan scowled at her.
"One little thing you really need."
"Let me guess. The deed? To a platinum mine?"
"And a duplex," Jeanette added. "And checks. Sign your X on the line. And hurry down the chimney tonight."
"I liked you better when you were a bitch, Jeanette."
She sighed. "Logan, are you sure you don't want to talk about..."
She trailed off as he pointedly looked away from her.
"Fine," she said again, softly.
***