Chapter 3
Logan
“It’s changed some since you were here last.” My father’s gruff voice cuts into the quiet as the truck crawls up the driveway, the morning fog revealing my family’s bison ranch like layers of curtains pulled back one at a time.
Those are the first words he’s said to me in two hours.
Eight words added to the few hundred over the course of a lengthy drive.
Not that I’m complaining. Inside this truck there are no guards barking orders, no inmates shouting threats, no nauseating buzz as I’m sealed into my cell.
The lack of conversation is welcome, the scent of Colts tobacco oddly comforting, as I listen to the droning voice on the radio and struggle to adjust to my newfound freedom.
“It’s changed a lot.” And yet recollections I assumed long since forgotten barrel into me as I lay eyes on my childhood home for the first time in twenty years.
The two-story house with the wraparound porch where my mother forced us to pose every October for a family picture ahead of Christmas card mailings; the sugar maple tree on the front lawn that my sister Sarah fell out of when she was nine, breaking her arm in two places; the old garage where Millie Crawford gave me my first blow job.
But I note the differences too. The house’s once-shingled roof is now a pine green metal.
The window frames are painted midnight black, making them pop like gaping rectangular holes against the crisp white siding.
Where my grandparents’ wooden rockers used to sit on the porch, there are chairs with plush cushions that perfectly match the green shade of the roof.
I don’t remember there being so many gardens, but I didn’t pay much notice to that back then.
Somewhere out there, veiled by the fog, are multiple buildings, including a massive new equipment barn to replace the rickety old wooden one that Jay and I used to hide in when we were avoiding chores.
That project took an entire season, according to my mother.
Beyond it are a thousand acres of rolling hills and flatlands where five hundred bison graze.
When I went away, the herd was a third of that.
Changes or not, nothing about this view ahead of me feels real. Probably because for the past twenty years I’ve stared at a concrete ceiling, thinking I’d never live to reach this day.
For a long time, I didn’t want to.
The truck’s brakes squeal as we ease to a stop in front of the house. The porch lights are still shining, though daylight’s well on its way to erasing their purpose.
My stiff body feels like squealing too. I climb out and stretch my arms over my head, inhaling the fresh air as I survey the nearby birch and maple trees that burst with yellow and orange fall foliage.
We should have arrived late last night, but plans went to shit from the word go.
The prison released me hours after they were supposed to, thanks to paperwork nonsense.
Then the drive home was riddled with traffic, construction, and an accident that brought the two-lane highway to a dead stop for hours.
It was after two a.m. when we found a twenty-four-hour gas station and my sixty-three-year-old father slouched in his seat to catch a few hours of rest.
My attention pauses on the detached garage.
“New doors.” Nice sliders, too, instead of the hinged ones.
“And you took it down to the natural wood.” My father used to force us to stain the old post-and-beam building a hideous brown every spring until Jay got too big to be forced to do anything.
Then the brush was shoved into my hand. I never had the nerve to say no.
“Yeah, Jon gave it a facelift a few years back. Big job.” My father winces as he rounds the front of the pickup, his Levi’s and army-green button-down creased from the journey.
Aside from more wrinkles and gray hair, he looks how I remembered him.
I’ve only seen him twice since the day of my sentencing, and only because Mom forced him to come for visitation.
“Hmm.” It’s all I can manage for a brother-in-law I’ve never met. Mom swears I’ll love Jon once I get to know him, which to me is code for “You’ll want to punch him in the throat at first impression.”
“That’s their place up there.” He gestures toward the ridge in the distance.
I can’t see anything through the mist. “A big log house, from what I hear.” Easily double the size of my parents’ place.
“Gotta fit all those kids Sarah keeps popping out.” My dad shakes his head, but he’s smiling, seemingly more relaxed now that he’s home. “She said she’s definitely done after this next round.”
My step falters. “Wait. You mean she’s pregnant again?” That must be recent because Mom hadn’t mentioned it in her last letter. “I thought they were done. What’s that, number six?” My sister’s forty—two years older than I am.
“And seven. Another set of twins.”
“Holy fuck. They aiming for a baseball team?”
He snorts. “Jon always wanted a large family. Anyway, Sarah decided that was where she wanted her house to be. Took nearly three years to finish it.”
The corner of my mouth curves slightly with nostalgia.
I know that spot. We spent many evenings up there.
Best view on the entire property, especially during the longest days of summer when night doesn’t fall until after ten.
I’m not surprised Sarah would want a porch to enjoy the sunset. “It’s a good place for a house.”
“Yeah, we thought so too. Jon had to be convinced. He thinks it’s too far from the main buildings.”
“He should be happy with whatever he’s given,” I mutter. My family has spent over a hundred years clearing and farming this land. No doubt he’s got his sights set on it.
“Jon is like a son to me,” my dad counters sharply before pursing his lips.
Maybe he thinks he’s wounded me with his words, but I feel nothing. I already know where my father stands as far as I’m concerned. He made that obvious long ago. “How’d Mom convince you to come get me, anyway?” The question I’ve waited hours to ask.
With a heavy sigh, he admits, “If I hadn’t gone, she would have, and she’s juggling too many things with that market of hers.” He nods at the window above. “They cleaned up the apartment for you. Got a new fridge and stove, even set up a computer. We thought you’d be more comfortable up there.”
“I’d be more comfortable, or everyone else would be?” I ask before I can help myself. What does my family truly think about the infamous Landry son returning? How does dear Jon feel about his convict brother-in-law around his brood of kids?
I’m not stupid. I know my mother is the only reason I’m here now.
“This is gonna be an adjustment for everyone, Logan. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”
My gaze veers beyond the garage and my new, segregated home, to the yellow house across the field.
It sits just past the property line, as if our two families made a pact long ago to live within shouting distance, out here in the middle of nowhere.
A navy-blue Ford Expedition is parked out front.
A light glows in the kitchen, revealing movement within the window.
“McAllisters still live next door,” my dad offers. “Emery is divorced and moved back here with her daughter, Isla. Clive died, oh, seven years ago now. Sandy, about three.”
A cheating husband, a heart attack, and a brain aneurysm, in that order.
I already know all this. I knew about it when it happened, on account of Mom’s letters, each one written with painstakingly detailed descriptions of the minutest chatter from around Cold River, including what was happening with the girl next door.
Even in those early years when I wasn’t returning Mom’s letters, I was reading them.
Memorizing them. I remember when Emery dropped out of university.
She told her parents it wasn’t for her. She left for the police college not long after.
That was always her end goal, anyway—she might as well have come out of the womb holding a badge.
She finished at the top of her class and could have gone anywhere, but she decided to come back here and take a job at an OPP detachment forty minutes away, where her dad wasn’t in command.
I was floored when I heard Emery started seeing Dillon Sanders again. They dated back in high school, and he screwed around on her. I broke his nose for it. Worse, she married the idiot the second time around, in a shotgun wedding after she got pregnant.
I acutely remember the letter detailing the night Emery caught Dillon at a motel with another woman.
I was torn between self-righteousness and sympathy.
She moved back in with her parents, a six-year-old in tow.
The affair was kept under wraps for her daughter’s sake.
The official story was that they’d gotten married too young.
I don’t know that anyone around town believed it, but it didn’t stop them from electing him mayor—the youngest in Cold River’s history.
Dillon married that woman once his divorce from Emery was final, and the co-parenting situation remained hostile for years.
They seem to have gotten over that hump, though, according to my mother, to find a relatively civil balance.
Emery hasn’t dated anyone since, choosing to immerse herself in work and her daughter.
Yes, I know every story beat of Emery McAllister’s life.
“She took over for her old man, huh?” The girl I grew up with was scrappy, her pale, red-tinged hair usually pulled back in a braid that frizzed in the summertime. She swung baseball bats and hung upside down from tree branches. She was smart, dependable, a rule follower.
She was my best friend.