Chapter 5
Logan
Pickup trucks line the driveway when I emerge from my new home just before six p.m. I’d heard them roll in and watched from my bathroom window as strangers piled out of vehicles, their hands laden with foiled dishes and bottles of booze.
There’s so fucking many of them, and everyone seems in a cheerful mood.
For twenty years, my only companions have been criminals. Some of them turned out to be decent guys. A lot of them were miscreants. But one thing they all knew how to do was mind their own damn business. Something tells me I’m about to face a lot of people who can’t say the same.
I wish my mother had given me a few days to adjust.
Muffled voices and laughter carry through the closed windows as I climb the porch steps to the main house, my footfalls heavy and reluctant.
The front door has been replaced, I note, as I study my reflection in the full pane.
I picked out stiff blue jeans and a green plaid button-down that’s too tight across my chest but left open over a T-shirt works.
It doesn’t feel like me, but I don’t know what does anymore, besides the prison-approved garb I’ve worn for two decades.
With a deep breath, I open the door.
“Give it back!” The last word is delivered on a high-pitched, two-syllable screech that makes me wince.
A pale-blond boy darts across the hallway with a doll held in the air above his head. Seconds behind, a girl with matching-colored pigtails runs after him, the hems of her jeans too long for her scrawny legs.
“Carson Sutter! You stop teasing your sister right now!” a female demands.
A mixture of familiarity and caution stirs. Sarah.
“Those pants are too long for you, Macy,” a gruff voice warns. “You’re gonna slip—”
A loud hollow thump sounds.
“What did I tell you about running in the house!” Sarah scolds over the girl’s wails.
I round the corner as people’s focus is on the sprawled-out little body, giving me a few seconds to take in the iridescent Welcome Home banner and string of balloons stretching across the ceiling like garland.
It’s not a long reprieve before a heavyset woman with short gray hair and rosy cheeks notices me. “Logan!” She clambers to her feet and rushes over to pull me into a deep hug.
Who the fuck is this woman? I struggle to hide my discomfort and my confusion.
“You remember Aunt Jill?” An older man closes in to shake my hand. It’s Uncle Wyatt.
Yes, but … The last time I saw Jill, she had long, dark hair and a lean body that she’d show off in bikinis when we all went down to Providence Bay on Manitoulin Island in the summer.
The house grows unnaturally quiet then as people pour in from all unseen areas to stare at the convict. So many faces, and they’re all wearing a mixture of everything from excitement to curiosity to wariness.
My heart batters my chest cavity.
This party was a fucking horrible idea.
In the middle of it all, Sarah lingers, her eyes unreadable. She looks like our mother did when I went away, with threads of gray weaving into her corn silk hair and crinkles around her eyes. Her once slender frame is curvier, probably on account of the babies she keeps spitting out.
I haven’t seen my sister since she drove down to Kingston after my assault conviction to tell me in person that I wasn’t welcome in their lives anymore.
Mom promises her feelings have changed. I guess we’ll see about that.
An older brown-haired boy nudges his way past the adults, interest in his hazel eyes. “Hi, Uncle Logan.”
“Hey.” The single word in my deep voice echoes through the silent room. I’ve never heard anyone call me that before.
Sarah brushes the mess of hair off the boy’s forehead. “This is Thomas. My oldest.”
I know. Mom wrote about them all in great detail. Thomas is twelve and likes engines and hockey and barely tolerates his twin siblings. He doesn’t look much like my sister at all.
That is until he grins. His smile is an exact replica of Sarah’s at that awkward preteen age, right down to the buck teeth. “Is it true you got shanked?”
The round of awkward introductions goes on forever. Aunts and uncles, cousins with their partners and children, ranch hands and their spouses and family. By the time I reach the kitchen, I’m desperate for a place to catch my sanity. But I won’t find it within these walls, not tonight.
New stainless steel appliances stand where the old white ones used to, but aside from that, the kitchen is the same as I remember, and memories hit me everywhere I look: the doorframe with pencil notches marking our heights every year, the stack of mail and newspapers on the desk in the corner, the pile of egg cartons to store the hens’ daily yield.
Mom spots me hiding in my corner. “Dinner’s almost ready.
Hope you’re hungry!” she yells over the whir of the electric carving knife as she slices off hunks of bison roast and loads them onto a platter, her red apron covered in smears.
Pots filled with mashed potatoes and gravy clutter the stovetop, while the smell of bread baking wafts from the oven.
Countless serving bowls cover the kitchen table, each wrapped in foil and plastic wrap.
Containers of butter and cream litter the countertop.
It’s how I remember every family gathering growing up—loud, messy, warm.
I inhale deeply, the delicious smells stirring stomach pangs.
Prison meals are all about efficiency and ease, the menu a four-week rotation rubber-stamped by some dietician as providing the necessary food groups, should anyone on the outside care to write up a report on the conditions inside.
It’s horrendous. Powdered milk, scrambled eggs that have been boiled in a bag, stews and soups made off-site and frozen until consumption.
Everything tastes off, the textures unappetizing.
It’s been a long time since I ate for any other reason than necessity. And the worst part about all this? I’ll be sick later because I can’t digest anything this rich.
“Here.” My cousin Jameson holds out a can of beer. “It’s one of my own brew.”
I wave it off.
“Come on, you’re celebrating!” he pushes.
“I’m meeting my parole officer on Monday, and they’ll make me do a piss test.”
“That’s two days away, man.” He laughs, and I don’t like the mocking sound of it. “One beer’s not gonna show up on any test.”
“You offering to take my place in prison if it does? Because the rules are pretty fucking clear.”
“Uh …” He blinks several times.
I feel eyes on me. Maybe that came out a bit too sharp.
“Jameson wouldn’t last one night in prison,” Jack declares while yanking the can from his younger brother’s grasp and cracking the tab. “He’d be the one they all bet on to start crying at lights-out.”
“You’d be bawling before you got off the bus,” Jameson counters.
“Yeah, probably.” They both laugh, and the sound helps ease the momentary tension I didn’t mean to create.
The last time I saw these two, they were ten and twelve—the same age as Thomas and the twins.
Now they’re burly men with sculpted beards.
I know from Mom’s letters that both brothers moved back home to their parents.
Jack’s divorced and has a four-year-old daughter named Olivia.
He’s got his excavator’s certification and works for a forestry company south of here.
Jameson’s the studious one. He got his degree at Lakehead in Thunder Bay and then moved to Sudbury to work as an engineer in a nickel mine before deciding he’d rather be a brewmaster.
So, he built a barn and started growing hops on his parents’ land.
He seems the most easy-going by far. His T-shirt says “Single and ready to mingle”—a weird thing to wear to a family function, in my opinion.
“Here.” Sarah appears from behind to hold out a tall, yellow can. “It’s nonalcoholic.”
A peace offering, I guess. One I shouldn’t refuse.
“It’s good. Try it. We can suffer together.” After a moment’s hesitation, she clanks her can against mine and then sucks back a mouthful.
Does this feel as awkward for her as it does me?
“I heard congrats are in order.” Her bulky white sweater hides all hints of the pregnancy.
“Honestly? I’m too old for chasing babies, let alone another set of twins. Brooks and Carson nearly killed me. I’m so busy with the market and all the social media for the ranch, plus we’re doing online ordering now.” She sighs. “I wasn’t planning on having more. It just kind of happened.”
“You know, there’s this thing called birth control,” Jameson jokes.
Aunt Jill sweeps in at that moment, cuffing her son upside the head on her way past to my mother’s side. “What can I help with, Annie?”
The brothers laugh at the perfectly timed event, and I find myself smiling too.
But Sarah’s attention is on me, her green eyes lingering on the hooked scar. “You look good, baby bro.”
I feel those two words somewhere deep in my chest. Jay used to call me that.
“Baby,” Jameson blurts. “Cuz, you’re a fucking beast. Seriously, did you do anything else besides work out for the last twenty years?”
“Get him to give you pointers.” Jack smacks Jameson’s gut, earning a retaliatory swing from his brother.
“Boys!” Aunt Jill scolds, shaking her head at them as if they’re misbehaving children.
“There are forty-five people packed into this house, and we are trying to feed the whole lot. In fact, here.” She thrusts bowls filled with salads into their hands.
“Rhonda’s setting up the dining room table. Help her.”
With grins, the grown men saunter out.
“So, how do you like the apartment?” Sarah asks after a moment of uneasy silence.
“It’s good.” In fact, I’m dying to get back to it.
“Yeah?” She watches my expression as if searching for a lie. “Jon and I lived there for a few years. We wished we’d put in a separate bedroom—”