27. Logan
— ? —
Logan
The ring has been on a cord around my neck since the fire.
I take it off now, holding it up to the workshop light, watching the way the diamond catches and scatters. It’s smaller than I remembered, delicate, almost fragile, and there’s a moment where I can’t believe I’ve been carrying something so precious without really looking at it.
She left it on the pillow. Just the ring, alone on the white cotton, explaining nothing where her head should have been, a goodbye I didn’t deserve the chance to answer.
I set it carefully on my workbench and wipe away my fingerprints with a soft cloth. The jeweler cleaned it last week, but I keep touching it.
The workshop is cold this morning, January cold, the kind that seeps through the walls no matter how much I run the space heater, but I’ve been here since before dawn anyway.
The piece I’m working on requires concentration, and concentration requires solitude, and solitude requires ungodly hours when normal people are still sleeping.
Fran is one of those normal people now. Thirty-seven weeks pregnant, she sleeps like the dead and wakes up hungry, and I’ve learned to have breakfast ready before she emerges from the bedroom. It’s one of the small things I can do, small things that add up to a life I never thought I’d have.
“You’re in here early.”
I startle, nearly knocking over my tea. Theo is standing in the workshop doorway, looking annoyingly awake for someone who definitely didn’t sleep here.
“How did you get in?” I ask, mopping spilled tea off the bench.
“Fran let me in.” He ambles in like he owns the place.
The workshop moved to the farm’s north building when we relocated to the cottage at thirty-six weeks, so now it’s a short walk from the house instead of a separate property.
“She’s eating oatmeal and said to tell you the baby kicked her bladder six times last night and you owe her. ”
“I owe her for her own bladder?”
“Apparently the baby is your fault,” Theo says, helping himself to my thermos.
“The baby is half my fault.” I don’t look up from the inlay.
“She said you’d say that.” He grins. “She also said half responsibility equals half bladder kicks, which means you owe her three apologies.”
I can’t help but smile. “She’s keeping score?”
“She’s keeping very detailed score.” Theo drifts along my benches, examining the tools and half-finished projects scattered across them. “What are you working on?”
I hesitate. The piece on my main workbench is covered with a drop cloth, and I’m not sure I’m ready to show anyone yet. But this is Theo, and he’s been my brother through all of this, through the fire, through the separation, through the slow work of becoming someone worth loving.
“A proposal piece,” I say finally.
Theo’s eyebrows rise. “You’re making her something?”
“I’m making her something that means something.” I pull back the cloth, revealing what’s underneath. “It’s not finished yet.”
He studies the piece in silence. It’s a jewelry box, or it will be, when it’s done, but not like anything I’ve built before.
The lid is inlaid with a pattern of flowers, each one representing a variety that grows on Fran’s farm: dahlias, ranunculus, zinnias, all rendered in carefully chosen woods that capture the colors and textures of the real thing.
The sides are quilted maple, the same wood I used for the cottage and her dressing table, and the interior will be lined with velvet the exact shade of the flannel she was wearing the day we met in her father’s office.
“Logan,” Theo says quietly. “This is incredible.”
“It’s not done.”
“It’s incredible even unfinished.” He traces the outline of a dahlia with one finger. “How long have you been working on this?”
“About a month. The inlay work takes forever - each flower has to be cut separately, fitted into place, sanded flush.” I run my hand over the surface, feeling for imperfections. “I wanted it to be perfect. She deserves perfect.”
“She deserves you finally asking her to marry you.”
“We’re already married.”
“The vow renewal,” Theo clarifies. “The actual choice this time. Not the courthouse transaction.”
“I know what you mean.” I gesture at the jewelry box. “That’s what this is for.”
“Then finish it. Stop sanding things that are already smooth.” He peers at the inlay work. “The dahlia’s crooked, by the way.”
“It’s not crooked.” I angle the box away from him on reflex.
“It’s a little crooked.” He tilts his head. “Very on-brand for you - perfectionist who can’t actually achieve perfection.”
“Get out of my workshop.”
“I’m helping,” he says, not moving an inch.
“You’re criticizing my dahlia.”
The workshop door opens again, and this time it’s not someone I want to see.
Emilio Salazar stands in the doorway, looking older than I remember, grayer, smaller, somehow diminished. He’s holding his hat in his hands, turning it in circles like a nervous habit.
“Logan,” he says. “Your wife told me I could find you here.”
“Fran let you in?” I’m surprised. She hasn’t spoken to her father in months, not since the truth about the fire came out.
“She told me to come find you. Said you and I should talk.” He glances at Theo. “Alone, if possible.”
Theo raises an eyebrow at me. I nod slightly, and he heads for the door, pausing to mutter “Don’t let him off the hook” as he passes.
Then it’s just me and my father-in-law, standing in my workshop surrounded by sawdust and wood shavings and the evidence of everything I’ve been building.
“I’m not here to ask for anything,” Emilio says before I can speak. “I know I don’t have the right.”
“You don’t.”
“I know.” He sets his hat down on the edge of a workbench, then picks it back up, then sets it down again. “But I wanted to say something anyway. To you. Before - before whatever comes next.”
I cross my arms. “I’m listening.”
“I sold my daughter.” The words come out raw, painful. “I told myself it was a good match, a smart alliance, that she’d be taken care of. But what I really did was trade her for business advantages. For wood contracts and social connections and all the things that seemed important at the time.”
“They weren’t important.”
“No. They weren’t.” He meets my eyes. “And then someone tried to kill her. Someone you invited into your home. And I didn’t even know until it was over - until she’d fled and hidden herself and built a whole new life because she didn’t feel safe coming to me.”
“She didn’t feel safe coming to anyone.”
“But she should have been able to come to her father.” His voice cracks slightly. “That’s what fathers are for. Protecting their children. Being a safe place when everything else falls apart.” He shakes his head. “I failed her. In every way that matters.”
I don’t disagree. I can’t. Everything he’s saying is true.
“Why are you here, Emilio? What do you want me to do with this?”
“Nothing.” He picks up his hat again. “I’m not asking for forgiveness. That’s Fran’s to give, not yours. I’m here to tell you that I see what you’ve done. How you’ve changed. How you’ve been taking care of her in all the ways I didn’t.”
“I’m her husband. It’s what I should have been doing all along.”
“It is. But you’re doing it now.” He pauses. “The farm is hers? Completely?”
“Completely. Unconditionally. Has been for months.”
“Good. That’s - that’s good.” He takes a breath. “I sold her to you. And you gave her back to herself. That’s more than I deserve to witness, but I’m grateful I got to see it.”
He turns toward the door, and I find myself speaking before I can think better of it.
“She’s going to have a baby. Your grandchild.”
He stops but doesn’t turn around.
“I know.”
“If she decides to let you be part of that child’s life - that’s her choice to make. It belongs to her and no one else.”
“I know that too.” His voice is heavy. “I’m not going to push. I’m not going to ask for more than I deserve.” He finally looks back at me. “But if she ever does forgive me - if there’s ever a chance-”
“Then you’ll have to earn it. Every day. For the rest of your life.”
“I understand.”
He leaves without another word, and I stand alone in my workshop, thinking about fathers and daughters and the complicated ways we fail the people we’re supposed to protect.
I work on the jewelry box for another hour, losing myself in the precise work of fitting the final flower into place.
It’s a dahlia, Fran’s favorite, and I’ve chosen a wood called purpleheart for the petals, which starts out grayish and deepens to a rich violet with exposure to light.
Over time, it’ll darken even more, changing as our marriage changes, growing richer with age.
That’s the kind of thing I think about now. Symbolism. Meaning. All the things I used to ignore because they seemed impractical.
When the dahlia is fitted and sanded and ready for finishing, I pick the ring back up.
It’s clean now, sparkling in a way it hasn’t since I found it on her pillow all those months ago. The jeweler didn’t ask questions when I brought it in, just looked at me with knowing eyes and said, “Second chances are rare. Don’t waste this one.”
I’m not planning to.
I thread the ring back onto the cord and hang it around my neck, tucking it under my shirt where it rests against my chest. Soon I’ll put it in the box, and then I’ll put the box in her hands, and then I’ll ask the question I should have asked two years ago.
But first, there’s something else I need to do.
***
Fran is in the kitchen when I come inside, standing at the counter with her hand pressed to her lower back and a look of concentration on her face.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine.” She stretches. “Just the usual complaints. Back hurts, feet hurt, bladder hates me.” She smiles. “Your brother said you’d been up since dawn. Working on something mysterious?”
“Working on something for you.”
“Another something?”
“A different something.” I move closer, resting my hands on her hips. “A special something.”
“More special than the cottage? More special than the dressing table?”
“More special than everything.” I lean down to kiss her forehead. “But it’s not ready yet.”
“Tease.”
“Perfectionist.”
“Same thing, coming from you.” She turns in my arms, facing me despite the belly between us. “My father came by.”
“I know. We talked.”
“Was it terrible?”
“It was… honest.” I think about Emilio’s confession, his acknowledgment of failure. “He’s not asking for forgiveness. He knows that’s your call.”
“It is.” Her voice is soft. “I’m not ready yet. Maybe I won’t ever be. But-” She pauses. “He’s still my father. That doesn’t go away.”
“It doesn’t have to. You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“I know. I just-” She leans her head against my chest. “I want our baby to have better than I had. A father who’s present. A family that makes sense.”
“She will.” I stroke her hair. “I promise you, Fran. She will.”
***
That evening, I wait until Fran is settled on the couch with her feet up and a cup of tea, and then I do something I’ve been planning for weeks.
“Can I talk to you?” I ask.
She looks up from her book. “You’re talking to me right now.”
“I mean-” I gesture at her belly. “Can I talk to her?”
Fran’s expression softens. “Of course.”
I kneel in front of the couch, feeling slightly ridiculous but also deadly serious. The baby is right there, just inches away, separated from the world by skin and muscle and whatever else is keeping her safe until she’s ready to emerge.
“Hi,” I say to the belly. “I’m your dad. You probably already knew that.”
“She knows,” Fran confirms. “She kicks extra hard when you talk.”
“Good. That’s - that’s good.” I take a breath. “So I have a question for you. And I know you can’t answer yet, but I wanted to ask anyway.”
Fran is watching me, her book forgotten in her lap.
“I’m going to ask your mom to marry me. Again.
For real this time.” I put my hand on the belly, feeling the baby shift under my palm.
“The first time, I didn’t ask. I just showed up because our fathers told us to, and I signed papers like it was a business deal.
But that’s not what your mom deserves. She deserves to be asked. To be chosen.”
The baby kicks, hard.
“I’m going to take that as encouragement.” I smile, even though my eyes are stinging. “So here’s my question: do I have your permission? To ask her? To spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of both of you?”
Another kick. Fran laughs, wiping tears from her own eyes.
“I think that’s a yes,” she says.
“I think so too.” I lean forward and press a kiss to her belly. “Thank you. I won’t let you down.”
When I look up at Fran, she’s crying openly now, happy tears, I think, though with pregnancy hormones it’s sometimes hard to tell.
“You asked the baby’s permission,” she says.
“I wanted to do it right.”
“You asked our unborn child for permission to propose to me.”
“She’s going to be part of this family. She should have a vote.”
Fran reaches down and cups my face in her hands. “Logan Davis. You are the most ridiculous man I’ve ever met.”
“I know.”
“And I love you so much it scares me sometimes.”
“I love you too. Both of you.” I turn my head to kiss her palm. “Which is why I’m going to make this proposal perfect. Because you deserve perfect.”
“I don’t need perfect.”
“You’re getting it anyway.” I stand, pulling her gently to her feet despite her protests about being too pregnant to move. “Come to bed. You need rest.”
“I need you to stop being so thoughtful. It’s making me emotional.”
“That’s the pregnancy hormones.”
“It’s mostly the pregnancy hormones. But also you.” She lets me guide her toward the bedroom. “When are you going to actually propose? Now that you have baby permission?”
“Soon. I promise.”
“I’m holding you to that. No more delays.”
“No more delays.” I help her into bed, tucking the covers around her enormous belly. “It’ll be worth the wait.”
She grumbles something about patience and frustrating husbands, but she’s smiling, and when I curl up beside her with my hand on her stomach, she falls asleep within minutes.
I lie awake a while longer, feeling the baby move under my palm, thinking about everything that has to happen before I can ask the question.
The box needs finishing. The ring needs to be placed just right. The words need to be perfect, not memorized-from-a-script perfect, but real-and-honest-and-from-the-heart perfect.
I want her to know exactly what she means to me. Not just that I love her, but why. Her brain, her laugh, the way she talks to her flowers like they can hear her. Her nerve, her strength, the way she started over in a town full of strangers and had them eating out of her hand inside a month.
I want to tell her all of it. And then I want to ask her to choose me, every day, for the rest of our lives.
Not because we have to.
Because we want to.