Page 51 of All Roads Lead to You

“Did you ever blame yourself?” he asked.

I looked at Logan, who seemed like an entirely different person from before this trip and huffed an ironic laugh. “Yeah, I did. My young brain thought I’d done something wrong. How’d you know?”

“I ask because I did the same.” He took a long pull from his can. “Mom got into that accident on her way to pick me up from school. I’d gotten in trouble and had detention, so I missed the bus.”

Shit, I could just imagine the amount of guilt he must have carried despite it not being his fault.

“It was the fault of the asshole who hit her and ran. Not yours.”

Logan sat there in the small fold-out lawn chair we’d brought with his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, staring out at the evening lake. He tipped back his beer again and chugged the rest of it back. After wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he looked over at me, his face glowing next to the fire.

“Well, the asshole wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been such a shit that day.”

Who was I to tell Logan how to feel? It still wasn’t his fault. He’d only been twelve and couldn’t predict the future, but I understood his guilt.

“I’m not going to tell you not to feel guilty, Logan, but you had no way of knowing. That’s impossible. If we could see into the future, we’d understand every action we make is about cause and effect, making us completely different humans. Maybe we’d freeze up, never to come out of our homes in fear of loss.”

“Maybe.”

We sat in silence for a long time, mulling over our stories. At least I was. But the silence wasn’t too uncomfortable. The crickets were at full blast, along with the frogs, and the breeze picked up through the trees, playing a relaxing melody. The fireflies danced with their light, making the world sparkle. There were no sounds of people or cars. Only the occasional plane overhead.

After we had a few more beers in us, I glanced over at him with new questions filling my head.

One thing I’d learned in the short period while traveling with Logan was that he loosened up when he’d had a few beers. If I asked him a question, he was more likely to answer it, so I took this opportunity to dig a little deeper into why Logan treated me like shit for so long. It had to be more than the ‘wicked stepbrother syndrome.’

“Can I ask you something, and you won’t get upset?”

“Ugh, the last time you did that to me, I freaked out and ended up baring my soul to you, along with my deepest secret, man.”

His tone didn’t seem all that upset or annoyed. It was more like resignation, so I pressed on. “Aren’t you glad you did? Now you see how cool I am.”

He snorted a laugh. “I’m going to need another beer for this. Fine, what are you dying to know now, freakin’ busybody?”

“Did you really hate me simply because your dad married my mom when you weren’t ready? And… do you really believe we aren’t brothers?”

“Fuck, man. Has anyone ever told you how heavy your questions are?”

“Because you’re a heavy person, Logan. You’re a lot more complex than I gave you credit for.”

Logan sat there so long, staring out at the water without saying a word, that I worried he wouldn’t answer me. Was he being so silent because I wouldn’t like what he had to say? Whatever it was, I was prepared. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.

“Yes. At first, I was angry at the marriage. I didn’t want a brother, and I didn’t fucking want a new mother. I felt like because Dad married your mom, I’d have to forget my mom, and I hadn’t been ready to move on. It wasn’t easy, Nick. I was a fucking mess. Remember, it wasn’t just her death, but my guilt.”

“I can totally understand that.”

I finished off my beer and grabbed another. He was right. This would call for more drinking.

“Then your mom was so damn nice, making it hard to hate her. But you? You were… Fuck.”

“An easy target?”

He looked at me with eyes filled with guilt, but he didn’t need to feel that way. I was really starting to understand him. “Yeah, exactly.”

“I get it, but… why for so long?”

He leaned his head against the back of the lawn chair and stared up at the sky. “Fuck… so… You’re not going to like this. It’s not something I’m keen on telling you…”

Logan leaned forward, rested his elbows on his thighs, and bent over to run his fingers through his hair. My body tensed because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what’d had him hating me for so long beyond his initial anger about the marriage.

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