The Future Is Only The Past Again, Entered Through Another Gate
Title: The Future Is Only The Past Again, Entered Through Another Gate
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Rating: R
Icon: claranstrap
Word Count: ~3000
Characters: Duncan & Logan friendship, Duncan/Meg, Duncan & Veronica friendship, Duncan/OFC, Lilly Kanes Jr & Sr, Dick Casablancas
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Duncan learns a lot about parenthood from the good people of Neptune.
Warning: References suicide / child abuse / rape, most of which is found in canon.
Author's note: For hyperemmalawlz , who loves Duncan.
1. Aaron Echolls
His first thought had been to lie when Veronica asked him, because he’d been keeping Logan’s secret for so long that a part of him felt jealous that she knew too.
But of course he knew. How could he not?
Logan had always changed for PE with his back to the wall, snapping John Enbom across the legs with a wet towel the one day that Enbom took his spot. Had changed with his back to the wall since Mr Graham in seventh grade had waited until the gym was nearly empty before asking how Logan had got the bruise that extended from his shoulder blade to his waist.
Logan had sneered, and told Mr Graham that people who had money got to do things on weekends that weren’t work a second job at the Pac and Sac, like go surfing. Duncan had said nothing, letting his face go blank like he was thinking about the cafeteria mac and cheese, but the sprung floor of the gym had rocked under his feet.
Duncan had always known both that he was one of the poles around which the school revolved, and that he wasn‘t really interesting enough to warrant the attention. The three of them - Duncan, Logan, and Dick; the charmed older sons of rich, powerful men - were the core of the 09er group. Those students outside the circle talked constantly about them and what they did, who they did it with, and what they drove. He was used to walking the Neptune High corridors under the scrutiny of half the student body, used to the other 09ers scrambling for his attention. But Lilly and Logan were the ones with star power. He’d drifted across the surface of his life, living in the warm golden glow of their reflected glory, for years.
The years of surfing, and computer games, and lounging by the pool had made them buddies, but in that moment, when Logan’s face paled under his tan, Duncan realized that they had more than that. That what he felt for Logan was as fierce and uncompromising as what he felt for Lilly.
He said nothing when Logan always had a note from Lynn after that, anytime they played shirts and skins. When Dick mocked Logan for wearing a t-shirt poolside, Duncan had lazily commented on Logan’s alabaster skin and the risk of melanomas, without opening his eyes.
He couldn’t stop himself making a noise, though, when he noticed the thin scabbing lines on Logan’s back that day, as they changed into their wetsuits. The sun was coming up, glinting mutely off the Xterra, standing, doors open, as near to the beach as Logan could get it. And Duncan heard himself making this weird gasping noise, like all the air in his lungs wanted to be outside his body instead of inside.
Logan jerked his chin up, as if daring Duncan to say something. But his eyes widened, damp and brown, and it took all Duncan had not to stretch out his hand and touch Logan’s goose-pimpling skin. Because, although he was never credited with much imagination, he could suddenly see, as if Logan had sat down and told him all about it over mango smoothies, Aaron Echolls slashing Logan’s back with a belt.
Logan pulled his wetsuit over his shoulders and pulled up the zipper, and the world was suddenly back as it should be, bathed in California sunshine with the swell promising a day of awesome surfing. Duncan shouldered the cooler and slammed the car door shut.
---
2. Mr Manning
The swell of Meg’s abdomen, primly veiled by her hospital gown, terrified him. He visited every day, and watched the nurses check Meg’s vitals as briskly as if she was a car, rather than a living girl who couldn’t wake up. Still, it seemed that they had collectively decided to protect him from the wrath of Mr. Manning. He had overheard them talking at the nurses’ station one night, and he felt like a fraud when one of them wished out loud that her daughter could find a boy who would love her like he loved Meg. What he mostly felt, as he sat in the gloom of Meg’s room, was afraid.
He hadn’t been able to explain to Veronica, to anyone, that he’d never had sex with Meg. Not the kind that usually led to a baby, anyway. They’d kissed, and held hands, but when they’d tried to go further it had been like there was a steel door denying him entry. She’d bitten her lip, turning her face away from his. He’d been frozen over her, totally silent because all the words he could think to say sounded like lies, but she’d ground her hips against him and he’d come, helplessly, against her leg, feeling like the biggest shitheel that ever lived. They never tried again.
Somehow, he hadn’t minded. Had even thought, in some strange way, that it was easier not to have to be responsible for someone else’s pleasure when he didn’t even know how to make that happen for himself. Sometimes, he wondered if the months after Shelley’s party had broken that part of him forever. When he’d dreamed of the feel of Veronica against his skin, and the taste of salt and lime on his lips, and - oh God - Lilly.
Meg’s schedule had been intense, and plotted in neat squares on a chart on the Manning refrigerator. As far as he knew, he’d been the only thing that she’d managed to fit in to the margins of time she’d carved from more wholesome activities. But then, staring at the smooth crest of the hospital sheet, he realized that there was a lot that he didn’t know.
For a few days he wondered if there had been someone else, if there were more strands of Meg that he wasn’t aware of, all woven together under her tanned skin and neat plaid skirts. But then he and Veronica had found Grace locked in the cupboard, and the piles and piles of composition books filled with the Manning girls’ neat cursive scripts, and the whole thing was so like some gothic novel that he hadn’t even argued with Lamb about being bundled into the back of the Sheriff Department cruiser.
He wanted Meg to wake up then, so he could tell her that he was sorry. He’d laughed with all the others about the stupid Purity Test thing, and he was starting to get the picture on how well that would have gone down with her parents. He thought about what she might have had to write in those stupid composition books, until it felt like somebody had sandpapered his throat.
When she did wake up, she broke his heart. Just took it and crushed it under the weight of the shitty life she’d lived.
He never told Veronica that Lilly wasn’t his. He knew that if he told her that Meg’s father was Lilly’s father too that she’d get the baby away, somehow, but he knew that she would never let him take her. And he owed Meg the life that he hadn’t realized needed saving.
---
3. Woody Goodman and Richard Casablancas Sr.
If he was honest, he’d never really liked Dick Casablancas. The guy was funny, sure, but Celeste had all but insisted he never come back to the Kane’s house after the second time he vomited in the pool. He’d barely given him a second thought since he’d arrived in Australia.
When Logan called to ask if he and Dick could come for a visit, Duncan was less than enthused. But he’d never been able to refuse Logan anything, and the dude’s brother had just jumped off the roof of the Neptune Grand.
He and Lilly were having breakfast outside on the terrace when Logan staggered through the terrace door. He scanned the table.
“Coffee, Danish and fruit? You should open a guesthouse, D.”
Duncan squinted at him. “Dick up?”
Logan waggled his eyebrows. “Nice of you to ask, dude. But I won’t need that type of service this morning.”
Duncan shook his head, smiling. “Not in front of my child, Logan.”
Logan looked at Lilly and his expression shifted. “Sorry.” He sat down. “Dick’s sleeping.”
“Jetlag?”
“Depression.” Logan was looking towards the pool, his eyes hidden behind his shades.
Duncan caught the blob of yoghurt that Lilly was letting dribble out of her mouth. “Like, clinically?”
“Well, it’s not like I went to medical school in the year you’ve been gone. But I’m guessing that his brother turning out to be a psychopath, and his whole family abandoning him, has got to be worth a couple of paragraphs of the DSM.”
They sat in the sun, while Lilly babbled underneath her parasol and mashed banana into the tray of her high-chair. Logan told him about Beaver and the bus, and Beaver telling Veronica that he had killed her father, and then about Woody. He looked sideways when he did, as though Duncan might have some awkward revelation about his time in a Little League uniform, but Duncan only had the haziest memories of Gia Goodman’s father.
Logan talked about how unhappy Dick was, and how hard he was hitting the booze, and his voice was so scared and so flat that Duncan wanted to wrap his arms around him.
Then there was a silence and Duncan felt something ache in his throat, until he was desperate to get a second opinion but couldn’t think how to start. He found himself putting Lilly inside, in her playpen, and then Logan sat stock still while he talked and talked about Meg and the fact that he wasn’t Lilly’s father. He thought about Mr. Manning so infrequently, because when he did it felt like something was sticking in his chest, that he hadn’t realized that he was so very scared that somehow her conception would seep through Lilly’s life like an oilslick.
“I’m pretty fucked if evil is genetic.” Logan’s voice cracked on the words, and he looked at his hands. “I don’t know how you can even talk to me, after what Aaron did.”
Duncan licked sweat off his lip. “He did it to you, too.”
He remembered, fleetingly, his dad yelling at him for dinging his car, when Logan had been over playing X-Box in his room. Jake had backed off when he realized Duncan had company, but Logan had stood up, stood between him and Jake, and it was years later before he realized that Logan thought Jake was going to hit him right there where he stood.
Logan flipped his glasses up, and his eyes were red. “Was there anyone in that town who wasn’t beating, fucking, or ignoring their kids?”
“Veronica’s dad?”
Logan snorted. “Yeah, her life’s been totally charmed. Alcoholic mother, Lilly, abandoned by her friends, Beaver-“
“Beaver?”
“The night of Shelley’s party. He-“ Logan swallowed, hard. “He raped her.”
Duncan felt his face freeze.
“Woody gave Beaver Chlamydia, and he gave it to Veronica that night.” Logan poured himself a coffee, and Duncan noticed that his hand was shaking. “That sick fuck was really the gift that kept on giving, and Big Dick didn’t notice a fucking thing.”
---
4. Lianne Mars
Veronica came to visit when her mother died.
“I just need to get some sunshine, and I don’t want to be in Neptune right now,” she’d said on the phone, and if there was one thing he could offer her in December, it was sunshine.
He had worried that seeing Lilly’s birthday hoopla would be a vicious reminder of what she’d lost, but Veronica seemed content to blow up sparkly balloons and help Kate bake a cake in the shape of a castle. Lilly had clung to Kate’s hand for all of ten minutes before she was pulling on her skates to show Veronica how fast she could speed round the terrace.
“Thanks for having me here, Duncan,” she said, leaning against the counter in the kitchen as he prepared food for the barbeque.
“It’s nice to have someone else around to absorb some of the birthday intensity.” He smiled. “It’s exhausting for Kate, being so pregnant in this weather.”
Veronica smiled. “She’s really great, that Mrs. Kane. I like her a lot.” Her smile slipped. “After everything, I’m glad that you’re so happy.”
“Thanks.” He sprinkled chives on top of the potato salad. “Are you? Happy, I mean.”
She licked her lips. “I love Quantico. Logan and I have finally learned how to be great together. Before my Mom died, I was definitely happy.”
He picked up the beer bottle that was sitting, sweating, on the counter. “It’s not your fault, Veronica.”
She blew her fringe out of her eyes. “I know. I put my best Nancy Drew on finding her. Paid for rehab twice over.”
Duncan frowned.
Her shoulders sagged. “She stole my college fund. That’s why I was so desperate to get the Kane scholarship.”
He looked at her. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah.” She looked away, and he wondered if she was thinking about white dresses and the reason he didn’t know jack about her life back then. “She had a choice between my future and the bottle, and she chose the hooch.”
He wrapped his arms around her, feeling the sun streaming through the kitchen window warm his skin. “Jesus, Veronica, you’ve got more guts than any two people I know.”
She leaned into the hug for a minute, and then patted him on the back. “Let’s not get over-emotional here, champ. There’s no crying in baseball.”
“Daddy?” It was Lilly, who had clomped into the house on her skates. “Can we go swimming after dinner?”
Veronica smiled at her, and brushed her fingers under her eyes. “That sounds awesome, Lilly.”
---
5. Jake and Celeste Kane
It was impossible, he knew, but sometimes Lilly looked so much like Lilly that it made him catch his breath. When she’d stood at the top of the stairs and stamped her foot. When she’d refused to put her pants on so he could take her to nursery. When she’d completed a particularly vicious tackle on the soccer field.
Now she was walking downstairs in the first long dress she had ever owned, and a pair of something Kate told him were kitten heels, and the look on her fact made his chest hurt. She was careful not to move her head too much, although Kate had sprayed her hair with so much Elnett that they were going to have to chisel her chignon from her head. She looked beautiful, and there was something so ancient about a daughter parading for her father’s approval that he felt the tears pricking the backs of his eyes,
Kate was smiling proudly from the bottom of the stairs, Annabeth propped on her hip, and he wondered for the five millionth time how this had happened. How he’d won life’s lottery.
“What do you think, Dad?”
It broke the spell. It wasn’t just that Lilly had an Australian accent. It was the smile. He couldn’t imagine his sister smiling at their father like that.
Lilly’s trust scared him. Distance in time and space had given him some perspective on his parents, and it had bruised him to realize that they’d broken his sister with indifference. That whatever character traits she’d brought to the party the combination of Celeste’s icily efficient mothering, and the way Jake’s eye’s slid right past her, had dipped her in shellac. They’d never hit her, but they’d hurt her as much as if they had.
His sister had been reckless in a way that he wasn’t, as if she had always been trying to find something to make her feel. He’d gone along for the ride, most of the time, but it had always been Lilly’s booze, or Lilly’s pills, and the way she had never, ever wanted to come down had scared him then. Had scared Logan, then, and he had a streak of self-destruction running through him a mile wide. It terrified him now, the thought of his baby picking through a gaggle of teenage boys in her panties and tiny t-shirt, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and bending down over a mirror with a fifty dollar bill in her nose.
Kate had grown up in Sydney, but her family had been rich enough to protect her from most things, and poor enough to keep her from others. His story of sitting next to Veronica, watching his best friend’s father fucking his sister, rendered her speechless. He couldn’t explain that he understood, that the Kane house had frozen his sister so much that she put her hand in the fire just to feel some warmth.
He looked at his daughter, twirling carefully in her dress and heels, and vowed that she would never doubt that she had two people who loved her more than anything in the world.
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Rating: R
Icon: claranstrap
Word Count: ~3000
Characters: Duncan & Logan friendship, Duncan/Meg, Duncan & Veronica friendship, Duncan/OFC, Lilly Kanes Jr & Sr, Dick Casablancas
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Duncan learns a lot about parenthood from the good people of Neptune.
Warning: References suicide / child abuse / rape, most of which is found in canon.
Author's note: For hyperemmalawlz , who loves Duncan.
1. Aaron Echolls
His first thought had been to lie when Veronica asked him, because he’d been keeping Logan’s secret for so long that a part of him felt jealous that she knew too.
But of course he knew. How could he not?
Logan had always changed for PE with his back to the wall, snapping John Enbom across the legs with a wet towel the one day that Enbom took his spot. Had changed with his back to the wall since Mr Graham in seventh grade had waited until the gym was nearly empty before asking how Logan had got the bruise that extended from his shoulder blade to his waist.
Logan had sneered, and told Mr Graham that people who had money got to do things on weekends that weren’t work a second job at the Pac and Sac, like go surfing. Duncan had said nothing, letting his face go blank like he was thinking about the cafeteria mac and cheese, but the sprung floor of the gym had rocked under his feet.
Duncan had always known both that he was one of the poles around which the school revolved, and that he wasn‘t really interesting enough to warrant the attention. The three of them - Duncan, Logan, and Dick; the charmed older sons of rich, powerful men - were the core of the 09er group. Those students outside the circle talked constantly about them and what they did, who they did it with, and what they drove. He was used to walking the Neptune High corridors under the scrutiny of half the student body, used to the other 09ers scrambling for his attention. But Lilly and Logan were the ones with star power. He’d drifted across the surface of his life, living in the warm golden glow of their reflected glory, for years.
The years of surfing, and computer games, and lounging by the pool had made them buddies, but in that moment, when Logan’s face paled under his tan, Duncan realized that they had more than that. That what he felt for Logan was as fierce and uncompromising as what he felt for Lilly.
He said nothing when Logan always had a note from Lynn after that, anytime they played shirts and skins. When Dick mocked Logan for wearing a t-shirt poolside, Duncan had lazily commented on Logan’s alabaster skin and the risk of melanomas, without opening his eyes.
He couldn’t stop himself making a noise, though, when he noticed the thin scabbing lines on Logan’s back that day, as they changed into their wetsuits. The sun was coming up, glinting mutely off the Xterra, standing, doors open, as near to the beach as Logan could get it. And Duncan heard himself making this weird gasping noise, like all the air in his lungs wanted to be outside his body instead of inside.
Logan jerked his chin up, as if daring Duncan to say something. But his eyes widened, damp and brown, and it took all Duncan had not to stretch out his hand and touch Logan’s goose-pimpling skin. Because, although he was never credited with much imagination, he could suddenly see, as if Logan had sat down and told him all about it over mango smoothies, Aaron Echolls slashing Logan’s back with a belt.
Logan pulled his wetsuit over his shoulders and pulled up the zipper, and the world was suddenly back as it should be, bathed in California sunshine with the swell promising a day of awesome surfing. Duncan shouldered the cooler and slammed the car door shut.
---
2. Mr Manning
The swell of Meg’s abdomen, primly veiled by her hospital gown, terrified him. He visited every day, and watched the nurses check Meg’s vitals as briskly as if she was a car, rather than a living girl who couldn’t wake up. Still, it seemed that they had collectively decided to protect him from the wrath of Mr. Manning. He had overheard them talking at the nurses’ station one night, and he felt like a fraud when one of them wished out loud that her daughter could find a boy who would love her like he loved Meg. What he mostly felt, as he sat in the gloom of Meg’s room, was afraid.
He hadn’t been able to explain to Veronica, to anyone, that he’d never had sex with Meg. Not the kind that usually led to a baby, anyway. They’d kissed, and held hands, but when they’d tried to go further it had been like there was a steel door denying him entry. She’d bitten her lip, turning her face away from his. He’d been frozen over her, totally silent because all the words he could think to say sounded like lies, but she’d ground her hips against him and he’d come, helplessly, against her leg, feeling like the biggest shitheel that ever lived. They never tried again.
Somehow, he hadn’t minded. Had even thought, in some strange way, that it was easier not to have to be responsible for someone else’s pleasure when he didn’t even know how to make that happen for himself. Sometimes, he wondered if the months after Shelley’s party had broken that part of him forever. When he’d dreamed of the feel of Veronica against his skin, and the taste of salt and lime on his lips, and - oh God - Lilly.
Meg’s schedule had been intense, and plotted in neat squares on a chart on the Manning refrigerator. As far as he knew, he’d been the only thing that she’d managed to fit in to the margins of time she’d carved from more wholesome activities. But then, staring at the smooth crest of the hospital sheet, he realized that there was a lot that he didn’t know.
For a few days he wondered if there had been someone else, if there were more strands of Meg that he wasn’t aware of, all woven together under her tanned skin and neat plaid skirts. But then he and Veronica had found Grace locked in the cupboard, and the piles and piles of composition books filled with the Manning girls’ neat cursive scripts, and the whole thing was so like some gothic novel that he hadn’t even argued with Lamb about being bundled into the back of the Sheriff Department cruiser.
He wanted Meg to wake up then, so he could tell her that he was sorry. He’d laughed with all the others about the stupid Purity Test thing, and he was starting to get the picture on how well that would have gone down with her parents. He thought about what she might have had to write in those stupid composition books, until it felt like somebody had sandpapered his throat.
When she did wake up, she broke his heart. Just took it and crushed it under the weight of the shitty life she’d lived.
He never told Veronica that Lilly wasn’t his. He knew that if he told her that Meg’s father was Lilly’s father too that she’d get the baby away, somehow, but he knew that she would never let him take her. And he owed Meg the life that he hadn’t realized needed saving.
---
3. Woody Goodman and Richard Casablancas Sr.
If he was honest, he’d never really liked Dick Casablancas. The guy was funny, sure, but Celeste had all but insisted he never come back to the Kane’s house after the second time he vomited in the pool. He’d barely given him a second thought since he’d arrived in Australia.
When Logan called to ask if he and Dick could come for a visit, Duncan was less than enthused. But he’d never been able to refuse Logan anything, and the dude’s brother had just jumped off the roof of the Neptune Grand.
He and Lilly were having breakfast outside on the terrace when Logan staggered through the terrace door. He scanned the table.
“Coffee, Danish and fruit? You should open a guesthouse, D.”
Duncan squinted at him. “Dick up?”
Logan waggled his eyebrows. “Nice of you to ask, dude. But I won’t need that type of service this morning.”
Duncan shook his head, smiling. “Not in front of my child, Logan.”
Logan looked at Lilly and his expression shifted. “Sorry.” He sat down. “Dick’s sleeping.”
“Jetlag?”
“Depression.” Logan was looking towards the pool, his eyes hidden behind his shades.
Duncan caught the blob of yoghurt that Lilly was letting dribble out of her mouth. “Like, clinically?”
“Well, it’s not like I went to medical school in the year you’ve been gone. But I’m guessing that his brother turning out to be a psychopath, and his whole family abandoning him, has got to be worth a couple of paragraphs of the DSM.”
They sat in the sun, while Lilly babbled underneath her parasol and mashed banana into the tray of her high-chair. Logan told him about Beaver and the bus, and Beaver telling Veronica that he had killed her father, and then about Woody. He looked sideways when he did, as though Duncan might have some awkward revelation about his time in a Little League uniform, but Duncan only had the haziest memories of Gia Goodman’s father.
Logan talked about how unhappy Dick was, and how hard he was hitting the booze, and his voice was so scared and so flat that Duncan wanted to wrap his arms around him.
Then there was a silence and Duncan felt something ache in his throat, until he was desperate to get a second opinion but couldn’t think how to start. He found himself putting Lilly inside, in her playpen, and then Logan sat stock still while he talked and talked about Meg and the fact that he wasn’t Lilly’s father. He thought about Mr. Manning so infrequently, because when he did it felt like something was sticking in his chest, that he hadn’t realized that he was so very scared that somehow her conception would seep through Lilly’s life like an oilslick.
“I’m pretty fucked if evil is genetic.” Logan’s voice cracked on the words, and he looked at his hands. “I don’t know how you can even talk to me, after what Aaron did.”
Duncan licked sweat off his lip. “He did it to you, too.”
He remembered, fleetingly, his dad yelling at him for dinging his car, when Logan had been over playing X-Box in his room. Jake had backed off when he realized Duncan had company, but Logan had stood up, stood between him and Jake, and it was years later before he realized that Logan thought Jake was going to hit him right there where he stood.
Logan flipped his glasses up, and his eyes were red. “Was there anyone in that town who wasn’t beating, fucking, or ignoring their kids?”
“Veronica’s dad?”
Logan snorted. “Yeah, her life’s been totally charmed. Alcoholic mother, Lilly, abandoned by her friends, Beaver-“
“Beaver?”
“The night of Shelley’s party. He-“ Logan swallowed, hard. “He raped her.”
Duncan felt his face freeze.
“Woody gave Beaver Chlamydia, and he gave it to Veronica that night.” Logan poured himself a coffee, and Duncan noticed that his hand was shaking. “That sick fuck was really the gift that kept on giving, and Big Dick didn’t notice a fucking thing.”
---
4. Lianne Mars
Veronica came to visit when her mother died.
“I just need to get some sunshine, and I don’t want to be in Neptune right now,” she’d said on the phone, and if there was one thing he could offer her in December, it was sunshine.
He had worried that seeing Lilly’s birthday hoopla would be a vicious reminder of what she’d lost, but Veronica seemed content to blow up sparkly balloons and help Kate bake a cake in the shape of a castle. Lilly had clung to Kate’s hand for all of ten minutes before she was pulling on her skates to show Veronica how fast she could speed round the terrace.
“Thanks for having me here, Duncan,” she said, leaning against the counter in the kitchen as he prepared food for the barbeque.
“It’s nice to have someone else around to absorb some of the birthday intensity.” He smiled. “It’s exhausting for Kate, being so pregnant in this weather.”
Veronica smiled. “She’s really great, that Mrs. Kane. I like her a lot.” Her smile slipped. “After everything, I’m glad that you’re so happy.”
“Thanks.” He sprinkled chives on top of the potato salad. “Are you? Happy, I mean.”
She licked her lips. “I love Quantico. Logan and I have finally learned how to be great together. Before my Mom died, I was definitely happy.”
He picked up the beer bottle that was sitting, sweating, on the counter. “It’s not your fault, Veronica.”
She blew her fringe out of her eyes. “I know. I put my best Nancy Drew on finding her. Paid for rehab twice over.”
Duncan frowned.
Her shoulders sagged. “She stole my college fund. That’s why I was so desperate to get the Kane scholarship.”
He looked at her. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah.” She looked away, and he wondered if she was thinking about white dresses and the reason he didn’t know jack about her life back then. “She had a choice between my future and the bottle, and she chose the hooch.”
He wrapped his arms around her, feeling the sun streaming through the kitchen window warm his skin. “Jesus, Veronica, you’ve got more guts than any two people I know.”
She leaned into the hug for a minute, and then patted him on the back. “Let’s not get over-emotional here, champ. There’s no crying in baseball.”
“Daddy?” It was Lilly, who had clomped into the house on her skates. “Can we go swimming after dinner?”
Veronica smiled at her, and brushed her fingers under her eyes. “That sounds awesome, Lilly.”
---
5. Jake and Celeste Kane
It was impossible, he knew, but sometimes Lilly looked so much like Lilly that it made him catch his breath. When she’d stood at the top of the stairs and stamped her foot. When she’d refused to put her pants on so he could take her to nursery. When she’d completed a particularly vicious tackle on the soccer field.
Now she was walking downstairs in the first long dress she had ever owned, and a pair of something Kate told him were kitten heels, and the look on her fact made his chest hurt. She was careful not to move her head too much, although Kate had sprayed her hair with so much Elnett that they were going to have to chisel her chignon from her head. She looked beautiful, and there was something so ancient about a daughter parading for her father’s approval that he felt the tears pricking the backs of his eyes,
Kate was smiling proudly from the bottom of the stairs, Annabeth propped on her hip, and he wondered for the five millionth time how this had happened. How he’d won life’s lottery.
“What do you think, Dad?”
It broke the spell. It wasn’t just that Lilly had an Australian accent. It was the smile. He couldn’t imagine his sister smiling at their father like that.
Lilly’s trust scared him. Distance in time and space had given him some perspective on his parents, and it had bruised him to realize that they’d broken his sister with indifference. That whatever character traits she’d brought to the party the combination of Celeste’s icily efficient mothering, and the way Jake’s eye’s slid right past her, had dipped her in shellac. They’d never hit her, but they’d hurt her as much as if they had.
His sister had been reckless in a way that he wasn’t, as if she had always been trying to find something to make her feel. He’d gone along for the ride, most of the time, but it had always been Lilly’s booze, or Lilly’s pills, and the way she had never, ever wanted to come down had scared him then. Had scared Logan, then, and he had a streak of self-destruction running through him a mile wide. It terrified him now, the thought of his baby picking through a gaggle of teenage boys in her panties and tiny t-shirt, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and bending down over a mirror with a fifty dollar bill in her nose.
Kate had grown up in Sydney, but her family had been rich enough to protect her from most things, and poor enough to keep her from others. His story of sitting next to Veronica, watching his best friend’s father fucking his sister, rendered her speechless. He couldn’t explain that he understood, that the Kane house had frozen his sister so much that she put her hand in the fire just to feel some warmth.
He looked at his daughter, twirling carefully in her dress and heels, and vowed that she would never doubt that she had two people who loved her more than anything in the world.