Fic: Neverland (Logan/Veronica) R
Title: “Neverland”
Author: em2mb
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica.
Word Count: 4,049
Rating: R
Summary: You don’t carry on. You change. You change, and you’re never the person you were again. Twenty-some years later, Logan and Veronica have to bury another teenage girl.
Spoilers: Season three relationship arch for Logan/Veronica, but nothing specific. Future Fic.
Warnings: Character death, grieving.
Author's Notes: The characters might belong to Rob Thomas, but I’ll require their use if my claim is accepted at 100_situations. Prompt and additional notes after the fic.
He’s at work when he gets the call. Feet up on the desk, laughing, fiddling with a pen, telling his secretary about Wendy’s debate tournament and Jillian’s basketball game and Sophie’s violin recital.
“Come to the house.”
His father-in-law’s voice shakes. Trembles, cracks even. It’s how Logan knows, even when Keith won’t tell him, that it’s one of the girls. One of his girls.
He runs three red lights to get home.
Logan sees the flashing lights before the house comes into view. A squad car, two officers. Jill sitting with Sophie on the front step, hugging her little sister tightly.
His tiny blonde wife sobbing in her father’s arms.
* * *
The first few days aren’t so bad. He’s still in shock and Veronica’s still in shock and there’s a lot of things to keep them busy.
At the funeral home, he holds Veronica tightly. She doesn’t say anything, hasn’t since they got there. She sits and twists her wedding ring. Eighteen years of marriage, three kids. Just when they thought the hard part was over.
“Maybe the cherry?” Logan murmurs, kissing Veronica’s temple. She shakes her head. The funeral director turns the page. “Oak? Veronica?”
He practically chokes on the words. Did it really matter? What difference could a type of wood make?
“I-I don’t know,” Veronica says finally. She’s shaking again, and Logan rubs her arm gently. She turns to him, eyes wet. “What if she wanted to be cremated? I don’t know if she wanted to be cremated.”
Veronica breaks down.
Of course you don’t, Logan thinks miserably. It’s not a conversation you have with your sixteen-year-old daughter.
“Shhh, baby,” Logan says, and he’s shrugging uselessly to the funeral director and ushering Veronica out of the room. He sits Veronica down with Keith.
In the end, he calls Wendy’s best friend since kindergarten.
“Cremation, definitely,” says Rachel knowingly. For a second, Logan is reminded of the Rachel of a decade ago. Her glasses aren’t pink anymore and she isn’t missing her two front teeth, but her tone as matter-of-fact now as it was then. “Wendy always wanted to be recycled into a neat-”
A sob punctuates Rachel’s speech. “It’s okay, honey,” he assures. But it’s not, and Rachel is smart enough to know that. She’s not number two in the class for no reason.
Number one now.
“I’m sorry Mr. Echolls,” she whispers. “I’m not ready to think of her in the past tense.”
* * *
Jillian writes the obituary.
No one asked her to-because who asks a fourteen-year-old to do that? But Logan isn’t surprised when she comes into the living room that night with her laptop. She pads over in her slippers (a gift from Wendy the Christmas before) and curls up next to him on the couch. He sets his pen and paper aside as she solemnly opens the screen.
Logan is crying when he finishes. Jill’s lip trembles.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she says. He hugs her tightly, breathes in the scent of her apple shampoo. She’s blonde like her mother, petite. Sophie is, too.
Not Wendy, though. Wendy is tall, with his dark hair and dark eyes and penchant for mischief.
Wendy is gone.
“Thank you, Jilly,” he says. “You know how much Wendy-face loved you, right?”
She buries her face in her father’s shirt as she cries.
* * *
Rachel delivers the first of many care baskets. She’s over early on the second day after, brandishing a fresh batch of her homemade muffins and a determined look. It only gets her so far. She breaks down once she’s in the kitchen, and Veronica has to get her a paper bag when she starts hyperventilating.
Logan walks in as she steadies herself, and he smiles at her as he pours a cup of coffee. Rachel throws the bag away, and for a second, Logan forgets. This is just the morning after another sleepover. Rachel always beats Wendy up.
But Logan kisses his wife, and the dark circles under Veronica’s eyes remind him why this is different. Still, they give Rachel their full attention.
“I wanted to tell everyone at school to wear green,” she says. “It’s Wendy’s favorite color, but before I said anything...”
She looks at them pleadingly.
“Of course, sweetie,” says Veronica, crossing the kitchen and covering Rachel’s hand with hers. “Logan and I-” she glances at him “-wanted you to say something, if you thought you could.”
Rachel considers this. “I don’t know,” she says. “But you should ask Mr. Parsons.”
* * *
Sophie’s still clinging to her parents, but Jillian wants to go back to school. She wakes up too late to make first period, but Logan takes her in halfway through her Spanish class. She hugs him tightly at the attendance window before turning down the hall.
“Mr. Echolls,” the attendance lady, Sue, says, “I’m so sorry.”
He nods numbly, thanks her. “We... we know about arrangements. The principal kept calling. Can I talk to him?”
“Of course,” Sue says, standing up. “I’ll take you to his-”
But his Wendy had been a firecracker, and Logan knows his way to the principal’s office.
And to the debate room, where he goes next. It’s right at the bells, and Wendy’s class is filing in when he gets there. They take seats quietly on the desks, hugging each other and crying. All of Wendy’s best friends, in one room. Rachel gives him a sad little wave, but the others avert their eyes. He’s seen them all before, having judged endless rounds of public forum over the years and given an infinite number of rides home.
He approaches Wendy’s debate coach, a man who seems to understand Logan doesn’t want words to console him. The last time he’d seen Mr. Parsons was a month ago, at a home tournament. Logan had come up midday with pizza for the team and Midol for Wendy.
Both men looked older now.
“Veronica and I wanted to know if you’d speak at the service.”
* * *
Sophie had been seven when Rachel’s mom died of cancer. She knew the lines fed to confused kids about heaven and hell. She was eleven now, and it had been long enough for her to know death was forever. Still, Logan and Veronica worried.
They reheated lasagna brought over by Mrs. Lamp, an older woman who had babysat all the girls when they were little. They didn’t bother to set the table, just scattered throughout the kitchen. Keith came with Alicia, whom he’d married three months before Logan and Veronica had tied the knot. Wallace was flying in from Chicago, and Darryl had driven in from Los Angeles with his wife.
After dinner, they gathered around the island and read the obituary Jillian had written.
“Beautiful, sweetie,” Keith tells his granddaughter.
“It really is, kid,” Darryl says, ruffling Jill’s hair.
Veronica squeezes her daughter’s hand, and Logan covers both their hands with his.
“This is stupid.”
They all turn to look at Sophie, who is leaning against the entryway between the kitchen and living room. She doesn’t look upset in the least.
“You’re not just here and then gone,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re not.”
No, you’re not.
Veronica takes this one because Logan is paralyzed. He agrees with Sophie.
* * *
He hasn’t seen this much green since the last St. Patrick’s Day he celebrated with Dick, which was before he was married.
Wendy’s friends file in, form somber groups throughout the chapel. He and Veronica aren’t particularly religious, but the church is large, and Bonnie Capistrano owed his wife a favor.
Logan has invited Rachel and her father to sit with the family, and to pass the invitation along to Wendy’s other close friends. Sophie is sandwiched between her cousins, Wallace’s twin girls. Jillian invites her best friend, Kerry, for comfort.
He wonders if it will be like Lilly’s funeral, where everyone who really cared sat in the first four rows and everyone else came in hopes the paparazzi would catch their tears.
But as Logan cranes his neck and surveys the sea of green, he knows faces. He sees teachers and friends and casual acquaintances but hardly anyone he flat out doesn’t recognize. His entire office is sitting a few rows from the back, lawyers dressed in black except for his secretary, Bev, who wore a dress so green it shocked the eyes.
He holds Veronica’s hand. The things everyone says about Wendy are nice, but he just wants it to be over.
* * *
They compromise. They cremate Wendy, but bury the ashes in a cemetery near the ocean. Logan knows he’s being selfish, but he can’t send his vibrant daughter to the wind.
He feels awkward and ridiculous at the gravesite, dropping pink roses in a hole. He wraps one arm around Veronica and offers the other hand to Sophie. Keith has Jillian.
No one has Wendy.
Logan wishes he were dead, but only for a second. Veronica needs him. Jill and Sophie need him. He knows he’ll have to be strong for them.
* * *
Everyone comes over afterwards. They have a receiving line stretching into the street. At first they decided against one, but Rachel had talked them into it. She had bit her lip and told them how wonderful it was to hear good things about her mother after the cancer had won.
Logan had never been able to deny Wendy much of anything, and now it seemed that it had transferred over to Rachel. He secretly hopes Wendy’s loud-mouthed best friend will keep coming over. She’s the only one that truly likes Easy Rider.
It does help to have the house filled with people and laughter. For three hours, no one is crying alone. But it ends, and the happy house of five is now a broken house of four.
* * *
The school calls a week later, two days into winter break. It’s Logan’s year to take time off from work to be with the girls, which works out because cases are backlogged at Mars Investigations from the week before. He’d barely seen his wife since she’d gone back to work. When he does, she’s a shadow of the woman she once was.
Ms. O’Neill suggests grief counseling. She can put them in contact with someone if he’d like, but Logan declines her offer. He plays a round of Scrabble with Jillian and watches a movie with Sophie. He tries not to glance at the stairs, at the top of which Wendy’s door remains closed.
Veronica comes back with take-out. They hadn’t had to cook a meal for two weeks, but now the sympathy food has stopped coming, and they eat Chinese straight from the cartoon.
Wendy’s not there to chastise them for using forks.
He takes Jillian to Kerry’s after dinner and drops her off at the door because he doesn’t want to discuss how they’re doing with Mrs. Graham, who means well despite of how uncomfortable she makes him. She’s the same woman who used to gush over his famous parents every time he’d drop Kerry off.
That’s why this run became Wendy’s when she was old enough to drive.
Afterwards, Logan drives around for a bit. He considers going to the gravesite, but there’s no marker yet, and he’s not really prepared.
When he gets home, Veronica is asleep on the couch. Her eyes are closed, but tears are streaming down her cheeks, and her mouth is moving. He wakes her up and whispers to her that he loves her.
“Do you know what else happened on December 7?” she asks tearfully.
He knows the answer is not Pearl Harbor.
* * *
Christmas is hard.
Wendy was supposed to get a new computer, a shiny new Apple laptop Mac had scored before they’d even hit store shelves, thanks to her high-ranking position with the company. Logan and Veronica gave Rachel the computer, who’d stammered her thanks and, blushing, presented them with two pies and a plate of fudge.
Jillian gets all her gifts and the ones that trickled in from other people for Wendy, bought before their lives had shattered. Sophie doesn’t say anything about this arrangement; she’s not yet interested in the same things. On Christmas Eve, she goes to bed early but does not put out milk and cookies for Santa.
The year before, Logan had spent an hour yelling at Wendy for spoiling the story for her little sister.
If only she were here this year to defend her decision-“But Dad, most ten-year-olds already know! She’d just find out from one of them!”
God, how he missed her.
On Christmas morning, Veronica sleeps late and doesn’t take any pictures as they open gifts.
* * *
Weeks turn into a month, and they’re suddenly faced with practical decisions. They agree to sell Wendy’s car, but Logan can’t bring himself to go through with it.
He takes the car, a bright green Beetle convertible-Wendy worshipped Mac-for a drive through Neptune, through the neighborhoods he and Veronica had grown up in, before the city had finally incorporated, expanded east, and grew large enough to have suburbs of its own. He and Veronica had always let on that much of the Echolls fortune had evaporated. It hadn’t, but they thought it was important to raise the girls as middle class, without the poverty she’d experienced or the affluence to which he was accustomed.
But he hadn’t been able to resist buying Wendy the car of her dreams when she’d turned sixteen. When she’d seen her Bug, wrapped in a bright red bow out on the driveway, she’d jumped at him so hard she’d knocked him over.
The car-whose name was Ringo-went into storage.
* * *
Jillian was the first to go into therapy, for obvious reasons. She’d cut her arm a little with a paring knife, and Veronica had seen the wound the next day. She’d called him, hysterical, and he’d come home from the office immediately.
He and Jill talked.
She’d been bawling by the time he was through. Logan felt bad he’d made her cry and spent two weeks trying to make it up to her. But at the same time, he felt he’d had to impress on her what her actions had done to her mother.
So Jill went into therapy, and he slowly stopped having nightmares about paring knives.
Veronica didn’t.
He got another call at the office from Keith when she collapsed from exhaustion. The doctor prescribed antidepressants and sleeping pills, but she wouldn’t take either.
* * *
It took until April to place Wendy’s tombstone. Logan, who with Veronica and Jill and Sophie and Rachel had decided so meticulously what to put on it, did not drop by to visit. He didn’t want to talk to engraved stone. He wanted to talk to his daughter.
He’d picked up a lot of literature about grieving while waiting for Jill during her therapy sessions. In one of the pamphlets, he read that something like fifty percent of couples that lost children got divorced.
He decided it wasn’t going to be him and Veronica, and he told her as much. He caught her when she was out of bed one night, hand on the doorknob of their dead daughter’s bedroom.
She doesn’t go in, and she won’t look at him as he talks.
“No,” Veronica says finally. “Wendy would be angry if we split up over this.”
Logan’s heart falls. He doesn’t know how to make her understand he’s not doing it for Wendy, and in that moment he realizes he doesn’t care if his daughter, perpetually sixteen now, would be mad.
He’s pretty mad at her himself.
* * *
Veronica packs a bag and stays with Keith and Alicia for a week. Logan imagines Jillian, now fifteen, knows what’s going on, but he tells Sophie she’s catching a bail jumper on his way to Mexico.
He’s alone when the postcard comes, like they always do, nondescript blue rectangles with familiar handwriting. Duncan’s always the last to know.
I am so sorry.
It’s all it says. That night, Veronica comes home. She’s crying as she falls into his arms, and he murmurs over and over that they’ll make it through this. He decides to let go of the anger he felt towards her for walking out. They agree to counseling.
Veronica starts to sleep through the night.
* * *
It’s summer before Logan knows it, and he’s ferrying his girls between violin lessons and league soccer games and the pool. Jillian’s arm has more than healed, and Logan begins to wonder if the faded pink line is a good reminder for them all.
Sophie is harder to read than her sister, and Logan doesn’t have a clue how to reach out to her. They talk sometimes, but she still goes to Veronica. She’s the last member of the Echolls family to go into therapy.
Finally, in late July, she mentions Wendy. She never talked about Wendy before, but over dinner one night, she began to tell all her favorite stories about her big sister. Logan makes it a point to tuck her in that night. Sophie asks if Wendy would be excited about her starting seventh grade. Logan replies that she most certainly would.
He still hasn’t visited his little girl’s grave.
* * *
Rachel has a new boyfriend. Rich, of the Wendy years, is gone. Logan suspects he cheated, but he doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want to know. It’s September, and he’s as protective of Rachel as he was of Wendy. He doesn’t want to have to explain to Dick why his son is in traction.
Derek meets Rachel’s dad first, but then Logan and Veronica get to size him up.
Logan doesn’t trust the glint in Derek’s eyes. It reminds of him of the wild streak he had as a teenager. But he gives Rachel his blessing all the same because it’s what Wendy would have wanted him to do.
He finally sells the Beetle, and puts the money in an account under Rachel’s name. She’s talking about Yale, and Logan knows her family can’t afford it. He’ll disguise it as a scholarship if he has to. Just in case it comes down to it, he and Veronica go to the school with a proposal.
They remember the Kane scholarship. They decide they’ll review applicants individually and favor members of the debate team. They don’t want Wendy reduced to a battle between valedictorian candidates.
* * *
Veronica and Logan go away for a weekend-it’s Keith’s idea. Logan has been in debt to his father-in-law since the day he gave his blessing. Now, after ten months, they’re starting to heal. Logan credits Keith. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever repay him.
In Aspen, they make new memories and forget old ones. They have the best sex they’ve had since the kids were born. Logan had almost forgotten how much he needed her. Almost.
Veronica sleeps soundly so long as it’s on his chest, and Logan stops worrying they won’t make it. They let go of a lot of things, but not each other, and not Wendy.
* * *
He waits until the week before the one-year anniversary. It seems appropriate, fitting, to visit Wendy now. But they have plans the day of, with the entire family and all of her friends. So he packs their favorite lunch-the one he’d bring out to her and Rachel’s teddy bear picnics when they were seven-and buys her a stuffed elephant with a green ribbon around its neck.
Logan’s eyes are already brimming with tears when he reaches the cemetery. He parks, getting out the picnic basket and peace offering and starts slowly down the trail. He hears voices.
“Everyone misses you,” someone is saying. “No one can believe it’s been a year.”
Another voice pipes in, “Rachel placed first in extemp at the home tournament. She’s doing amazingly well, considering it’s her first semester.” A pause. “She wouldn’t do puff anymore, not without you.”
The first voice continues, “We still don’t understand it, Wendy.”
“You had everything going for you. And you just gave it all away.”
Logan is hanging back, closing his eyes. He’s waiting for them to finish so he can be alone with her. He can hear them shuffling, one telling the other to wait in the car. The first speaker, a girl, brushes past him.
“Mr. Echolls,” she stammers. “I-we-”
He smiles at her, hoping his tears aren’t too obvious. “Annabeth, right? You were on the debate team with Wendy.”
“I was,” Annabeth says. “She was such a special person, Mr. Echolls. She was always so nice to me-it meant a lot.”
Logan says goodbye to Annabeth. He’s still listening to her friend, the one who’s still talking to his daughter.
“-you know how Annabeth is. Her sister died over her summer, not Kristy, who she’s close to, but her older half-sister who lives in New York. Car accident. She was one of the only ones that wasn’t mad at you before, but she is now.” His voice softens. “But she’s trying not to be. We all are, but-we still don’t know why you did it.”
We don’t either.
He’s still hanging back, still waiting, still questioning his decision to come here at all. He didn’t know why he insisted on a marker in the first place.
“Your mom and dad both came up to work the tournament last month. I don’t know how they do it, Wendy. I don’t know how they carry on, knowing their sixteen-year-old daughter didn’t think her life was worth living.”
The boy’s voice cracks, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and makes a beeline for the car. Logan’s vision is too blurred to make out the boy’s face or to tell if he noticed him as he passed by. He almost has a panic attack right there.
You don’t carry on. You change. You change, and you’re never the person you were again. Dammit, Wendy. We all loved you. We all loved you so much. How could you not see it?
But Logan knows how she couldn’t see it, because the time on the Coronado Bridge wasn’t the only time he thought about jumping or overdosing or pulling the trigger. He steadies himself and walks to Wendy’s grave. He places the elephant with the other stuffed animals and flowers. He kneels, hoping Wendy will appreciate the sacrifice of his aging joints.
He won’t ever know why she pulled the trigger or even how she got the gun. He won’t know why she did it with her mother and sisters at home. He won’t know why Veronica and Jill had to see her for the last time like that. He won’t know a lot of things, but he’s less angry now. Less angry at her, less angry at himself and everyone else who didn’t see the signs, less angry at the world cruel enough to let so many terrible things happen.
He’s decided that it doesn’t matter, can’t matter, how things ended. It’s still hard, but it’s getting easier every day. He’s still married, he still has two beautiful daughters. He’ll never stop longing for the third, but he wants to look back someday and remember everything but the day she died.
He quietly eats half the lunch he packed-tuna sandwiches, potato chips, Oreos and juice boxes-and leaves the rest in the sack. He’ll never send her to Stanford, but he’ll always have teddy bear picnics.
He wants to tell her how they’re doing. He wants to tell her about Keith’s back problems and Alicia’s failing eyesight and how Veronica burned the turkey at Thanksgiving. He wants to tell her Jill is thinking about joining the debate team next year and that Sophie is in the seventh grade spelling bee. He wants tell her about Rachel and Amanda and Monica and her other friends.
But he can’t, and he’s not ready to, so he just hopes they’ve been there while he’s been negligent. He leans forward and touches the cool stone.
Logan exhales slowly.
“Hey Wendy-face. It’s Dad.”
* * *
Prompt: suicide.
Author’s Note: something I would have written eventually, for some fandom. Based somewhat (unfortunately) on my own experiences in high school with suicide/death.
It’s probably a touch depressing for the day before Valentine’s Day, but if I can get through some schoolwork here shortly, I might try for something fluffier.
Thanks to the masterful jayiin for the edit.
Author: em2mb
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica.
Word Count: 4,049
Rating: R
Summary: You don’t carry on. You change. You change, and you’re never the person you were again. Twenty-some years later, Logan and Veronica have to bury another teenage girl.
Spoilers: Season three relationship arch for Logan/Veronica, but nothing specific. Future Fic.
Warnings: Character death, grieving.
Author's Notes: The characters might belong to Rob Thomas, but I’ll require their use if my claim is accepted at 100_situations. Prompt and additional notes after the fic.
He’s at work when he gets the call. Feet up on the desk, laughing, fiddling with a pen, telling his secretary about Wendy’s debate tournament and Jillian’s basketball game and Sophie’s violin recital.
“Come to the house.”
His father-in-law’s voice shakes. Trembles, cracks even. It’s how Logan knows, even when Keith won’t tell him, that it’s one of the girls. One of his girls.
He runs three red lights to get home.
Logan sees the flashing lights before the house comes into view. A squad car, two officers. Jill sitting with Sophie on the front step, hugging her little sister tightly.
His tiny blonde wife sobbing in her father’s arms.
* * *
The first few days aren’t so bad. He’s still in shock and Veronica’s still in shock and there’s a lot of things to keep them busy.
At the funeral home, he holds Veronica tightly. She doesn’t say anything, hasn’t since they got there. She sits and twists her wedding ring. Eighteen years of marriage, three kids. Just when they thought the hard part was over.
“Maybe the cherry?” Logan murmurs, kissing Veronica’s temple. She shakes her head. The funeral director turns the page. “Oak? Veronica?”
He practically chokes on the words. Did it really matter? What difference could a type of wood make?
“I-I don’t know,” Veronica says finally. She’s shaking again, and Logan rubs her arm gently. She turns to him, eyes wet. “What if she wanted to be cremated? I don’t know if she wanted to be cremated.”
Veronica breaks down.
Of course you don’t, Logan thinks miserably. It’s not a conversation you have with your sixteen-year-old daughter.
“Shhh, baby,” Logan says, and he’s shrugging uselessly to the funeral director and ushering Veronica out of the room. He sits Veronica down with Keith.
In the end, he calls Wendy’s best friend since kindergarten.
“Cremation, definitely,” says Rachel knowingly. For a second, Logan is reminded of the Rachel of a decade ago. Her glasses aren’t pink anymore and she isn’t missing her two front teeth, but her tone as matter-of-fact now as it was then. “Wendy always wanted to be recycled into a neat-”
A sob punctuates Rachel’s speech. “It’s okay, honey,” he assures. But it’s not, and Rachel is smart enough to know that. She’s not number two in the class for no reason.
Number one now.
“I’m sorry Mr. Echolls,” she whispers. “I’m not ready to think of her in the past tense.”
* * *
Jillian writes the obituary.
No one asked her to-because who asks a fourteen-year-old to do that? But Logan isn’t surprised when she comes into the living room that night with her laptop. She pads over in her slippers (a gift from Wendy the Christmas before) and curls up next to him on the couch. He sets his pen and paper aside as she solemnly opens the screen.
Logan is crying when he finishes. Jill’s lip trembles.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she says. He hugs her tightly, breathes in the scent of her apple shampoo. She’s blonde like her mother, petite. Sophie is, too.
Not Wendy, though. Wendy is tall, with his dark hair and dark eyes and penchant for mischief.
Wendy is gone.
“Thank you, Jilly,” he says. “You know how much Wendy-face loved you, right?”
She buries her face in her father’s shirt as she cries.
* * *
Rachel delivers the first of many care baskets. She’s over early on the second day after, brandishing a fresh batch of her homemade muffins and a determined look. It only gets her so far. She breaks down once she’s in the kitchen, and Veronica has to get her a paper bag when she starts hyperventilating.
Logan walks in as she steadies herself, and he smiles at her as he pours a cup of coffee. Rachel throws the bag away, and for a second, Logan forgets. This is just the morning after another sleepover. Rachel always beats Wendy up.
But Logan kisses his wife, and the dark circles under Veronica’s eyes remind him why this is different. Still, they give Rachel their full attention.
“I wanted to tell everyone at school to wear green,” she says. “It’s Wendy’s favorite color, but before I said anything...”
She looks at them pleadingly.
“Of course, sweetie,” says Veronica, crossing the kitchen and covering Rachel’s hand with hers. “Logan and I-” she glances at him “-wanted you to say something, if you thought you could.”
Rachel considers this. “I don’t know,” she says. “But you should ask Mr. Parsons.”
* * *
Sophie’s still clinging to her parents, but Jillian wants to go back to school. She wakes up too late to make first period, but Logan takes her in halfway through her Spanish class. She hugs him tightly at the attendance window before turning down the hall.
“Mr. Echolls,” the attendance lady, Sue, says, “I’m so sorry.”
He nods numbly, thanks her. “We... we know about arrangements. The principal kept calling. Can I talk to him?”
“Of course,” Sue says, standing up. “I’ll take you to his-”
But his Wendy had been a firecracker, and Logan knows his way to the principal’s office.
And to the debate room, where he goes next. It’s right at the bells, and Wendy’s class is filing in when he gets there. They take seats quietly on the desks, hugging each other and crying. All of Wendy’s best friends, in one room. Rachel gives him a sad little wave, but the others avert their eyes. He’s seen them all before, having judged endless rounds of public forum over the years and given an infinite number of rides home.
He approaches Wendy’s debate coach, a man who seems to understand Logan doesn’t want words to console him. The last time he’d seen Mr. Parsons was a month ago, at a home tournament. Logan had come up midday with pizza for the team and Midol for Wendy.
Both men looked older now.
“Veronica and I wanted to know if you’d speak at the service.”
* * *
Sophie had been seven when Rachel’s mom died of cancer. She knew the lines fed to confused kids about heaven and hell. She was eleven now, and it had been long enough for her to know death was forever. Still, Logan and Veronica worried.
They reheated lasagna brought over by Mrs. Lamp, an older woman who had babysat all the girls when they were little. They didn’t bother to set the table, just scattered throughout the kitchen. Keith came with Alicia, whom he’d married three months before Logan and Veronica had tied the knot. Wallace was flying in from Chicago, and Darryl had driven in from Los Angeles with his wife.
After dinner, they gathered around the island and read the obituary Jillian had written.
“Beautiful, sweetie,” Keith tells his granddaughter.
“It really is, kid,” Darryl says, ruffling Jill’s hair.
Veronica squeezes her daughter’s hand, and Logan covers both their hands with his.
“This is stupid.”
They all turn to look at Sophie, who is leaning against the entryway between the kitchen and living room. She doesn’t look upset in the least.
“You’re not just here and then gone,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re not.”
No, you’re not.
Veronica takes this one because Logan is paralyzed. He agrees with Sophie.
* * *
He hasn’t seen this much green since the last St. Patrick’s Day he celebrated with Dick, which was before he was married.
Wendy’s friends file in, form somber groups throughout the chapel. He and Veronica aren’t particularly religious, but the church is large, and Bonnie Capistrano owed his wife a favor.
Logan has invited Rachel and her father to sit with the family, and to pass the invitation along to Wendy’s other close friends. Sophie is sandwiched between her cousins, Wallace’s twin girls. Jillian invites her best friend, Kerry, for comfort.
He wonders if it will be like Lilly’s funeral, where everyone who really cared sat in the first four rows and everyone else came in hopes the paparazzi would catch their tears.
But as Logan cranes his neck and surveys the sea of green, he knows faces. He sees teachers and friends and casual acquaintances but hardly anyone he flat out doesn’t recognize. His entire office is sitting a few rows from the back, lawyers dressed in black except for his secretary, Bev, who wore a dress so green it shocked the eyes.
He holds Veronica’s hand. The things everyone says about Wendy are nice, but he just wants it to be over.
* * *
They compromise. They cremate Wendy, but bury the ashes in a cemetery near the ocean. Logan knows he’s being selfish, but he can’t send his vibrant daughter to the wind.
He feels awkward and ridiculous at the gravesite, dropping pink roses in a hole. He wraps one arm around Veronica and offers the other hand to Sophie. Keith has Jillian.
No one has Wendy.
Logan wishes he were dead, but only for a second. Veronica needs him. Jill and Sophie need him. He knows he’ll have to be strong for them.
* * *
Everyone comes over afterwards. They have a receiving line stretching into the street. At first they decided against one, but Rachel had talked them into it. She had bit her lip and told them how wonderful it was to hear good things about her mother after the cancer had won.
Logan had never been able to deny Wendy much of anything, and now it seemed that it had transferred over to Rachel. He secretly hopes Wendy’s loud-mouthed best friend will keep coming over. She’s the only one that truly likes Easy Rider.
It does help to have the house filled with people and laughter. For three hours, no one is crying alone. But it ends, and the happy house of five is now a broken house of four.
* * *
The school calls a week later, two days into winter break. It’s Logan’s year to take time off from work to be with the girls, which works out because cases are backlogged at Mars Investigations from the week before. He’d barely seen his wife since she’d gone back to work. When he does, she’s a shadow of the woman she once was.
Ms. O’Neill suggests grief counseling. She can put them in contact with someone if he’d like, but Logan declines her offer. He plays a round of Scrabble with Jillian and watches a movie with Sophie. He tries not to glance at the stairs, at the top of which Wendy’s door remains closed.
Veronica comes back with take-out. They hadn’t had to cook a meal for two weeks, but now the sympathy food has stopped coming, and they eat Chinese straight from the cartoon.
Wendy’s not there to chastise them for using forks.
He takes Jillian to Kerry’s after dinner and drops her off at the door because he doesn’t want to discuss how they’re doing with Mrs. Graham, who means well despite of how uncomfortable she makes him. She’s the same woman who used to gush over his famous parents every time he’d drop Kerry off.
That’s why this run became Wendy’s when she was old enough to drive.
Afterwards, Logan drives around for a bit. He considers going to the gravesite, but there’s no marker yet, and he’s not really prepared.
When he gets home, Veronica is asleep on the couch. Her eyes are closed, but tears are streaming down her cheeks, and her mouth is moving. He wakes her up and whispers to her that he loves her.
“Do you know what else happened on December 7?” she asks tearfully.
He knows the answer is not Pearl Harbor.
* * *
Christmas is hard.
Wendy was supposed to get a new computer, a shiny new Apple laptop Mac had scored before they’d even hit store shelves, thanks to her high-ranking position with the company. Logan and Veronica gave Rachel the computer, who’d stammered her thanks and, blushing, presented them with two pies and a plate of fudge.
Jillian gets all her gifts and the ones that trickled in from other people for Wendy, bought before their lives had shattered. Sophie doesn’t say anything about this arrangement; she’s not yet interested in the same things. On Christmas Eve, she goes to bed early but does not put out milk and cookies for Santa.
The year before, Logan had spent an hour yelling at Wendy for spoiling the story for her little sister.
If only she were here this year to defend her decision-“But Dad, most ten-year-olds already know! She’d just find out from one of them!”
God, how he missed her.
On Christmas morning, Veronica sleeps late and doesn’t take any pictures as they open gifts.
* * *
Weeks turn into a month, and they’re suddenly faced with practical decisions. They agree to sell Wendy’s car, but Logan can’t bring himself to go through with it.
He takes the car, a bright green Beetle convertible-Wendy worshipped Mac-for a drive through Neptune, through the neighborhoods he and Veronica had grown up in, before the city had finally incorporated, expanded east, and grew large enough to have suburbs of its own. He and Veronica had always let on that much of the Echolls fortune had evaporated. It hadn’t, but they thought it was important to raise the girls as middle class, without the poverty she’d experienced or the affluence to which he was accustomed.
But he hadn’t been able to resist buying Wendy the car of her dreams when she’d turned sixteen. When she’d seen her Bug, wrapped in a bright red bow out on the driveway, she’d jumped at him so hard she’d knocked him over.
The car-whose name was Ringo-went into storage.
* * *
Jillian was the first to go into therapy, for obvious reasons. She’d cut her arm a little with a paring knife, and Veronica had seen the wound the next day. She’d called him, hysterical, and he’d come home from the office immediately.
He and Jill talked.
She’d been bawling by the time he was through. Logan felt bad he’d made her cry and spent two weeks trying to make it up to her. But at the same time, he felt he’d had to impress on her what her actions had done to her mother.
So Jill went into therapy, and he slowly stopped having nightmares about paring knives.
Veronica didn’t.
He got another call at the office from Keith when she collapsed from exhaustion. The doctor prescribed antidepressants and sleeping pills, but she wouldn’t take either.
* * *
It took until April to place Wendy’s tombstone. Logan, who with Veronica and Jill and Sophie and Rachel had decided so meticulously what to put on it, did not drop by to visit. He didn’t want to talk to engraved stone. He wanted to talk to his daughter.
He’d picked up a lot of literature about grieving while waiting for Jill during her therapy sessions. In one of the pamphlets, he read that something like fifty percent of couples that lost children got divorced.
He decided it wasn’t going to be him and Veronica, and he told her as much. He caught her when she was out of bed one night, hand on the doorknob of their dead daughter’s bedroom.
She doesn’t go in, and she won’t look at him as he talks.
“No,” Veronica says finally. “Wendy would be angry if we split up over this.”
Logan’s heart falls. He doesn’t know how to make her understand he’s not doing it for Wendy, and in that moment he realizes he doesn’t care if his daughter, perpetually sixteen now, would be mad.
He’s pretty mad at her himself.
* * *
Veronica packs a bag and stays with Keith and Alicia for a week. Logan imagines Jillian, now fifteen, knows what’s going on, but he tells Sophie she’s catching a bail jumper on his way to Mexico.
He’s alone when the postcard comes, like they always do, nondescript blue rectangles with familiar handwriting. Duncan’s always the last to know.
I am so sorry.
It’s all it says. That night, Veronica comes home. She’s crying as she falls into his arms, and he murmurs over and over that they’ll make it through this. He decides to let go of the anger he felt towards her for walking out. They agree to counseling.
Veronica starts to sleep through the night.
* * *
It’s summer before Logan knows it, and he’s ferrying his girls between violin lessons and league soccer games and the pool. Jillian’s arm has more than healed, and Logan begins to wonder if the faded pink line is a good reminder for them all.
Sophie is harder to read than her sister, and Logan doesn’t have a clue how to reach out to her. They talk sometimes, but she still goes to Veronica. She’s the last member of the Echolls family to go into therapy.
Finally, in late July, she mentions Wendy. She never talked about Wendy before, but over dinner one night, she began to tell all her favorite stories about her big sister. Logan makes it a point to tuck her in that night. Sophie asks if Wendy would be excited about her starting seventh grade. Logan replies that she most certainly would.
He still hasn’t visited his little girl’s grave.
* * *
Rachel has a new boyfriend. Rich, of the Wendy years, is gone. Logan suspects he cheated, but he doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want to know. It’s September, and he’s as protective of Rachel as he was of Wendy. He doesn’t want to have to explain to Dick why his son is in traction.
Derek meets Rachel’s dad first, but then Logan and Veronica get to size him up.
Logan doesn’t trust the glint in Derek’s eyes. It reminds of him of the wild streak he had as a teenager. But he gives Rachel his blessing all the same because it’s what Wendy would have wanted him to do.
He finally sells the Beetle, and puts the money in an account under Rachel’s name. She’s talking about Yale, and Logan knows her family can’t afford it. He’ll disguise it as a scholarship if he has to. Just in case it comes down to it, he and Veronica go to the school with a proposal.
They remember the Kane scholarship. They decide they’ll review applicants individually and favor members of the debate team. They don’t want Wendy reduced to a battle between valedictorian candidates.
* * *
Veronica and Logan go away for a weekend-it’s Keith’s idea. Logan has been in debt to his father-in-law since the day he gave his blessing. Now, after ten months, they’re starting to heal. Logan credits Keith. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever repay him.
In Aspen, they make new memories and forget old ones. They have the best sex they’ve had since the kids were born. Logan had almost forgotten how much he needed her. Almost.
Veronica sleeps soundly so long as it’s on his chest, and Logan stops worrying they won’t make it. They let go of a lot of things, but not each other, and not Wendy.
* * *
He waits until the week before the one-year anniversary. It seems appropriate, fitting, to visit Wendy now. But they have plans the day of, with the entire family and all of her friends. So he packs their favorite lunch-the one he’d bring out to her and Rachel’s teddy bear picnics when they were seven-and buys her a stuffed elephant with a green ribbon around its neck.
Logan’s eyes are already brimming with tears when he reaches the cemetery. He parks, getting out the picnic basket and peace offering and starts slowly down the trail. He hears voices.
“Everyone misses you,” someone is saying. “No one can believe it’s been a year.”
Another voice pipes in, “Rachel placed first in extemp at the home tournament. She’s doing amazingly well, considering it’s her first semester.” A pause. “She wouldn’t do puff anymore, not without you.”
The first voice continues, “We still don’t understand it, Wendy.”
“You had everything going for you. And you just gave it all away.”
Logan is hanging back, closing his eyes. He’s waiting for them to finish so he can be alone with her. He can hear them shuffling, one telling the other to wait in the car. The first speaker, a girl, brushes past him.
“Mr. Echolls,” she stammers. “I-we-”
He smiles at her, hoping his tears aren’t too obvious. “Annabeth, right? You were on the debate team with Wendy.”
“I was,” Annabeth says. “She was such a special person, Mr. Echolls. She was always so nice to me-it meant a lot.”
Logan says goodbye to Annabeth. He’s still listening to her friend, the one who’s still talking to his daughter.
“-you know how Annabeth is. Her sister died over her summer, not Kristy, who she’s close to, but her older half-sister who lives in New York. Car accident. She was one of the only ones that wasn’t mad at you before, but she is now.” His voice softens. “But she’s trying not to be. We all are, but-we still don’t know why you did it.”
We don’t either.
He’s still hanging back, still waiting, still questioning his decision to come here at all. He didn’t know why he insisted on a marker in the first place.
“Your mom and dad both came up to work the tournament last month. I don’t know how they do it, Wendy. I don’t know how they carry on, knowing their sixteen-year-old daughter didn’t think her life was worth living.”
The boy’s voice cracks, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and makes a beeline for the car. Logan’s vision is too blurred to make out the boy’s face or to tell if he noticed him as he passed by. He almost has a panic attack right there.
You don’t carry on. You change. You change, and you’re never the person you were again. Dammit, Wendy. We all loved you. We all loved you so much. How could you not see it?
But Logan knows how she couldn’t see it, because the time on the Coronado Bridge wasn’t the only time he thought about jumping or overdosing or pulling the trigger. He steadies himself and walks to Wendy’s grave. He places the elephant with the other stuffed animals and flowers. He kneels, hoping Wendy will appreciate the sacrifice of his aging joints.
He won’t ever know why she pulled the trigger or even how she got the gun. He won’t know why she did it with her mother and sisters at home. He won’t know why Veronica and Jill had to see her for the last time like that. He won’t know a lot of things, but he’s less angry now. Less angry at her, less angry at himself and everyone else who didn’t see the signs, less angry at the world cruel enough to let so many terrible things happen.
He’s decided that it doesn’t matter, can’t matter, how things ended. It’s still hard, but it’s getting easier every day. He’s still married, he still has two beautiful daughters. He’ll never stop longing for the third, but he wants to look back someday and remember everything but the day she died.
He quietly eats half the lunch he packed-tuna sandwiches, potato chips, Oreos and juice boxes-and leaves the rest in the sack. He’ll never send her to Stanford, but he’ll always have teddy bear picnics.
He wants to tell her how they’re doing. He wants to tell her about Keith’s back problems and Alicia’s failing eyesight and how Veronica burned the turkey at Thanksgiving. He wants to tell her Jill is thinking about joining the debate team next year and that Sophie is in the seventh grade spelling bee. He wants tell her about Rachel and Amanda and Monica and her other friends.
But he can’t, and he’s not ready to, so he just hopes they’ve been there while he’s been negligent. He leans forward and touches the cool stone.
Logan exhales slowly.
“Hey Wendy-face. It’s Dad.”
* * *
Prompt: suicide.
Author’s Note: something I would have written eventually, for some fandom. Based somewhat (unfortunately) on my own experiences in high school with suicide/death.
It’s probably a touch depressing for the day before Valentine’s Day, but if I can get through some schoolwork here shortly, I might try for something fluffier.
Thanks to the masterful jayiin for the edit.