if i could name you in this song, would it make you smile and sing along?

Fic: The Paxtons

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 06:10:29 GMT

Title: The Paxtons
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: The Proposal (Andrew/Margaret!)
Rating: Absolutely innocent!
Summary: Jack Wesson loves his job and hates his boss. When he has to stop by her house as per her directions, however, he realizes there's a lot more to the editor-in-chief than he ever could have imagined.
Disclaimer: I clearly do not own any rights whatsoever to the movie The Proposal, although I'd love to claim credit for something so fabulous!
A/N: Just a little fluffy family shot. Enjoy :)

Truth be told, Jack Wesson wasn't a hater.

He got along with most people, could never really hold a grudge, and, hell, he even loved animals. But there was one woman that Jack — and as far as he knew, everyone he worked with — absolutely despised. It wasn't his fault, really. If he had to guess, he'd say she wasn't born, but instead manufactured in Satan's laboratory.

She was always meticulously dressed and expected everyone else to be the same. She read at a ridiculous pace that no human being could keep up with. She was always in control, drank the same coffee every day (which he was expected to provide), and could charm the bosses better than anyone in the business. Truth be told, she probably was better than anyone in the business, but you'd have to impale him on a rusty spike to make him admit it.

She was an oddity, though, in addition to being evil. He got a lecture that made him want to wet himself the first time he was late to work, but on rare occasion she would show up to work an hour late looking a little dishevelled. And while she never took a sick day and often frowned upon those who did — since getting ill was entirely a person's own fault, clearly — she was off work and usually out of town for every holiday.

Strangest of all was the fact that she wore a wedding band.

Someone had been psycho enough to marry her.

Of course, that was all Jack knew. There were rumours that she had been pregnant a little while back, but he couldn't imagine that. She would make the world's worst mother.

Then, again. . . Who knows. If someone married her. . . . He had been working at Hewitt and Company Publishing for just over five months as her assistant, and she was impossible to get to know. His co-workers were as scared of her as him, and all they could tell him about her was that she'd worked for years at another publishing company but had come to Hewitt after "personal problems." What the hell did that mean?

Right at that moment, however, he couldn't have possibly cared less. Because his delightful boss had just told him that he had to work late on the night of Halloween. Who did that? She was already flipping through another file, apparently having dismissed him, but he only stood at her desk, gaping.

"Is something the matter?" she asked coolly.

"Halloween is a holiday," he stuttered, swallowing thickly. He shouldn't protest — but as bad as she was, she had never forced him to work on a holiday before.

"For children," she replied, not bothering to glance up.

"Yeah, but —"

"Are you a child, Jack?"

"No, but I —"

"Do you have any children?"

"No! No, but —"

"Were you planning on spending Halloween with children?"

"Er, not really, but —"

"Then you have nothing to do. When you have children, you're welcome to the night off. Until then, this is any other night to you. Therefore, I'll see you at eight. You have the address." She flipped a page, and it was clear she was once more through with him. But he didn't budge. Giving an almighty sigh, she finally looked up. "All I'm asking is for you to stay late and finish reading the manuscript you should have finished this morning. Then deliver it to my apartment at eight. How is that difficult?"

"Okay, honestly?" he asked, feeling strangely courageous. She nodded, and there was a gleam in her eyes as she looked at him that should have set alarm bells off in his head. "I was going to go to a party at my roommate's brother's apartment and there's this girl that I really want to —"

"Enough," she cut in. "First, if the party starts before eight, it can hardly be an amazing party. Second of all, look at my face. Does this look like the face of someone who cares about your love life and the girls you want to sex up at parties?"

"N-no."

"Very good, Jack. Eight o'clock. Don't be late."

And he had to admit defeat.

He might have been her assistant for only a few months, but there was a reason she never kept assistants for very long: Margaret Paxton was a horror.

"I swear, I'll be there as soon as I drop this off," Jack said, stepping out of his car. "It'll only take a minute," he assured, and he snapped the phone shut as he started up the stairs. It figured that his boss would live in one of the most gorgeous buildings in the city.

Glancing at his reflection in the gold panelling of the elevator, he straightened his tie and tried to flatten his hair. He knew his unruly curls were an annoyance to her. She seemed unable to fathom that he was born with that hair.

When he knocked on the door, he had already placed a smile on his face, ready to hand over the manuscript and his notes on it as soon as she opened the door. It'd be a simple "Hello, here you go, goodbye," and he'd be gone.

The door swung open.

No one was there . . . until he glanced down.

He balked. There was a little girl looking up at him. Her feet were bare, but she wore what he guessed was the smallest suit on earth. He didn't know much about kids — anything, actually — but he guessed that she was three or four at most, and who in their right mind put a three-year-old in a pencil straight, dark grey suit?

"Hi," he finally said.

"Hi," she replied. She looked up at him curiously. Suddenly she gasped. "You's a tricker-or-treater!" she exclaimed happily, her face lighting up. Before he could protest, wondering if perhaps he'd gotten the wrong address, she shouted out "Daddy!" and went flying into the apartment. "DADDY!"

Jack teetered on the edge of the doorway. He glanced at his watch. It was three minutes past eight.

Margaret was going to kill him.

A moment later, the little girl reappeared, but this time she was on the hip of an older man. He was dressed in an impeccable suit — Margaret would be proud. The little girl's tiny suit skirt was bunched at her waist so that her chubby legs could wrap around the man's waist, and she looked even more delighted than before as she clutched at a bowl of candy. "Look, Daddy!" She pointed at him.

The man stared critically at Jack, his brows slowly rising. "Either you're the oldest tricker-or-treater ever and probably a child molester," the man said, "or you're here to see Margaret." Jack felt relief flush through him: this was the right apartment.

"I just wanted to drop off this manuscript," he said, holding it out. The man nodded, stepping back.

"Come on in," he replied. "You must be Jack Wesson, the new assistant. We haven't met yet. I'm Andrew Paxton." As he lowered his daughter to the ground, he held out his hand, and Jack shook it wordlessly. This was the man who'd been medicated enough to marry Margaret.

"Margeret!" he yelled down the hallway. "You've got company!" He looked down at the little girl, still clutching her bowl of candy. "Sorry, hon, looks like this one isn't a tricker-or-treater," he told her.

"But — but —" She looked sorely disappointed, but Jack was too astounded to say anything.

Margaret had a kid?! How did he not know that? And how was that even possible?

"But, you know, it's been a while since I've gotten to trick-or-treat," Andrew Paxton said thoughtfully, tapping his chin. The little girl looked up at him with renewed excitement. "Say," he looked down at her, "would you mind — ? Wait here!"

He walked out the door, shutting it behind him. Jack frowned, but the little girl only trained her eyes on the door. There was a knock. She leapt into action, jumping at the doorknob and swinging the door open. There was Andrew. "Trick or treat!" he sang.

"Trick!" the girl sang right back, before, ready to burst at the seams, she added loudly, "Close your eyes!" He did as told and an instant later she sailed out the door and under his legs. "Open them!" she demanded.

He did as told before letting out a gasp of disbelief. "You're gone!" he exclaimed. He looked at Jack. "She disappeared! Did you see? Gone! Poof! Annie? Annie!" The girl — called Annie, apparently — was having a fit of giggles behind him. Jack could only stare.

These people, a perfectly normal daughter and dad, were related to Margaret Paxton?

Seriously?

"Margaret!" Andrew shouted. "Annie's disappeared!"

Annie darted suddenly forward, back through her father's legs and appeared before him. Once more, he gasped with perfect shock. "You're back!" and he grabbed her, lifting her up while she laughed, her face a bright pink, her brown pigtails swinging wildly.

When they finally seemed to calm down, Andrew frowned dramatically. "It seems Margaret has disappeared," he told Jack, shutting the door behind him. "My best guess? She tried to drown herself in the tub to keep from having to wear her costume." He spoke in complete seriousness. "Darn! Knew I should have hidden the drain stopper." He snapped his fingers.

"Oh, well." He looked at Jack. "So, Jack, tell me about yourself." He smiled.

Jack was pretty sure the man was insane.

"I — I actually have this party to get to and I just wanted to drop off the manuscript and notes," he replied slowly. "Maybe you could give it to her?" He held it out hopefully.

Andrew smiled. "Trust me, Jack, I speak from personal experience when I tell you that you should give it to her yourself. The dog that lives in the apartment next door might nudge open the door that you didn't shut all of the way because it was two in the morning by the time you finished the assignment she gave you and you're exhausted, and the dog will get into her apartment, knock over the stand you put the manuscript on, which will break a china vase, and then pee on the manuscript, and it will be entirely your fault, something she'll remind you of for the next two months."

"Oh," Jack said, not sure what else there was to say.

"Relax," Andrew told him, smiling, "I was her assistant once, too. She's not as evil as she seems. It's all a carefully crafted illusion. She is, contrary to popular belief, human." Jack could only nod. "Annie," Andrew looked down at the girl, who'd gotten bored with their conversation and was eating her way through the contents of her bowl, "go see if Mommy's still alive, will you?"

Annie nodded, sliding out of his arms before racing across the stylish front room and disappearing down a hall.

"You were her assistant?" Jack asked, unable to stop himself.

Andrew nodded. "Three years. I have her job now, though, at her old company. She went over to Hewitt when I first became an editor. Conflict of interest, you know? Not supposed to sleep with your boss and all." He nodded at Jack as if it were all the most obvious situation in the world.

"Right," Jack said.

"Daddy!" Annie had reappeared, and was skipping her way over to him. "Mommy says she'd rather throw herself at the mercy of Kevin before she wore that suit in public," Annie declared. "And she said if you go looking for her and try and get her to come out," Annie giggled, "she'll beat you to death with the shoes you're trying to get her to wear."

He cracked his neck. "I'll risk it. Hold down the fort. Oh, dear pumpkin!" he yelled, disappearing down the hall as Annie had before. Annie smiled up at him. He didn't know what to say. She thrust the candy bowl at him suddenly. "Want some?"

"I'm okay," he replied.

"Don't you like candy?"

"Yes, but —"

"Mommy says that eating lots of candy will make all your teeth rot and fall out," she told him matter-of-factly.

"Well, she was probably just —"

"Daddy says Mommy's heart is gonna rot if she goes around spoiling the magic of childhood for kids." She giggled. "And Mommy says Daddy's favourite limb'll rot 'cause a disuse if he doesn't shut up." She leaned towards him as if about to share a great secret. "I asked Daddy, and he said his left hand was his favourite limb, but he said it was a secret. Shh!" She couldn't contain her giggles.

"Okay," Jack said, still not sure how to deal with Margaret's apparent family. This was unbelievable. Shouting came from down the hall. He glanced up just in time to see a furious Margaret storm into the room.

She wore a man's suit, one that hung oddly on her shoulders. Her feet were bare, and he was shocked to see her toenails painted a bright orange. "Jack," she greeted as if everything were perfectly normal. "You're late."

"I was actually —"

"Did you finish the manuscript and write a report on it?" He nodded wordlessly, holding the papers out for her. She began flipping through it immediately, only to have it taken away by her husband, who came out of no where and grabbed it before she could stop him. She protested but it was to no avail.

"It's Halloween," Andrew told her, holding the manuscript above his head. "We've got to get out there before it gets any later or all the door candy. Right, Annie?"

"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Annie exclaimed, jumping up and down around her parents.

"I am not going out dressed like this," Margaret replied, a hand on her hip and her fiercest glare set in her face. She glanced at Annie. "Mommy'll buy you some candy, sweetie, how would you like that? Anything you want!"

She sent her husband another glare but Andrew Paxton only smiled back at her.

"It's just a suit. You love suits. You love pants suits. Its like any other day for you!"

"This is a man's suit," she replied, glowering.

"You don't say!"

"Andrew!"

"You turned down the Wonder Woman suit," he said. She rolled her eyes.

"If you really thought I would ever wear that —"

"Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, whatever," he interrupted. "So instead your costume matches with your daughter's. It's cute. We'll take pictures for Gammy. It'll be great." He made a cutesy face at her. She mockingly returned it.

"How does my wearing a suit match with Annie's costume?"

"I'm you, Mommy!" Annie interrupted, clearly used to her parents' bickering.

"Do the hand on the hip," Andrew coached, and little Annie struck a pose. "Atta girl! And you," Andrew turned back to Margaret, "are me, back in my days as assistant. Remember that time when I loathed you with a burning passion?"

"Oh, fondly," she replied. "And who, remind me again, are you?"

"The later me."

"That's not a costume."

"Sure it is, sugarpuss. I was going to be Superman to go along with —"

"Do not bring that up again."

Jack knew he should be on his way — he was already late — but he was too fascinated to leave. They seemed to have forgotten he was there, and he couldn't help myself: it was the same Margaret he knew, yet it was a completely different one at the same time. . . .

It all took on a new level of weird when a baby started crying.

"Saved by the baby!" Andrew exclaimed as Margaret started walking towards the plaintive cries.

"This conversation is not finished!" she called back. Andrew shook his head, a smile playing on his lips. "You ready to go?" he asked Annie. She nodded, her eyes round and excited. Andrew looked over at Jack.

"Any plans for the night?" he asked.

"A party, actually," Jack answered. "Not costume, but I think I prefer it that way."

Andrew nodded in understanding. "I can get behind that." The cries had stopped. So Margaret had been pregnant recently. Un-fucking-believable. "She likes you, you know." Jack looked back at Andrew to see the older man watching him keenly.

"You sure about that?"

Andrew grinned. "She's not the friendliest person. But she's been complaining about how even though you deserve a promotion, she doesn't want to give you one and lose you as an assistant." That was news to Jack, and he was sure it showed on his face. "It was kind of the same with me," Andrew went on, "but she didn't admit it until after our first wedding."

"You've been married multiple times?"

Andrew shook his head. "Had two weddings. Only managed to see one all the way though." At Jack's confusion, he added succinctly, "lo-ong story."

Margaret reappeared at that moment, and this time she was the one with a child on her hip. A baby, actually, a small, chubby boy with dark peach fuzz hair, flushed pink cheeks, and a tiny devil costume. "You're still here," Margaret remarked, eyeing Jack.

"I just — is it okay for me to leave?"

"Go," she waved her hand in dismissal. "Have fun at your aunt's cousin's brother's wife's mother's party." She turned to her husband. "If you expect me to go out like this, you better have an actual costume. You'll suffer right along with me."

"Gammy only made something for Annie and Teddy," he replied, smirking. "What would you like me to wear — my birthday suit?" He started for the door, and Annie was instantly on his side.

"Come on, Mommy!" she whined. "Le's go!" She stomped her foot.

"Yeah, Mommy," Andrew whined, "let's go!"

Jack had once again faded into the background, and he knew it was time to go. He wasn't sure what Andrew Paxton had done with the manuscript and the notes, but it wasn't his problem any more. He made for the door, and when he glanced back at the threshold, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head: they were kissing as Annie danced around their feet making noises of disgust.

The little boy smashed between his embracing parents looked at Jack with a happy face, drool gathering on his chin and his devil's horn cap sliding off his head. It looked as if Margaret wasn't the world's worst mother. He thought of his own parents, divorced when he was eight.

But it didn't matter. He needed to get to the party.

Work tomorrow, though, was definitely going to be interesting.

"You're late. You are aware, aren't you, that the world doesn't revolve around you, right?"

Jack sighed. He hadn't meant to be late, really, but the party had gone on for a while, and now Margaret was sitting behind her desk, meticulously dressed, her hair pinned up neatly and her work already spread out before her, and he looked even worse in comparison. Why couldn't today have been one of the rare days she was late?

He wondered randomly if Andrew Paxton was the reason behind her occasional lateness.

"Jack?" she asked critically.

"Ah, I'm sorry. Really. Sorry." He handed over her coffee, which she accepted without looking up. "The night went longer than I thought." Hoping maybe it was worth a stab, he went on hesitantly, "How was your night?"

"Fine." It was clear she wasn't willing to talk. No wonder no one knew about her husband or kids. He had done some Googling on his phone, though, as he waited in line at the coffee shop, and he'd discovered that Andrew Paxton was as big in the business as his wife.

"I guess I'll, ah . . . get to answering the phone, then. We have that meeting at nine, by the way." She nodded and he turned to leave. At the door, however, she stopped him. She was still looking at her desk as she spoke.

"I read your notes on the manuscript. They were good. Thanks for having them delivered."

"Sure," he said slowly, a little confused. Since when did she thank him? In fact, she had told him once that such thanking was unnecessary from boss to assistant as a pay check was thanks enough.

"You're good." She glanced up finally. "Which is why I'm promoting you as long as you one, purchase a functioning watch, and two, never tell a soul that you saw me go out in a men's suit." He could only stare. Her husband had been right. Swallowing thickly, he nodded.

"Th-thank you," he finally said.

"Find me a replacement and you can take the office across the hall as soon as you do." When he didn't reply, she went on, a gleam in her eye that he would have thought was amusement if he didn't know her better . . . but evidently he didn't know her very well at all. "Unless, that is, you'd like to stay my assistant." He shook his head quickly, and to his amazement, she smiled her first genuine smile at him. "You're good, Jack. You deserve this. I've only ever had one assistant as good as you before, and I stuck him under me for three years. Consider yourself lucky."

"Right," he replied, and when she looked down at her papers again, he knew he ought to leave before she could change her mind. So maybe she wasn't a horror after all. Maybe she was just hard to get to know and —

"Oh, and Jack!" she called. He glanced back.

"Yes?"

"That tie is hideous. Buy a new one before you mortally offend someone."

Or maybe she was part horror and part human.

Fin.

A/N: I saw the movie, bought it on DVD as soon as I could, and am officially obsessed. And in love with Ryan Reynolds. I had to write something, and this was what came to mind. Please review!

my first livejournal award!

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:10:23 GMT

Although I've won awards on mugglenet (the Silver Quill) this is the first time I've ever won an award on livejournal! I had a lot of fun writing Safe in Harbor, so I'm glad that others enjoyed it, too. Thanks to all who voted for it! This makes me want to write more VM fic :)

Fic: Safe In Harbor (part two)

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:18:37 GMT

Title: Safe in Harbour
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: Veronica Mars (V/L)
Rating: PG
Summary: A few years after college, Veronica gets an unexpected visitor who has a case for her. Between an estranged lover, a dying friend, and visits from the majority of the VM cast, Veronica has her hands full. For the vmfic_gameon 's Back to School challenge, using the prompt "You're NOT the father" (which seems to be the most popular!)

***New title, as not to be confused with another story!***

"Hey! And how are we feeling today?"

"Well, personally I'm feeling a little down, actually," Veronica answered the nurse, rubbing her stomach thoughtfully. "Mac here just told me she's having a great day. But neither of us could begin to guess how you're feeling." She smiled brightly.

The nurse gave a tight smile. None of them liked Veronica. The feeling was mutual. "I'm okay," Mac told the woman, shaking her head at Veronica with a small smile playing on her lips.

"Your pain today?" asked the nurse, scribbling on her clipboard.

"Four," Mac answered.

"Well, that's excellent!" exclaimed the nurse, beaming. "You let me know if you start to feel bad, okay?" Mac nodded and to Veronica's relief, the blonde nurse with dancing elephants on her scrubs left as quickly as she had come.

"We really need to get you out of this place," Veronica told her friend.

"You're telling me," Mac replied. It was quiet. "I'm so sick of this room. You know the same people who design prisons, design hospitals? What does that tell you?"

"They also design schools, and we survived that," she replied. Mac didn't say anything. Her heart fluttering in her chest, Veronica reached forward and grabbed Mac's hands, stopping their incessant sheet twisting. "The surgery tomorrow? It's going to work. Dr. Bojarski is one of the best in the country and she has a really high success rate. This is going to work. It'll keep you strong until a transplant comes along, I promise."

Mac didn't meet her gaze. "I actually . . . I've decided not to have the surgery."

Veronica sat back in her chair. "What?"

"I can't keep doing this," Mac said, looking up at Veronica in desperation. For years, they've been cutting me open to keep me alive while we wait for a transplant and I'm just so . . . tired of it. All these surgeries . . . they're like putting band-aides on bullet wounds. Even if this surgery is successful, I'll be back in a month."

"Mac," Veronica murmured.

"I'm not doing this anymore. I'm gonna wait for the transplant and if I don't make it until then . . . I'm not going under the knife again. I can't. Not even with the promise of some transplant in the distant future."

"If I remember my Scrubs right, its a scalpel, not a knife," Veronica said, wishing desperately that there weren't tears clinging to her lashes.

"Veronica." Mac looked up at her. Veronica squeezed her hand.

"Please, Mac, don't just give up —"

"I've already made my decision. I talked to Dr. Bojarski and my parents and . . . the next surgery I'm doing is a transplant. That's it. And I'd . . . I'd really like your support in this. You've done so much for me, given up so much for me and you're the best friend I've ever had and I just really need you to understand." Her eyes were pleading. Veronica didn't say anything, but she reached forward and grabbed Mac's hand, giving it another squeeze.

It was quiet for a moment. "Tell me about something else," Mac blurted suddenly. She gave Veronica a weak smile. "I'm sick of talking about how . . . sick I am. What are you working on for the FBI now?"

Veronica gave a small grimace. "I can't really tell you. . . . But its nothing interesting, I swear! They have me do a lot of looking through old cases and paper work and all that."

"Okay," Mac said slowly, "What about Logan? When are you two going to get back together?" There was teasing gleam in her eyes now.

"Honestly?" Veronica sighed, slumping in her seat. "I don't think we are this time." Mac was watching her carefully, and Veronica knew what she was about to say, but she wasn't ready to hear it; she didn't want to talk about Logan and their failed relationship. "I do actually have a pretty interesting case," she said, perking up.

"Yeah?" Mac said. Veronica nodded.

"It involves Duncan Kane." She paused for dramatic effect. "He's back in town. He came to see me and told me that he wants me to find out who his daughter's biological father is."

"Wait, what?" Mac exclaimed. "As in . . . he's not her biological father?"

"Nope," Veronica confirmed. "DNA tests prove he's not."

"Do you have any idea who is?" Mac asked.

Veronica shook her head. "I'm basically at a dead end. Meg's little sister didn't know anything and neither did her ex-boyfriend or anyone else I talked to. I've been going through the yearbook, looking at potential boys she might have had a one-night stand with, but its not going very fast."

"God . . . that's crazy." Veronica could only nod, and before either said anymore, there was a knock on the open door, and they both glanced over to see Wallace. "Hey supa-fly!" Veronica greeted, standing up. Wallace was working in Washington D.C. these days, and she rarely saw him.

"Hey, girl," he replied, smiling as she approached him and giving her a hug. It was always good to see Wallace. He turned to Mac. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm still alive," Mac shrugged.

"Strangely enough, I see that," Wallace told her, and he and Veronica both sat down on either side of the bed.

"Instead of talking about me, because all I do is lay here day after after day why don't we talk about you? Tell me about the big world out there. Has it changed in my absence? Is the sky still blue?"

"It's gonna a little green lately, actually," Wallace told her.

"Interesting, interesting," Mac nodded her head. She smiled, and it was clear she was happy at having fresh company. "How's D.C.?"

"Ooh, yes," crooned Veronica, "How's life as a lobbyist?"

Wallace made a face at her. "See, when you say it like that —" he began.

"Say it like what?" asked Veronica innocently. "You are a lobbyist, aren't you?"

"What I am," he replied, puffing out his chest, "is a man working to make our government help children forced to fight."

"You tell her," Mac encouraged. Veronica only shook her head, smiling. She really was proud of all that Wallace had done and was doing. There was a good person, and then there was Wallace, at a level no one else could ever touch.

"I think you should give up the middleman game and put your name on the ballot," Veronica said matter-of-factly. "That's how you'll really change the world, Fennel. I'd vote for you!"

"Yeah," Wallace said, "you and three other people."

"Gotta start somewhere," Veronica countered.

Before he could reply, one of the numerous machines Mac had been hooked up to began to beep wildly and Veronica looked at Mac in alarm to see her friend slumped onto the pillow, convulsing. Wallace had no idea what was going on, but Veronica was on her feet in an instant, punching the blue button that would send nurses flying into the room.

The nurses wasted no time in arriving, and two minutes later, Dr. Bojarski had stopped the crisis. But Wallace couldn't even walk back in to the room he was so horrified. Veronica sighed. It would all be over soon. It had to be. They'd faced this for too long. Mac had faced this for too long.

But now Mac was saying. . . .

Focus on the case, Veronica told herself. Focus on the case.

"This warms my heart, you know," he told her, smirking. "My protégé, my FBI daughter, coming back to her old man for advice. The student does not surpass the master."

"Yuck it up," she replied. "But you better be able to help me after all this."

"Oh, rest assured, darling daughter of mine," he grinned, "I will be. So. . . ." He leaned back in his desk chair, putting his hands behind his head and stretching his legs, a smug look firmly in place on his face. "How can I help?"

"Here's what I know so far," Veronica said, handing him the file on information she had written and complied. Most of it was basics — copies of the DNA tests, a timeline showing that the baby had to have been conceived within certain dates; her own reports on Lizzie Manning and Meg's Aunt Kris knowing nothing and Cole not being the father. . . .

"I've made some calls to some of the 09er boys Meg didn't completely detest," she told him, "but none of them were any help. I honestly . . . don't know where to look next."

Serious now, her father flipped through the file thoughtfully, his brow creased. "And there's no chance the parents have any idea?"

"If Lizzie doesn't know, I don't know why they would. And asking them would —"

"Put Duncan at risk," he finished for her. "I know. Meg's close friends at the time — have you talked to any of them?"

"I wouldn't know where to start," she replied. She sighed. "Meg pulled away from everyone in the months leading up to the crash. And before that, I was probably one of her best friends. A lot of the girls she grew up calling friends turned out to be . . . not so great. If she was talking to someone, I honestly have no idea who."

"Did, ah, did she have any hangouts? Any bars, maybe, where she might have gotten drunk and . . . ?"

"I hate to think that Meg would do that," Veronica told him.

"Honey, honestly, it makes the most sense at this point."

She nodded sadly. "Yeah, but I wouldn't know where to start with that either. When I was close to her, she wasn't hanging out at bars and having one night stands."

"It looks like at this point you'll have to go door to door — in a manner of speaking," he said, handing her back the file. "Seek out old classmates — maybe people who did frequent bars and the like — and ask them if they can remember Meg Manning in a bar seven years ago. It's a long shot, but if her being there was really an abnormality, it might be something someone remembered."

Veronica was about to reply when her cell phone rang. She glanced at it and then back at him, apology gleaming in her eyes. "I've been playing phone tag with him for a while —"

"Logan?" Keith asked knowingly.

"Casey, actually. You remember him, right?"

"Cult boy, sure, sure," he nodded. "Are you two an item these days?"

"No, Dad, we're not an item. Just — I'm gonna go. Thanks for your help." She turned away before he could protest and answered her cell phone. "Hey," she greeted.

"You're welcome!" her dad called out.

"Hi, you've reached Logan with today's inspirational message: "A ship is safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for." William Shedd. Leave a message."

"Hey, its me . . . again . . . this is getting kind of old. Could you please just . . . look, just, ah, give me a call when you get this." She snapped the phone shut. He could only ignore her for so long, right? She did not want to go another two months without talking to him.

"Is everything okay?" Casey asked as she slipped the phone back into her pocket. He sat back down at their restaurant table.

"Oh, yeah, of course," she assured. "I was just making a call while you were busy, that's all."

"Logan?" he said, giving a small, understanding smile.

"He's avoiding my calls," she answered, taking a forkful of salad.

"Would you mind me asking what, exactly, happened with that . . . ?" he questioned.

"The short version? He asked me to marry him."

"W-wow, and you . . . ?"

"Said no, obviously," she answered, stabbing a carrot and impaling it on her fork. "We're too young and we're both starting our careers and I never — I stopped imagining myself with that kind of life — you know, happy wife and smiling kids — a long time ago, and I . . . I didn't want to break up but he said now or never and since I couldn't choose now. . . ."

"He chose never," Casey said softly. She nodded. "He'll come around. The guy loves you. He has since junior year. That's not gonna change so easily." She met his gaze to see him giving an encouraging smile.

"Thanks, Casey," she said. "Things are just piling up so much lately. Things with Mac are worse than they've ever been and its not looking good and there's this case that's got me walking in circles and I'm just really, really tired." She sighed.

"Yeah, but you'd so be bored if things weren't piling up," he told her. "Don't lie." She glared at him but his grin only widened. "And Mac's going to be fine."

"God, I hope so," she murmured. It was quiet for a moment as they both ate, but eventually he broke it, clearing his throat.

"So — the case you're working on — what's it about? Anything interesting?"

"Sorry," Veronica shook her head, giving him an apologetic smile, "client confidentiality."

"Oh, no, its cool," he said. "I get it. Back in high school I was pretty glad you kept things confidential when I tried to drink the kool-aide." Watching him, it occurred to her suddenly that maybe Casey would know something. After all, he was a part of their crowd, and once a person got close to him, he was a hell of a lot sweeter than most of the 09er boys. What if he noticed a guy hanging around Meg or . . . ?

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked suspiciously.

"Okay, so I'm going to break a confidence," she said, shifting in her seat. He raised his eyebrows, amusement clear. "Duncan's back in town. Nobody knows but Logan, my dad, Mac, and me. And you can't tell anyone. He's back in town for a little while. He didn't bring his daughter, but he's here about her." She paused.

"Go on," he encouraged.

"He found out a couple of months ago that he wasn't the father."

Casey frowned. "I'm not sure I. . . ."

"Meg had a baby right before she died, remember?"

"And Kane ran off with it," Casey nodded. "Yeah, I remember. You're saying it wasn't actually his kid?" His disbelief was clear. Obviously he hadn't thought Meg was that sort of girl either.

"Not according to DNA tests," she confirmed. "He wants me to try and figure out who is the father. I'm a complete loss. I mean, I talked to her sister and her aunt, but neither of them knew anything and as far as I can tell she didn't have any really good friends she could have confided in —"

"Wait, you're sure the kid isn't Duncan's?" he pressed.

"Positive," Veronica said. "About the only thing I do know about the father is that he has type O blood, just like Meg and the baby."

He let out a strangled laugh. "That's crazy. Wouldn't Meg have told someone? It just — I mean, it doesn't sound like her, you know?"

"Oh, I know, believe me. Maybe she never got the chance," Veronica said. "Or maybe she honestly thought it was Duncan's baby. Sometimes you want to believe something so much that you actually start to."

"Wow," he said. "Wow. That's pretty crazy. Who knew, right?" He grabbed for his water.

"Yeah. So does this mean you don't remember ever seeing Meg with . . .?"

"No," he said quickly. She cursed inwardly. She was never going to figure this out.

"That's okay," she sighed. "I'll just keep looking, I guess."

"Actually," he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. "I do remember . . . um, do you remember Caz — Caz Truman?" It took Veronica only a minute to recall the boy, the one who Meg said would flirt with anything that had boobs. "I remember seeing — one night, ah, it really stuck out in my mind — I saw her talking to him at the diner out on Main. It turns into a bar after ten, you know and. . . ."

Veronica tried to process that. "I can't believe that she would go for him, but I if she was really depressed. . . ." Her voice trailed off as she let the information click in her mind. It fit. Meg would probably be pretty drunk, things would progress quickly, and her memories would only be hazy the next morning. "But I guess it makes sense," she murmured. "Thanks."

"Yeah, sure," he dismissed. "Um, I actually have to go. I have — I forgot about this thing — and I . . I know we were supposed to go see that movie after dinner, but maybe a second rain check?"

"Okay," she agreed, only half-paying attention. It wouldn't be hard to find Caz, really.

He stood. "I'll call you. And here — this should cover it." He handed her a few twenty dollar bills.

"You don't need to," she protested.

"No, just — its no skin off my back. I'll call." He gave a tight smile and was gone before she could do more than nod.

Veronica glanced at the screen before she answered her cell. She was already out the door and walking to her car to go see Caz, but she couldn't ignore a call from Mac. "Hey," she greeted, opening her car door.

"Veronica? This is — this is Cindy's mother. I'm using her cell phone."

In the back of her head, alarm bells went off. "Ah . . . Hi, Mrs. Mackenzie. Is everything okay?" Veronica paused where she stood beside the car, her grip on the door handle tight.

"I . . . I know that you're Cindy's best friend. She always talks about how amazing you are and I know how much you did for her after your senior year at Neptune and then again when she got sick and I thought you should be here."

"Has something happened?" Veronica asked, gripping the steering wheel tightly. "Is Mac okay?"

"She is," Mrs. Mackenzie assured, "they . . . I thought you should know — they just took her into surgery. They found her a transplant." Veronica felt her heart seize at the words. Mrs. Mackenzie let out a tearful laugh. "After nearly three years on the National Donors List, she finally has her transplant. They just took her into surgery."

"That's amazing, Mrs. Mackenzie," Veronica said, leaning against the car as ripples of shock still ran through her.

"I know, but I was just thinking — if this doesn't work — if it doesn't —"

"It'll work," Veronica cut her off. "Mac's going to be fine, Mrs. Mackenzie," Veronica said, refusing even to think anything else. "And I'm on my way to the hospital right now. I'll be there as soon as I can."

The line was quiet for a moment. "I'm so glad Cindy was lucky enough to have you in her life," Mrs. Mackenzie whispered. "You're such a good friend."

"She's still lucky," Veronica answered firmly. "She's getting a transplant. This is it. This is what we've been waiting for."

"I — I know. I'll see you in a little bit, Veronica." The call ended and Veronica slowly lowered the phone from her ear. She climbed into the car, her hand shaking as she buckled her seat belt. But she only made it a few miles before she couldn't take it any more and had to swerve the car off the road.

She bent over, unable to stop the tears from welling in her eyes and spilling out over her cheeks as she pressed her forehead to the steering wheel. For years Mac had been fighting, for years Veronica had taken her to the hospital and gone to visit her and to wheel her out after a successful operation, and this is what they had been waiting for all along, and. . . .

It took her a while before she could coach herself into drying her tears and starting up the car again. She couldn't break down like that. She couldn't. Mac deserved better. Veronica had done everything she could to be a strength and comfort to Mac's family and to Mac, and she wouldn't abandon that job now, not when they were so close to the finish line.

When she finally made it to the hospital, it was to find Mrs. Mackenzie pacing and looking as if she were hanging by a thread. Veronica approached her quietly, ready to comfort, and before she knew what was happening, Mrs. Mackenzie had thrown her arms around Veronica, hugging her tightly.

Mrs. Mackenzie released her at long last. "How's she doing?" Veronica asked. Mrs. Mackenzie's face contorted, her bottom lip trembling, and Veronica immediately wished she hadn't asked. "I'm sure she's fine, isn't she?" she went on hastily, producing the best smile she could.

Mrs. Mackenzie nodded. "There hasn't be an — an update yet. But they should probably be done soon, right? I mean, how long do these sort of things usually take?"

Veronica shook her head. "I really don't know."

Mrs. Mackenzie gave a brave smile. "That's okay. They'll be done soon, I'm sure. Sam just took Ryan home. It's too hard for him to be here," she explained. "He's just a baby." The tears broke free. "She's just a baby, too. She's my baby, and there's nothing I can do for her."

"You've already done so much."

Mrs. Mackenzie and Veronica both spun around to see Mrs. Sinclair standing a few feet away, looking at them anxiously, as though she still didn't feel she was allowed to be there. After a long pause, Mrs. Mackenzie said softly, "Hi Anna."

Mrs. Sinclair took a step closer. "Natalie . . . I've only just gotten to know Mac these past few months and I still don't know her very well but I do know that she's an amazing girl, an absolutely amazing girl, and I know she must owe so much of that to you. You couldn't — you couldn't have done more."

Mrs. Mackenzie burst into tears, and this time she threw herself at Mrs. Sinclair, and the two older women clutched one another as they sobbed. Veronica could only watch in astonishment.

"Hey, how's she doing?" Veronica tore her eyes away from the women to face Logan. When she didn't answer, his concern deepened. "She okay?" Realising Veronica must be confused, he added in explanation, "Mrs. Mackenzie called Dick."

Veronica nodded even as Logan reached out and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "She's still in surgery. I don't really know anything, though."

She looked back at Mrs. Sinclair and Mrs. Mackenzie, and Logan followed her gaze. "That must be so strange," Veronica murmured to him. "Hugging the woman who raised your child. I can't imagine being either one of them. They've been through so much, survived so much, and now to have to face this . . . it's not fair."

"You know better than anyone that life's not fair," Logan replied. Veronica nodded. She smiled up at him.

"It was good of you to come."

"Of course," he said. "Mac's my friend, too." He paused. "Honestly, though, I came more for you. Always you." He stared at her in that burning way of his, that way that made it seem as though he could look straight into her soul. It took all her strength to drop her gaze. "Dick's parking the car," he said, breaking the tension. "He offered. I think he's probably gonna need a bit to get it together before he can come in. I swear, I can't get over how much he's changed."

"Me neither," Veronica agreed.

They were quiet for a few minutes as Mrs. Sinclair and Mrs. Mackenzie sat murmuring occasionally to one another in the chairs that lined the wall. Veronica glanced at the clock. Who knew how much longer they'd be there?

As if sensing her building distress, Logan caught her eyes and asked, "How's the case going?"

"Pretty good," she answered, glad for the distraction. "I actually have a new lead. I'm meeting Duncan tomorrow to tell him." Logan nodded. Before he could reply, however, Dr. Bojarski approached, and Veronica's heart caught in her chest. The small blonde woman nodded in acknowledgement at Veronica and Logan before addressing Mac's two mothers.

"How'd it go? How's my baby?" Mrs. Mackenzie asked immediately. "How's my Cindy?" Veronica's breath caught in her chest and she was grateful to feel Logan's hand on her back.

"The surgery went very well," Dr. Bojarski smiled. Veronica gasped and found herself in Logan's embrace. Mrs. Mackenzie let out a cry, clutching her mouth and looking skyward as if thanking God. There were tears in her eyes as Mrs. Sinclair wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "The transplant was a perfect match and your daughter's doing very well. She should be awake soon."

"Thank you," Mrs. Mackenzie said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! Oh, I have to call Sam and tell him! Thank you!"

"She'll have to stay in the hospital under observation for a while longer yet, and you should be aware that complications can always arise after surgeries of this magnitude, but we'll be closely monitoring Cindy, and there's no reason to suspect she won't make a full recovery."

Even Veronica was crying now.

"I've got to call Sam," Mrs. Mackenzie murmured again, patting her pockets as if to find her cell phone but too ridiculously happy to make a real effort. She glanced back at Veronica, and for the first time in a long time, her teary smile reached her eyes. "Thank you," she told Dr. Bojarski again. "Thank you so much."

The doctor only smiled. "Congratulations, Mrs. Mackenzie. Your daughter has a brand new heart."

"Hey," Veronica said softly.

"Hey? That's it? That's all you've got? I undergo major surgery to have my heart replaced after waiting three years and when I wake up and they let you in to see me, all you have to say is Hey?" Mac asked, and she grinned so widely, Veronica knew that everything was uphill from there on out.

"I can say it with jazz hands if you'd like," Veronica offered, sitting in the chair by Mac's bed.

"You joke, but you should take advantage of this joyous mood I'm in. Before long I'll be back to my default setting," Mac warned.

"You know, I kind of like your default setting."

For a moment they only smiled at one another. Mac's parents and brother had all been in to see her when she first woke up an hour ago, and she had even talked with Mrs. Sinclair. Veronica had waited out with Logan the entire time, and now that she was finally in to see Mac, she couldn't really think of anything to say.

It didn't matter.

"Veronica, can I talk to you about something?" Mac asked, her fingers twisting in her sheets.

"Of course," Veronica encouraged, a little puzzled by Mac's soft, serious tone.

"Why did you say no to Logan?" Veronica could only stare, and Mac took her silence as reason to go on. "I know you love him. You've loved him for years. And you're both young, sure, but don't you think its less about age and more about experience? 'Cause you and Logan have experienced plenty together, more than most people do when they get married."

"Mac," Veronica murmured, "I do love him. It took me a while to admit that, I know, but I can say it now. But I don't think I'm ready for marriage. I don't know if I'll ever be ready, honestly."

"If you have the ability to get married and spend the rest of the life with the man you love, Veronica, then you should take it. Not everyone gets that chance. I came pretty close to missing it." Veronica looked down at her hands. "I'm not trying to make you feel bad," Mac continued, "but when they were prepping me for surgery, I kept thinking. . . ."

"But you're okay," Veronica said. "You're gonna leave this hospital and be okay and you can be with anyone you want — even Dick."

Mac gave a small smile. "I know," she nodded. "And I know how much you've done for me. You spent most of senior year taking care of me, and you even helped me start that site that found dirt on teenagers' parents so that I could pay my medical bills, and then you came back to Neptune despite how much you hated it. . . . But I think you're making a mistake, Veronica. I think you're scared. But if you don't take a chance now, you might lose all chances.

"Maybe you're not cut out for marriage with a happy, normal guy, 'cause you're not a happy, normal girl and you'd never be able to put up with a happy, normal marriage. But if Logan Echolls is a happy, normal guy, then I'm a bunny."

"A bunny, huh?' Veronica asked, desperately trying to keep the tears at bay.

"He's the guy for you," Mac said, her eyes wide with enthusiasm. "I don't really do this kind of thing — give this kind of advice, but I'm gonna use my status as a person that almost died to tell you wisely that he's the guy for you. Be scared if you want, but don't let him go."

Veronica didn't know what to say, but Mac didn't seem to require a response. "What about you?" Veronica finally asked. "What happens next?"

"Who knows," Mac shrugged. "Things are definitely gonna be different."

"In a good way," Veronica assured.

"Yeah," Mac smiled. "In a good way."

Veronica couldn't help herself. "Dick was mighty excited when Logan went and found him in the parking lot and told him the news.

"Don't you even start," Mac protested.

"It's okay, I'm totally immune to Dick these days. If you want to date him —"

"We are not having this conversation," she insisted. Veronica smirked. And Mac, glancing side to side as if about to reveal a secret, leaned towards Veronica and said, "I can safely say, however, that Dick is not eggplant."

They both laughed, remembering a time when things weren't literally life and death, a time that would return in the weeks and months and years to come. "Ooh, so tell me about the case!" Mac said when they'd both calmed down. "Have you found the daddy yet?"

"I've got a new lead, actually," Veronica replied. "Caz Truman."

Mac raised her eyebrows sceptically. "I'm not sure I remember exactly who he is, but if I'm remembering right —"

"I know," Veronica agreed, "but Meg was probably pretty drunk.

"Why do you think it's him? Have you talked to him?"

Veronica shook her head. "I'm about to. It was Casey who told me. I mentioned the case to him over lunch and he was really shocked — he basically freaked out — but then he suddenly remembered —" She stopped.

Mac frowned. "Veronica?"

"Oh my . . . " Veronica stared at the far wall, her mind spinning.

"Veronica?" Mac repeated. "What's the matter?"

Veronica shook her head in amazement. How come she hadn't picked up on that earlier? "I have to go," she told Mac, standing up. "I'm sorry. I'm sure Dick'll want to talk to you anyway. I'll come by later, okay?"

Mac shook her head in bewilderment, a puzzled smile on her face, but she gave Veronica her consent, and Veronica was out the door in an instant.

"You really should lock your door," Veronica said.

He shut the refrigerator door he had just opened, not taking anything out of it, and looked over at her in surprise. "Weren't you the one that was just lecturing Logan on breaking into people's homes?" he asked. He had only arrived a moment ago, but Veronica had been waiting for nearly an hour and she couldn't hold it in.

"It's you," she said.

"I don't —" he shook his head.

"You're the father," Veronica accused, standing up. Casey sighed, meeting her gaze but not denying it. "You and Meg ran into each other one night," she went on. "Your life wasn't great with those parents of yours and you got drunk at a bar, and Meg was there drinking, too, and things got out of hand, didn't they? And the next morning, when she barely remembered it, you decided to forget it, too." She let her words settle. "Am I close?"

"You're pretty much spot on," he answered softly.

Veronica's breath caught a little. Even though she had been positive as she ran from Mac's room with the new revelation, hearing his confirmation was still. . . .

"I'm sorry I mentioned Caz. I just . . . I needed a little bit to digest the bomb you'd just dropped." He ran a hand through his hair. "I never really knew Meg, okay? But when she saw me at the bar and started chattering away about Duncan dumping her and how terrible her parents were and . . . I knew, afterwards, that she wasn't that sort of girl and that she would be better off forgetting whatever hazy memories she might have. I left her alone. Never mentioned it. It was . . . it was one night, okay? One night."

"And it never occurred to you when you found out she was pregnant that it might be yours?"

"Honestly?" he replied. "No. It didn't." She couldn't deny the look of utter honestly on his face. "It was just one night," he said, and there was almost a plea in his voice. "What were the chances?"

"I'm guessing you're type O negative?" she asked.

He nodded. "So this means . . . I have a kid, right?"

"There's always a chance you weren't the only one that Meg . . .," Veronica told him. "But I don't think that's the case. Still, there'll be a DNA test."

He ran his hands over his face, slowly slipping into a seat across from her at the kitchen table. "I can't believe this. It doesn't — this sort of stuff — it doesn't happen in real life."

Veronica felt her sympathy for him rise. "Trust me, Casey, nothing in my life ever seems like real life. Welcome to the club."

"What happens after this?" he asked, swallowing thickly. "Duncan's been raising the kid, right? He probably . . . loves her and everything and — its a her, right?" Veronica nodded. "He's not gonna want to give her up and besides I don't know if I want him to. I mean, I am not ready to raise a kid. I'm still a kid myself!" he exclaimed. "And he's a fugitive and what, is she supposed to take a plane half way across the world every weekend so she can see us both?"

Veronica shook her head. "I really don't know. But at least now you know, right?"

He let out a breath of disbelief, giving a strangled laugh. "Yeah, at least now I know." His voice was sarcastic, and Veronica felt even worse for him. He didn't deserve this. Neither did Duncan. "What's her name?" he asked suddenly.

"Lilly," Veronica answered softly. He didn't say anything. "I haven't told Duncan yet. Do you want me to or do you . . . ?"

"Together?" he requested anxiously. She reached forward and grabbed his hand in hers. She nodded.

"Together."

Duncan opened the door without a word.

She knew he must have seen Casey through the peep hole when he'd checked to make sure it was her knocking on his hotel room door, and just how blank his face was revealed that fact. "Can we come in?" Veronica asked softly. His eyes flickered from her to Casey and back again, before he stepped back, opening the door wide and allowing them in.

"Hey Duncan," Casey greeted warily. "It's been a while."

"What are you doing here?" Duncan replied tonelessly. Veronica nearly flinched. She hated robo-Duncan.

"You know why I brought him, Duncan." Silence. "He's the father. He's Lilly's father."

Duncan didn't reply. He didn't give any reaction whatsoever. "I had no idea," Casey finally said, put off by Duncan's reaction. When Duncan still said nothing, he went on hastily, "It never even occurred to me when it went around the school that Meg was pregnant in her coma that the baby was anybody but yours —"

"You slept with my girlfriend?" Duncan asked, his voice dangerously calm.

Casey looked down at the ground, shaking his head softly, and then looked back at Duncan. "It wasn't like that," he said.

"It wasn't like that?" Duncan repeated.

"Duncan —" Veronica began, sensing the danger.

"YOU SLEPT WITH MY GIRLFRIEND!" Duncan roared, and he lunged at Casey.

Veronica was in between them in an instant, and she pressed her palms to Duncan's chest in an attempt to stop him. "Hold on," she demanded. "Just hold on. Look at me. Duncan. Duncan." He tore his eyes from where they were glaring death at Casey to gaze down at her, still fiery. "Casey didn't do anything wrong. Meg was miserable after you broke up with her, and she got drunk one night and she and Casey ended up in bed together."

"So you took advantage of her?" Duncan challenged.

"Hey, you're the one who dumped her," Casey threw back. Duncan started forward again and Veronica had to shove at his chest to keep him from trying to pummel Casey.

"Casey didn't do anything wrong," Veronica defended, forcing Duncan to meet her gaze as she spoke to him. "It was one night, and he knew she had done it with a broken heart, and he never pressed her about it or told anyone. That's why it was so hard to find him. No one ever even knew — he protected her reputation. And now he's fessed up." She paused. "He's done nothing wrong."

Slowly, Duncan drew away from Veronica, and he looked at the far wall, running a hand through his hair. Veronica glanced at Casey, who took a deep breath and spoke. She wondered what, exactly, he could possibly say that would make any of this better.

"I'm not going to try and take her away from you," he announced. Duncan's back stiffened, but he said nothing, and Casey went on. "She's your daughter, and I know you've already done so much for her. I wouldn't be a good Dad anyway. She's yours."

"Casey," Veronica murmured softly, but he only spared her a brief glance and a tight smile.

"I want — I want to meet her, though," he went on. Still, Duncan said nothing. "I'll come to wherever it is you're living now. You don't have to tell her who I am. I just want to meet her. And maybe . . . maybe a couple times a year I could visit. But she never has to know who I am unless you want to tell her." He said it with resolve, allowing no argument.

At long last, Duncan turned to face him. "That's all you want?"

"That's all, man," Casey said. Duncan stared at him and Casey didn't drop his gaze, and Veronica knew that whatever happened after this, it would be okay.

Her work was done.

"So, now, tell me, why is it you need a ride home from the some dingy motel right outside of town?" Logan asked as he strolled up to where she waited outside the motel. He was smirking.

"The jackass wouldn't pay for my taxi home," she replied.

"Shame," Logan replied, shaking his head sympathetically as she stood from her seat on a railing. He was clearly waiting for a real answer as they started towards his car.

"This is where Duncan is staying," she said. He stopped, glancing around as if he expected Duncan to pop out at any moment. "Do you want to — to see him?" she asked, realising he hadn't yet. He didn't answer right away.

"No," he finally murmured. "No." He turned and gave her a soft smile. "So what, did you jog here?"

"I got a ride from Casey." Logan nodded, probably assuming Casey had simply dropped her off, but Veronica knew there was no harm in adding the rest. "He's still in the room with Duncan, talking over logistics. I figured I didn't have to stay for that."

Logan gave her a puzzled frown, only for understanding slowly to seep across his face. "Casey's the father?" he asked.

"Casey's the father," she confirmed. He opened the car door for her and she climbed in. A few minutes later they were turning onto the road. It had been quiet all the while, but Veronica had to say her bit, even if it was too late. But Logan had come to pick her up as soon as she called, hadn't he? And he had been at the hospital for Mac's surgery, too.

She'd been thinking about it for a while now off and on, and her mind had been entirely consumed by it while she waited for Logan to pick her up. She had to say it. She had to try.

"It's amazing, what they're doing, Duncan and Casey. They both acted up when they first heard, but now . . . its gonna work, I think." He nodded. She looked down at her nails, wondering what Lilly would say about her cuticles. That happened sometimes — when she least expected it, she would have a random thought of her dead friend.

"You okay?" Logan asked, glancing away from the road to sheet her a quick glance of concern.

"What they're doing — their plan — its going to be so hard. But just because something is hard, that doesn't mean you should avoid it. Just because something is uncertain, doesn't mean . . . I don't want to die without having really lived, you know?"

His brow crinkled. "Were you planning on dying soon?"

"Its like Mac," Veronica went on. "Until she was sick, she — she wasn't. There was nothing wrong with her. And then one day, her heart became defective. What if she had died, Logan? What if all her life had consisted of was growing up in Neptune and — and everything that happened with Cassidy? That's not a life. That's barely even a beginning."

"Mac's fine," Logan assured softly. "She's fine. You don't have to worry." He grabbed her hand and lifted it to press a kiss to her knuckles.

"I'm not talking about Mac," Veronica told him. "I'm talking about me. About this," she said, lifting up her hand, still clutched in his. He released it, as if he took her words to be a reprimand. She went on hurriedly, before she lost her courage.

"I'm so scared of marriage, Logan. And I've always thought that every example I've seen of it has gone South, but that's not true — Mac's parents have stayed together and strong through so much and my dad and Alicia have gotten their act together, and I — I think its just about finding the right person."

He didn't see anything, but she saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel. "I'm not going to be a very good wife," she murmured, the words sticking a little in her throat. "But . . . are you okay with that?"

He didn't answer immediately, and before she knew what was happening, he was swerving the car off the road and onto the grass. She grabbed the inside of the door to keep from flying forward in her seat. "What are you doing?" she yelled. He slammed on the breaks, not answering.

He put the car in park and turned to face her completely. "Are you serious?" he asked.

Veronica swallowed. She was about to get in way over her head. But if Casey and Duncan could deal with their situation, then she could deal with hers. Weevil was wrong and Mac was right. She couldn't deny that any longer. "Ask me again," she said.

He ran a hand over his hair. "I asked if you're serious — if you really mean —?"

"No," she interrupted, unexplainably breathless. "Ask me again," she repeated, pounding home each word. He stared at her.

"Marry me?" he guessed, and his eyes were shining with disbelief.

Straightening up, Veronica nodded. "Okay," she replied. He stared.

"Okay?" he repeated. A smile swept across her face and she nodded again. "You couldn't even say yes? You had to say okay, like you were just trying to pacify me —?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Are you seriously complaining?"

He only laughed, and it was a rare moment, then, when nothing whatsoever was amiss.

"Hi, you've reached Logan with today's inspirational message: "Okay." Veronica Mars. Leave a message."

Fin.

A/N: This story is pretty much all over the place and I managed to include cameos from nearly every character, but hopefully it all worked! Please review :)

Fic: Safe in Harbor

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:58:22 GMT

Title: Safe in Harbor
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: Veronica Mars (V/L)
Rating: PG
Summary: A few years after college, Veronica gets an unexpected visitor who has a case for her. Between an estranged lover, a dying friend, and visits from the majority of the VM cast, Veronica has her hands full. For the vmfic_gameon 's Back to School challenge, using the prompt "You're NOT the father" (which seems to be the most popular!)

***New title, as not to be confused with another story!***

She knew something was amiss.

Not only was her spidey sense tingling, but he was involved.

Some people had Gaydar, but after everything that had happened, Veronica Mars had Clarence Wiedman-dar. When the man was close by, Veronica knew. When he was following her, she definitely knew. And he was following her.

She saw him the first time as she exited Mars Investigations. She didn't work there any longer, but she still checked up on her father occasionally, and she had been doing so more lately now that he was once again attempting to run for Sheriff. She had been on the phone as she stepped out of the building and started towards her car, and a random glance up had found her eyes pinned on his face.

He was gone before she could blink, but within the hour, Veronica was home on her computer doing a little research into the recent activities of one Clarence Wiedman. She couldn't find much, and she decided simply to be wary. When she saw him at the grocery store, she waved. He only sighed and it was clear he wasn't going to bother hiding.

She couldn't stop him from making a quick getaway, though. And before she could confront him, she came home from work to find the reason why the Kane family's biggest fan was stalking her again: Duncan Kane.

She froze at the sight of him sitting on her porch, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. His head rose at the sight of her, and she was positive it was him. Despite the added years and the sprinkling of a five o'clock shadow, his dark hair, bright blue eyes, and tired shoulders — as if the weight of the world rested there, even after all the time that had passed — were still the very same.

"Duncan?" she asked. It was a pointless question. It was him. But she squeaked the name out nonetheless.

Slowly, he stood. "Hey Veronica," he greeted softly. He gave a small smile.

"What — what are you doing here?" she questioned, her mind whirling. This was why Clarence Wiedman had been following her: Duncan had wanted to find her, and it was easy enough to have Clarence locate her and give Duncan the details. But why would Duncan need to find her? And why —?

"After six years, that's how you're going to greet me?" Duncan asked, a teasing note in his voice. He opened up his arms, and shaking her head as if to shake away her curiosity and confusion, she finally stepped forward and hugged him. He smelt strange, and she realised after a moment it wasn't that his scent had changed; in fact, it was the very same.

She simply hadn't smelt him in a very, very long time. Six years. When they broke apart, he leaned down and kissed her sweetly before she could pull away. "What're you doing here?" she asked again. "Where's Lilly? Do your parents know you're here?"

He sighed. "Some things never change," he said. Running a hand over his hair, he gave a tired smile and asked, "Could we at least go inside?"

Nodding and once more trying to gather her wits, Veronica stepped past him and unlocked her front door, inviting him in. Her house was small, but she was proud of it nonetheless: she had bought it with her own money, without help from anyone, not even her father. And she had made the house a home; she had even had some photos she'd taken framed and hung on the walls.

She had meant to escape Neptune; really, she had. She spent every summer interning with the FBI, and for years grand schemes of a life in Virginia had swam through her mind the way that dreams of going to candy mountain consume the nights of children. She wanted it even more than a pony. But senior year had come with its set of shocks, and after FBI training was complete and she was given a list of locations from which to work, she had reluctantly decided on Neptune, knowing it was the right choice.

"Have a seat," she told Duncan as they entered the living room and she threw her purse into a corner and sat down on the chair. He sank onto the sofa, sighing again. Something was the matter. It had to be. "Can I get you anything or . . . something?"

"I'm fine," he assured. It was quiet.

"Duncan," she began softly, unable to take it. What did he expect?

"I'm not supposed to be here, I know," he said. "Nothing's changed with the Mannings. I'm still a fugitive, for a lack of a better term. And my parents don't know I'm here. But I needed to talk to you. I . . . I need your help."

"Of course you do," she said wryly, leaning back in her seat. "What's happened?"

"I was doing so well," Duncan said. "I was giving surf lessons for a little extra cash and I had even opened my own store. I started seeing a girl who worked —" he paused, blushing a little.

"It's okay," Veronica said, a little amused. "I haven't been living the life of a nun in your absence." His blush deepened and he didn't look nearly as amused as she. "Go on," she pressed. "Things were going well, but . . . ?"

"I really don't want to do this," he said slowly, "but I have . . . I have to know. I tried to ignore it but I couldn't. I need to know."

"Know what? What's going on?"

"It's Lilly."

The two words hung in the air. Veronica knew nothing of the little girl; she hadn't seen her since she was a new-born baby. And, honestly, she hadn't thought much of the child. She only did when she thought occasionally of Duncan, and after six years, it wasn't really something that entered her mind very often.

"What about Lilly?" Veronica asked. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," Duncan replied. "I left her, actually, with my — my girlfriend, Sarah. She's fine." He went silent.

"Then what's the problem?" Veronica pressed. Did he really have to drag it out?

"Lilly was in an accident," he explained. "It was horrible. She was in the hospital for days." At the look on Veronica's face, he added hastily, "this was a few months ago. She's fine now. But at the time, they needed more blood. They said she was type O negative and that meant I could probably give blood."

"Okay," Veronica nodded slowly. "And . . . ?"

"And I'm not type O negative blood, Veronica. I'm AB."

Veronica's mind came to a screeching halt and her high school experience flashed before her eyes, memories of Meg and the bus crash playing out in an instant. "But the hospital assumed that you probably had . . . because for a kid to have O blood," Veronica said, "you couldn't have AB blood. . . ."

Duncan nodded, swallowing thickly. There was no trace of any sort of smile on his face now. "Lilly isn't . . . I thought that I was the only person Meg ever . . . Lilly —" He seemed unable to say the words, and Veronica couldn't help but utter them.

"You're not the father."

He only nodded again.

There were a lot of things Veronica didn't like, and while she had no problem digging into the pasts of others, digging into her own past was at the top of her list of dislikes. She had closed the doors to certain affairs in her history, and she was loath to open them.

But for Duncan Kane, she did. She had always had a weakness for him. He checked into a hotel a little ways out of Neptune after she promised she would find the truth. How could Meg have hidden this? She had obviously thought Duncan was the father; and her laptop hard drive must not have revealed anything about the true father. It didn't make any sense.

Veronica was looking up Lizzie Manning's address when she got the call. She picked up the cell without looking — if she had, she probably wouldn't have answered. She hadn't talked to him in two months, but it was as much his fault as it was hers: after all, he hadn't called in two months; she'd had no opportunity to talk to him even if she'd wanted to. At least, not until now.

"Hello?" she asked distractedly, expecting it to be one of Mac's parents or Casey.

"Duncan's in town," Logan announced without preamble. Veronica paused, sitting up at the sound of his voice. "Did you hear me?" he pressed.

She sighed. "I heard you." The other line was quiet for a moment and she knew what he was thinking before he spoke, his voice low and almost accusatory.

"You already knew," he said.

"He came to me," she admitted.

"Were you going to tell me?" he asked, and the note of accusation spun with anger was clear this time. He had no reason to be angry.

"Honestly, Logan? No, I wasn't. He's here for help, and the less people who know, the better. The Mannings can't find out he's here, and it's probably better if his parents don't either," she said. "He only got into town early this afternoon and he was waiting for me at my house when I got home from work."

"I'm his best friend," Logan replied. "If anyone deserves to know that he's here, it's me." Veronica didn't say anything, and he went on. "And I deserve to know why. What's happening? What does he need help with?" She had known he'd ask.

"I don't think —"

"Don't even try, Veronica. Tell me."

"Lilly," she answered softly. There was no point. It wasn't as if Logan would tell anyone. "She's not really Duncan's daughter."

"You're — you're kidding," Logan said, his amazement clear.

"I wish I was," Veronica said. "I can barely believe it. But its the truth. Biologically, she's not his. He's even had tests done." She paused. "He wants me to find out who her father is. He says he has to know. Do you have any idea who she —?"

"None," he said, not hesitating. "Wait, so — do you think she was pregnant before they first got together? But that would have been way too soon, right? Maybe she got with someone right when they broke up and she just told everybody Duncan was the father."

"She wouldn't lie like that," Veronica defended immediately.

"So you think she honestly believed Duncan was the father?"

"That's the only thing I do know for sure."

It was silent, then, and suddenly the topic of Duncan and Meg and Lilly seemed to fade into the background a little. "How's Mac?" Logan asked finally, breaking into the silence.

"Okay," said Veronica, "for now, at least."

"Is Parker still avoiding her? Refusing to deal with it?"

"Pretty much," Veronica nodded. It went quiet again.

"Veronica," he began, and this time his voice rang with a plea, "I know that you —"

"Look, Logan, I really can't deal with it right now. Duncan needs to get out of here as soon as he can, but he refuses to leave until I find something out, so. . . ."

"Right. You and Duncan Kane. It's always the same story." She rolled her eyes. He was such a girl. "Look, if you need any help, I'm around, okay? Give me a call. Don't do anything stupid without inviting me along to be your muscle."

"You be the muscle? Haven't you heard, Echolls? Its a new day and age. The female gender has their own muscle now. Men are obsolete."

"Do something stupid to get yourself killed, Veronica, and I'll never talk to you again."

"Pinky swear?"

"Veronica," he said, his voice sharp. Duncan was right: some things never changed, and the white knight in Logan Echolls was among those things.

"If I have to do something in my line of work that requires extra protection, I have you on speed dial and I will call, hand to God," she said, her voice monotone.

"Good." There was a long pause.

"I'll talk to you later," she said at long last.

"Good luck," he murmured, and the call ended. She stared at the phone for a moment. Two months was a long time to go without talking to someone who had become such a huge part of her life. He had always been a huge part of her life, first as a friend, then as a tormentor, then as something, always something.

Veronica could say a lot against Logan, but one thing she couldn't claim was that he'd ever left. One person that had always been around — in good and bad ways — was Logan. And like any quality drug, in addition to being entirely detrimental to health, Logan was also insanely addictive, and going cold turkey the past two months had been hard.

Veronica sighed, tossing the phone onto the bed and turning back to the screen. Thoughts of Logan slipped away as she realised what was now displayed on her screen; Logan's call had distracted her. Lizzie Manning was living right outside of Neptune. It'd be easy to stop by and ask a few questions.

Veronica wrote down the address and was on her way out of the room to stop by the hospital when she saw the picture Duncan had given her. She had put it on her desk earlier, and now she picked it up, giving it another close look. The little girl smiling up at the camera was holding a buttercup flower under her chin and giving a toothy grin. She had dark brown hair in a braid and dimples in her cheeks. She looked like Duncan's kid.

Meg wouldn't have lied. But if she had been so depressed after Duncan broke up with her that she turned to someone for one night — but she had to have had some inkling then, that — but no, Meg wouldn't do that. Veronica wouldn't disrespect her memory that way. Meg believed Duncan was the father. Of course, that didn't really change anything.

It didn't make it any easier to find out who the real father was.

But she would.

"Veronica Mars," Lizzie said, her eyes scanning Veronica as she slowly drawled the name.

"Hi Lizzie," Veronica greeted. Instead of inviting her in, Lizzie leaned against the door frame of her front door and crossed her arms over her chest, looking at Veronica appraisingly. "I was hoping I could talk to you," Veronica said softly.

"About what?" Lizzie asked, and Veronica shifted uncomfortably in the apartment hall.

"About Meg," she answered simply. When Lizzie made no move to say anything or invite her in, Veronica added, "It's for Duncan and — and Lilly. I'm trying to sort some information out."

"Lilly is . . . ?" Lizzie began softly, but Veronica knew by the look in her eyes that Lizzie understood who Lilly was, even if the name was different than that she'd known.

"Your niece," Veronica confirmed, nodding. Again, Lizzie seemed to consider Veronica, and finally she stepped aside and allowed Veronica into her apartment.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Duncan and Lilly are both fine, and they're happy, too, living down in Australia. Lilly was in a car crash a couple of months ago. She's recovered now, but they found something out at the time." She hesitated, but Lizzie only stared, waiting impatiently for more. "Duncan isn't Lilly's biological father."

Lizzie's eyes went wide and she started shaking her head. "That's impossible," she said. "Meg might not have been crazy religious like our parents, but she did not spread it around. Duncan was the only person she ever . . . it's impossible, okay? Some mistake."

"It's not," Veronica shook her head sadly. "I talked to Duncan. When he realised that she might not be his, he had a DNA test done. He wasn't a match."

"Well — then have another one done," Lizzie said. "Those things can be faulty. He is her father, okay? I know it."

Veronica sighed. "I guess this means you have no idea who else Meg was close to? Who she might have . . . any boys that she spent time with after she and Duncan —?"

"You mean after Duncan dumped her for you?" Lizzie asked, a slight snarl in her voice. "You mean after you stole my sister's boyfriend when she was pregnant?"

"Lizzie, this isn't . . . about that. For the record, I didn't steal Duncan. He and Meg broke up weeks before he and I got together. And, also, not that this matters, but I dated him long before he and Meg got together, and I even gave her permission to go out with him." Lizzie only glared at her. "You can't think of anyone who might . . . ?"

"No," Lizzie said, crossing her arms over her chest again. "No one."

"Okay," Veronica said. "If you think of anything —"

"I'll hunt you down!" Lizzie said, her eyes widening in exasperation.

Veronica turned to leave only to pause, curious. "How's Grace?" she asked hesitantly.

There was a brief pause, but finally Lizzie answered, her tone genuine this time. "My Aunt Kris sued for custody of her four years ago," she explained. "She lives with her now. She's okay." Veronica nodded, happy to hear it, and turned to leave once more. "It's because of Meg, you know," Lizzie added. "What Meg did, even when she was heartbroken, is what saved our baby sister."

"She was my friend," Veronica said. "And I hate what happened, too."

Lizzie didn't say anything, and Veronica left, no closer to an answer than she was before. It was clear, though, that Lizzie really didn't know anything. If not Lizzie, then who? Was there any trace at all?

When Veronica arrived at the hospital, it was to find Logan and Weevil sitting in chairs side by side. "This can't be good," she muttered under her breath. No combination of Logan and Weevil ever led to good things. "I'm going to have to call you back, Casey." She snapped her phone shut. "Hi boys," she said, approaching them.

Logan looked up. "Hi sweetie. Did you know our little Weevil here is going to community college? Our boy's all grown up. Here I didn't even know he could read!" Logan gave a simpering smile and slapped Weevil on the knee as Veronica rolled her eyes.

"Do that again and you'll lose that hand, boy," Weevil growled at Logan. "Hey V," he nodded at her.

"Are you here to see Mac?" she asked. She knew that Logan came often enough without her; he had grown to be friends with Mac over the years. But Weevil?

"I had some time," he answered vaguely.

"What about hitting the books?" asked Logan. "Wait, can you read? You do know you have to read in college, right? Even if it's play college, reading is still important! Here, let's have a test. What does that sign say? Sound it out if you have to."

"So, tell me again, what is it you're doing now?" Weevil asked. "Sitting on your ass spending daddy's money on video games and hookers?"

"Actually, Juan, I just got a job at the quickie mart. Wait, wait, no, that's you. Sorry, you're right. Video games and hookers." He smiled, only to glance up at the sight of Madison Sinclair's mother slipping quietly from Mac's room. They all went silent, and the older woman froze under their gaze.

She was why Weevil and Logan had both been sitting and waiting. Veronica knew that Mac had spoken with her biological mother in recent months, but she didn't know their relationship had progressed to visits. "Veronica, right?" Mrs. Sinclair finally said, glancing at Logan and Weevil for an instant as if she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and they were about to tattle.

"Right," Veronica nodded. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," Mrs. Sinclair assured, gripping the strap of her purse tightly.

"Are you done?" Logan abruptly asked her. "Can I —?" He nodded at the door to Mac's room.

Mrs. Sinclair nodded, as if grateful that Logan was making no to-do about her presence. "Of course," she added softly.

Logan looked back at Weevil and Veronica. "You all wait out here, now. Taking turns is as important as reading. Think of this as a lesson, Tido. And I'm not even charging you for it!" Logan gave Weevil a big thumbs up and disappeared into Mac's room, closing the door behind him.

Mrs. Sinclair started to leave, and Veronica felt a little bad for the woman. "I think it's good," she said, and Mrs. Sinclair hesitated. "That you come, I mean. I think it's good." She gave an encouraging smile and Mrs. Sinclair nodded.

"Thanks," she murmured. She left before another word was exchanged, and Veronica turned to Weevil.

"She was in the room when I came," Weevil explained. "I thought she deserved a few minutes."

Veronica nodded. "How long have you been waiting?"

"A while. Your boy toy showed up just a few minutes ago, though." He finally turned to look at her. "You still with him?"

"No," she said softly. "Not anymore."

"Glad to hear it," he replied, staring straight forward again.

"He's not as bad as you think," Veronica defended. "He acts up some times, but —"

"If he's not so bad, why aren't you with him?"

"It's . . . complicated."

Weevil scoffed. "Right." Veronica watched him for a moment, considering. Weevil might have been a bad boy, but much like Logan and Veronica herself, he was a softie on the inside. A marshmallow, a Wallace-like voice said in her head. The fact that he was at the hospital right at that moment was proof. "What do you want?" he sighed.

"What?" Veronica said, frowning.

"What do you want?" he repeated. At her confusion, he glanced at her knowingly. "You always want something. You're staring at me that way now. What do you want, V?"

"I was just wondering . . . do you remember Meg Manning?" she asked.

He nodded. "The only one who survived the bus crash, right?"

"Yeah, but she died a few months later," Veronica said. When Weevil didn't seem interested in saying anything, she went on, "she and Duncan dated. She was pregnant, actually, during the crash."

"I remember," Weevil said. "Kane ran off with the baby. Everybody who went to Neptune knows that, V. What are you fishing for?"

She shook her head, leaning her head against the wall and staring straight forward as he was. "Nothing. I'm not fishing for anything. I've just been . . . thinking about Meg lately. I wondered if you ever spoke to her or . . . saw her around."

He looked at her. "Far as I'm concerned, she's another reason why the boys you like to hang on aren't any good. Kane, Echolls — you'd all be better off without them. If she had lived, trust me: she would have been better off without Duncan Kane."

Before she could reply, he stood. "I'm gonna get going. My shift starts in a few minutes. I guess I'll come back later when the great Logan Echolls isn't here. I'll see you later, V." She only nodded and he turned a corner out of sight a moment later. She sighed.

"There has to be something else," Veronica pressed.

"No," Duncan shook his head. "There's nothing."

"But on her hard drive —?"

"No!" Duncan shouted angrily. "Why aren't you listening to me? There's nothing on there! That's why I came to you!"

"I don't have magical powers," Veronica snapped. "There's not a wand in my back pocket. I need something to go on." Duncan said nothing, only covered his face with his hands, letting out a deep breath. It had been nearly a week, and Veronica had been unable to make any headway. She had gone to speak with Cole and had found to her disgust that the boy hadn't changed much.

When he realised what she was after, he freaked out and said he hadn't been anywhere near Meg and if she tried to stick him with paternity he'd have a DNA test done. Veronica declined the oh-so generous offer: Meg had had better tastes than that.

Of course, at this point, she might very well have to resort to considering Cole again. . . .

"Look, there's got to be something else. You're Veronica Mars. You can solve anything. You've got to be able to figure this out," Duncan said, a plea in his voice. Veronica assessed him for a moment, leaning towards him as he was towards her.

"Duncan," she said softly, "maybe . . . maybe you don't need to know." He sat back in his chair, gritting his teeth and clearly unhappy with her suggestion. She wasn't deterred. "It's not like it'll change anything!" she went on. "Lilly is still your daughter, no matter what. Why do you —?"

"I just — I just have to know, okay?" he replied, taking a deep breath as if to calm himself. "I can't let it go. And you of all people should understand that. When was the last time you let something go?"

Veronica didn't say anything.

"Do what you have to do," Duncan told her, standing up. "Money's not a problem. Just figure it out." He turned and left, his face stony. Veronica sighed. She couldn't deny that he deserved to know the truth, but finding it wasn't going to be easy.

"It never is, Mars," Veronica muttered, slumping in her seat. She frowned, thinking, before fetching her phone from her purse and dialling his number. There was no answer, and she had to listen to one of his inane messages.

"Hi, you've reached Logan with today's inspirational message: "The mind determines what is possible. The soul surpasses it." Pilar Coolinta. Leave a message."

"You really need to find something to do other than peruse inspirationalquotes.com," Veronica said. "And I need a yearbook from Neptune High. I seem to remember being forced to sign yours. Hand it over."

If she was going to do this, she might as well go all out.

"I got your message," Logan said. She looked up from the table in surprise.

"You do know you don't live here, right?" she asked, annoyed. "You're not allowed to just walk in." He barely seemed to pay her any mind; instead, his eyes were trained on Casey, sitting across the table from her. She knew immediately what he was thinking, and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"I still have a key," he replied, his burning gaze still on Casey. "Hey Casey," he said. "I didn't know you were back in town."

Casey gave a tired smile, as if he too could read Logan's mind. "Got back a few months ago, actually," he replied. "I just graduated from NYU. It took an extra year, but I managed to do it.

"Call it a victory lap," Veronica told him, teasing. He only grinned. God. Was it wrong that her stomach turned to jelly when he smiled like that? Some boys were just God's gift to women.

"I brought my yearbook, as per your request," Logan said, nearly growling. He held up the book as proof. "Is now good?" It now seemed his new tactic was simply to ignore Casey. It could be worse, Veronica thought; he could start mocking Casey, as was his usual route.

Veronica sighed. "So it looks like I've got case stuff," she told Casey, smiling apologetically. "Could we maybe cut this short and take a rain check on the movie?"

He nodded. "Sure. If you need any help, give me a call." He stood and she followed suit. There weren't many people Veronica kept in contact with from Neptune High, but as of recently, Casey was one of them. There was something about him that . . . that was so different from the rest of the Neptune minions. "I'm actually going to be pretty busy for the rest of the week, but maybe sometime this weekend?" he asked.

"I'll call you," she assured, and with Logan watching on reproachfully, she gave Casey a hug. He nodded at Logan as he passed him by and left the house. The moment the front door shut, Logan turned on Veronica.

"Is he why you said no?" he demanded.

"Oh, do not start," he said, grabbing the yearbook from his hand and heading to the living room. She'd clean up their lunch dishes later.

"I thought maybe it was some lingering love for Duncan —"

"Logan, please," Veronica exclaimed, exasperated, as she plopped down onto her living room couch, tucking her legs under her and beginning to flip through the yearbook.

"— or maybe your own aversion to — Veronica!" he snapped, clearly irate at her inattentiveness.

She looked up at him patronisingly. "You are such a girl, you know that?" she said. He sighed, looking away from her and running a hand over his face. Despite her best effort, she felt herself soften towards him. "Thanks for the yearbook."

"Sure," he replied wearily. "What do you need it for, anyway?"

"I'm thinking maybe one of our former classmates could be Lilly's biological father. It's worth a shot, at least. It's the only shot I've got at this point, actually." She sighed heavily. The middle stretch of cases was always the hardest.

"Yeah. I talked to Dick, asked if he knew anything, but he didn't have a clue," he told her.

"You told Dick?"

He shrugged. "You know he couldn't care less, and he's not gonna bother telling anyone." It was true, but —

"But Dick?" she repeated. "Really?"

"I think he's turning over a new leaf, actually," Logan informed her. He grinned as he went on. "He came home last night ranting and raving about how he'd lost his balls because he got a call from some girl about going out only to turn her down because he'd already told Mac he'd visit her. He was asking me what was wrong with him that he'd pick a sick hospital girl over a hot one night stand."

"How long do you think it'll be before he figures out he's in love with Mac?" Veronica asked, matching his grin with one of her own. Regardless of his past transgressions, Dick really had fallen for Mac, and he was treating her better than Veronica could have imagined, though they weren't even an actual couple . . . yet.

"I'll give it another five years," Logan replied, and Veronica shook her head, still smiling as she looked back down at the yearbook. It was silent for a moment before he spoke, his voice pleading. "Veronica . . . are you and Casey — ?"

"We're friends," she said firmly. "I ran into him in the supermarket months ago. We went for coffee. We meet up every now and then. He's cool and easy to talk to. That's all. Honestly." He nodded and looked at his feet so pathetically that she felt sympathy rise in her once more.

"I wasn't ready," she murmured. "I told you that."

"Are you ever gonna be ready?" he questioned, a knowing glint in his eyes.

"Maybe," she answered honestly, shrugging her shoulders. "Maybe not. But — but probably . . . I — I hope so. I want to be."

He looked away, not answering. He'd lost all his fire recently, all his snarkiness, and she hated it, hated knowing that she'd done that to him. "It's not that hard, Veronica. Either you love me or you don't."

"No, Logan. No. You of all people know it is hard, and its not that simple!" He said nothing. "My mother had an affair and broke my father's heart before abandoning me. I spent years taking pictures of husbands cheating on their wives and —!"

"So you think I'm going to cheat on you?" Logan demanded indignantly.

"No! That's not what I'm saying!" she replied, her own anger building. "Listen to me!"

"I am listening, Veronica. I've heard you loud and clear. And I —" he scoffed, his lip curling, "I don't know what it is about you. I honestly can't . . . just let you go, not even when its what you want."

"Okay, don't do this self-pity thing! You're the one that broke up with me!" she said furiously, nearly leaping to her feet. "I was happy. I was in love with you!"

"Yeah, and it only took you until our senior year of college to admit it! But I waited and I stuck it out and I wanted to marry you, Veronica!" Logan yelled. "I wanted to marry you and I asked and you just stared at me like I was a lunatic! And the truth is its not because you don't like marriage or because you're too young. The truth is that I've never been what you really wanted." He paused, and his next words were low and angry and resigned, and they stabbed at her with sudden fury. "I'm just what you settle for when there's no one else around."

"Logan, you — you know that's not true," she protested.

"No, Veronica, I really don't. If its not true, then why don't you want to marry me? Why did you say no?"

"Because I'm not ready!" she exclaimed. He only shook his head.

"Logan —"

"I've got to get going," he cut her off. "You can keep the yearbook." He started towards her front door, clearly too pissed to deal with her. Why did he always do this? Why did he have to be like this?

"Logan. Come on. Logan! Don't be an ass!"

But the front door slammed shut loudly. She sighed. He said it wasn't hard, but he was the one making it hard. Refusing to dwell on it, to remember his simple proposal in her kitchen, to remember the disappointing realisation that she was refusing seep across his face, she focused her attention back on the yearbook.

Cases were always the best escape.

And this case was definitely on a timelimit. She turned to the senior photos in the yearbook, grabbing the pen and notebook she'd discarded on the floor earlier. There was a good chance that Lilly's real father wasn't a former Neptune student, but there was also a good chance he was.

And if he was, Veronica was going to root him out.

Continued in part two . . .

Fic: Birds of a Feather

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:49:44 GMT

Title: Birds of a Feather
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: One Tree Hill (Peyton and Lucas!)
Rating: PG-13/Teen
Summary: "As each day goes by, it makes way for another,/ We discover that we're not alone,/ And each day we try the best that we can to recover,/ All the feelings that we left below." AU Lucas/Peyton. What if Lucas had lost to Nathan in the pilot?

You wish for a moment, a single moment when the world seems to still and you don't hear the screams around you and you don't feel Brooke standing beside you, you wish for that one moment that the basket is good. You know its wrong; you know that you should be supporting your boyfriend, ass that he is. But you can't help yourself: you see yourself when you look at that boy, and you hate that, but you can't change it, and you wish for a single moment there on that old court that he wins the game.

How much would your life change if someone finally put Nathan Scott in his place? How much would your life change if the outcast, the forgotten son, Lucas Scott, the boy the world knows but refuses to acknowledge, were to win this game? How much would your life change if Lucas Scott joined the Ravens basketball team? It seems a silly thing to imagine, but you know, you know — you can feel it in the air — that if the blonde brother wins this game and joins the Ravens, everything will change.

But he misses the basket and Nathan grabs the rebound and in one swift movement, one swift layup, the game is over, and once more Nathan Scott has won, has conquered all, is smugly smiling while the world cheers him on. You don't cheer for him, though. Your eyes are trained on Lucas. "Guess this means you'll stay where you belong," Nathan tells Lucas, and his vindictive satisfaction is so thick it should be suffocating the crowd around them.

Lucas says nothing, but his faces hardens and you recognize the gesture, you recognize the strength, and you hate that see yourself in it all, in him, yet again, but once more: you can't change it. His friends surround him; they pat his back and glare at Nathan and the mob of faceless, nameless celebrating students, and you know, without a doubt, the truth in the words you next say.

His eyes meet yours, and you can't help it, "You're better off," you say, your face as hard as his. His gaze bores into you and the stare is so intense, so somehow intimate, that you want to slap him. But its not like with Nathan. It's not a smug stare or a dirty one. It's a stare that sees you as no one ever has.

Nathan throws his arm around your shoulder and slams his lip to yours. When he pulls away he looks at Lucas and you know he kissed you to put one more nail in Lucas Scott's coffin. So you glance away, because its easier that way. You let Nathan drag you towards his friends. You look back, though, and its your fatal mistake: "I'll be seeing you," Lucas tells you. There is no smile on his face, no emotion in his expression, but there are his eyes, and they repeat his words so loudly you know you'll never forget them.

"God, your boy looks good tonight," Brooke says, giving you a lecherous grin and then waving about her pompoms, yelling.

You don't reply. Sometimes you have no idea why you're friends with Brooke. You do know deep down, of course. There's a part of Brooke that's been hidden for years, a part of her that is good and sweet and concealed under layers of negligent parents and fake friends and thick eye make-up, and you've seen that part of her only few times but enough to know that keeping Brooke in your life is worth a hell of a lot, even if most of the time she pisses you off more than anything else.

Then again, most of your life doesn't make any sense, so why should your relationship with Brooke? At least your friendship with her is explainable to a degree. You have no reason whatsoever to date Nathan anymore, not with the way he treats you, not with the way he treats everyone. And as often happens, your mind sticks on that fact, swirls around it and won't let it go, and by the end of the game, you hate yourself for dating Nathan and for being someone you're not, and you skip out before the victory celebrations can really begin.

You blow off Brooke and Nathan and his offers of a party if you wait until he changes. You get in your car, toss your pompoms in the passenger seat and take off. You know you're a sucker for pain when you find yourself driving to the river court. You know its wrong that you're hoping he's there, and you know its wrong to be upset he's not there alone.

He's playing basketball, because that's what Scott boys do, and he looks so much different from Nathan in his grey t-shirt and mesh shorts. He's laughing and horsing around as he plays with a mismatched collection of boys you barely even recognize. Up in the stands two boys talk into microphones, laughing and shoving each other and having as much fun as the boys on the court, and there's a girl with them, too, smiling and shaking her head and rolling her eyes, and you realize there's a whole world you don't know about.

You know about Lucas, sure. Everybody knows about Lucas Scott and his sordid story. But when you labeled Nathan as a king and Lucas as an outcast, you didn't really realize that he was a king in his own way. Nathan Scott was king of Tree Hill high, but Lucas Scott, he was king of the kids who didn't want to be ruled by Nathan; he was king of the outcasts.

"Can I help you?"

You look at your window in surprise and see the girl from the stands is no longer in the stands; she's standing in front of your car, her dark brown hair held back from her face with one hand, her dark eyes looking at you critically and even a little knowingly. "Can I help you?" she repeats.

You roll down your window. "No," you tell her.

She shrugs and walks away. You expected her to say something more. Then she glances back. "Your boyfriend's a jerk," she says.

"I know," you reply.

She shakes her head softly. "I don't get why he likes you. I've never gotten it."

You frown. "What are you talking about?"

She looks over at the court, at the boys still playing, and her eyes land on Lucas, and you look, too, and suddenly he's looking at you and at the girl, his eyes bouncing back and forth, and he only stops when one of the other boys hits him in the back of the head with the ball and he laughs and shoves the boy and turns away from your direction.

"You could always dump Nathan, you know," the girl says.

"Mind your own business," you snarl.

"Hey, honey, you might be the leader of the pompom bimbos, but this is my turf and I'm in charge here," the girl tells you with a kind of sass that throws you for a loop. "Don't forget that you're the odd one out here. You came to us." And she walks away without looking back then.

In school the teacher asks you to describe Lucas Scott in one word. You think of a thousand biting things to say in an instant, but you say the thing you really think of when you see him, the thing that you first thought of when Nathan told you about his big brother: "Forgotten," you say.

And he calls you lonely. You stare at him and he at you, and then Nathan ruins it all and he and Lucas fight and the entire time you see those blue eyes floating in front of you face, haunting you like in some sort of Victorian novel, and that afternoon you drive to the river court again. This time he's the only one there, and you're not in a cheerleading uniform and you don't feel like such a phony in jeans and a t-shirt, so you climb out of the car and you approach him, your arms crossed over your chest defensively.

"You play?" he asks, holding the ball under one arm and smiling at you. He has a split lip.

"No," you reply.

"Ever tried?"

"No," you repeat. You've forgotten why you're here. He throws you the ball. You don't catch it and he laughs and you glare at him and it takes you a moment to realize he's not mocking you or insulting you or making a show for all the people around — because there aren't any people around and he's just teasing you, just trying to clear some of the anger from your face.

You pick the ball up and throw it at the hoop. It misses by a mile. "You were aiming for there, right?" he asks.

"What do you want from me?" you ask.

"Hey!" he says, raising his hands up. "You're the one that keeps coming to my court."

"Maybe I wouldn't if you would stop watching me and calling me lonely and —"

"And treating you like an actual person?" he interrupts. "Yeah. Sorry. I'll try and get my act together. I know you like your men to be asses." You roll your eyes and walk away, berating yourself for coming here. Why did you come here? What did you want to happen?

"Aw, Peyton!" he yells. "Wait!" You turn back around, your mouth perused. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?" he says. "I shouldn't have said that, I know. I'm sorry. I just really don't like your boyfriend." He gives a small smile, one that asks for understanding. You stare at him for a moment, at the sincerity in his face that Nathan never has when he apologizes. When Nathan says sorry, he's patronizing you; when Nathan says sorry, there's a clear note of devil-may-care in his voice that turns the apology into an insult. But its not like that with Lucas.

"Why do you like me?" you ask.

"Because you deserve to be liked," he replies simply, as if its the most obvious thing in the world.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" you demand.

"I like you because you're you," he explains. "And your legs. I like your legs." You roll your eyes and you try and leave again, try to erase the words he's just said. "We've having a game tonight on the court," he calls out. "Haley's bringing popcorn. You can come, if you want." You keep walking.

But you come again that night, and you sit next to the girl who must be named Haley, and she offers you some popcorn and she doesn't mention the peculiarity of you being there and she talks about her stupid science teacher and this commercial she saw on television and why she hates the color yellow, and a boy named Mouth introduces himself to you and Lucas only smiles and you make a sarcastic comment and Mouth and Haley laugh and you realize you like it in this other world.

Maybe you should have joined the small kingdom of those who chose Lucas over Nathan a long time ago.

"So thanks for making this a no-brainer," you tell him.

This is it. This is for real. You and Nathan have broken up before. But its time you're finally ending it once and for all. For so long you convinced yourself that he was the way he was because of the pressure of basketball and his father and this and that and this and that.

But you had only been making up excuses for him.

He treats you like shit, he treats his own friends like shit, and he treats Lucas like shit. He still won't leave his brother alone, even though Lucas did as agreed and refused to join the basketball team. It makes you wonder: how can Lucas be such a good person and Nathan such a . . . dick? How can Lucas submit your art to thud and Nathan not even notice the sketches in your room?

"Is this about Lucas?" Nathan asks angrily. You huff, crossing your arms over your chest.

"This is about the fact that you're an asshole, Nathan! I keep on giving you chances and you keep on proving you don't deserve them and I'm finally doing something about it!" You are. You should have done this a long time ago.

"If you honestly expect me to believe this has nothing to do with Lucas," he begins, his face contorted.

"Maybe it does have something to do with Lucas!" you interrupt. "Because the way you treat him, Nathan, is disgusting. He's your brother and you can't leave him alone —!"

"He's not my brother. And I'm not going to leave him alone when he won't stop hitting on my girlfriend! The guy's asking for it!"

You stare for a moment. "Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore, because you no longer have a girlfriend."

"Peyton," he murmurs, making a puppy dog face, "please. Things are so hard for me right now. My dad is really riding me and my grades are getting so bad Turner is threatening to suspend me if I don't get a tutor and get my act together and I need you!"

"No, Nathan. You need to become a decent human being. Get out." You're not going to fall for it again. You're not. Your mind flashes to all the terrible things he's said and done and then suddenly you're remembering the nights you've spent on the river court lately, the conversations you've had with Haley and the way Lucas looks at you and the things he said when he submitted you art, and your resolve hardens.

"Peyton —"

"Get out."

"Fine," he replies. "Fine. You'll change your mind by tomorrow anyway." He gives you a nasty glare and then leaves, and you know he'll be calling you, begging forgiveness and telling you that he knows you didn't mean it.

But this time you won't listen. You won't even pick up the phone.

The phone is already ringing in an hour. You pick up your sketchbook and pencil and you drive to the river court. They're all there: Lucas and Haley and Skillz and Mouth. You climb onto the bleachers and Haley smiles at you but doesn't say a word as you focus on your sketches.

"I broke up with Nathan," you blurt out.

She only smiles and then asks if you've done your English homework yet and whether or not you liked the assignment. You answer and go back to your sketches and you feel once more at home in the land where the ravens with broken wings all gather.

You should have known since that game at midnight on the river court when brother had gone against brother that no matter what you would eventually find yourself on the damned river court about to do this. You don't know how your life has changed so much so quickly and you wonder again if things would have been different had Lucas won that game or joined the team regardless of losing or never have stared at you with those intense blue eyes, but he didn't win the game and he didn't join the team and he has always stared at you with those eyes.

You put your hands on his face and you stare at him and he says your name, so softly you're not even sure he really did, and you don't know what you're doing but you haven't known what you're doing for a long, long time, so you throw caution to the wind and you kiss him. The river court is empty except for the two of you, and its dark, and he responds so ardently to your kiss. He wraps his arms around you and lifts you off the ground and his hand tangles in your hair and you wonder why you put up with Nathan for so long.

When you break apart he says, "I've wanted this for so long. I want everything with you, Peyton." His eyes are so intense and his words so deep and you're frightened for a moment and the urge to run or to shout or to fight flickers in your mind. But you don't. Because you want this, too. You've been lying to yourself for so long and its time you finally told the truth. You've spent so much time on this court in the last few weeks with his friends and with him and you know you want to be a part of this world, a part of his world.

But you don't know what to say. So you kiss him again, desperately, passionately, and you stand there as time passes by — you have no idea how much time — kissing him and letting him trail kisses down your jaw and whisper into your skin how beautiful you are and how amazing you are and how much he wants you and wants this.

Maybe if you had gotten to know him in the world you grew up in, maybe if you had gotten to know him at Ravens basketball games and parties and the world of Nathan and Brooke and preps and jocks and cheerleaders, you wouldn't be able to do this. Maybe you'd be too afraid. But you've been slowly pulling away from that world to spend more time in his, and you've gotten to know him in this world, and in this world, you don't have to be afraid.

A part of you is still scared, but you keep kissing him anyway.

You arrive at school and he's there and he greets you with a soft kiss and intertwines your hand with his. You're aware of all the stares, of the pointed fingers and whispered words, but then Haley bounds up to the two of you gushing and grinning and even winking at Lucas. She wraps an arm around your shoulder and you really like this bouncy brunette who calls herself Luke's best friend, so you smile and laugh and squeeze his hand in yours.

"Oh. My. GOD!" Brooke exclaims, dragging you out of class the moment the bell rings for lunch. "It is all over the school, P. Sawyer. How come I had to hear from a complete stranger that my best friend is dating Nathan's broody brother?" Her eyes are glinting with a kind of excitement.

"I, ah, meant to tell you, but —"

"Well, tell me everything now!" Brooke interrupts, clapping her hands. "Is this why you dumped Nathan? 'Cause I gotta say, Peyton, Lucas is one fine looking boy, even if he is poor." She grins and you have to hand it to Brooke: at least she doesn't come with any surprises. "But so you're definitely dating, right? Oh my god! So how is he?" Her voice lowers. "He kicks ass in the backseat, doesn't he?" She wriggles her eyebrows.

"We just kissed, Brooke. We haven't gone out and we've haven't had sex, but we —"

"You're gonna have sex, though, right?" Brooke persists.

You manage to get away from her eventually. You then have a choice: you can sit with Brooke and Bevin and Nathan and the group of kids you've always sat with, or you can sit with Lucas and Haley and the group of kids you've been slowly growing close to but only on their turf, only on the river court and never at school or around Nathan or Brooke or anyone else.

But you've kissed Lucas, and you can't keep precariously living on the edge. No one can be loyal to two kings. It's obvious Brooke doesn't care who you choose, at least not now, and she's probably the only person you grew up with whose opinion matters. You see Nathan watching you with burning eyes, but you sit down beside Skillz and Lucas and Haley, and when Lucas kisses your temple, you know what's done is done and you pointedly ignore the attention of the Tree Hill high school students, because you've fallen from grace, and you're one of the forgotten now.

Thank God.

They don't really forget about you, though. Just like everyone knows who Lucas Scott is and everyone knows who his father is and who his brother is and how he's the abandoned, unclaimed son, everyone knows who you are. You're the cheerleader who dated the basketball star only to leave him and cheerleading and all of your friends behind to date Lucas Scott and spend your afternoons playing records for Haley James, discovering that she knows more about music than she ever let on before.

You meet Keith Scott, and he's such the Lucas to Nathan's Dan that you smile, and you can't understand why he and Karen don't get their act together.

You see less and less of Brooke once you quit cheerleading, but you never really belonged there anyway; you belong with Lucas on the river court, so you start spending your evenings there. You draw comics while he plays basketball, and afterwards he wraps your curls around his fingers and kisses you with such adoration that you melt further and further into him and fall deeper and deeper for him, so that when Brooke yells at you for abandoning her you can't help but feel less than completely guilty.

You begin to realize that Haley is keeping a secret but you don't think about it too much, because Karen leaves town and you end up in bed with Lucas and its skin on skin and he's only the second boy you've done this with and you wonder briefly if there's a greek play about you, the girl who bonked two brothers. But he's making you feel so good, so loved and worshiped and damn. . . .

Then he comes so soon you know this is the first time he's even done this. You laugh at him and he's so adorably offended that you laugh harder. He doesn't get angry the way that Nathan would, though, he only kisses you again and the first time you have sex with Lucas, you don't have sex, you make love, and when he rolls away from you and you think that to yourself, you chuckle at your own stupid, inane thoughts.

"What?" he asks.

You turn to him and smile, biting your lip. "Nothing," you say. "I'm just turning into such a girl."

"Don't worry," he replies, "you're the best kind of girl." You shake your head at him and then let him wrap an arm around you, your head resting on his shoulder. This is better than with Nathan, and you realize you're glad you dated him, you're glad you experienced so much with that dark-haired boy, because it means you can appreciate this for what it is, you can appreciate Lucas for who he is.

You never should have agreed.

But you did. Brooke begged you to spend some time with her, to come to a college party, and you agreed. You hate the place, though. You feel stupid in the outfit Brooke put you in and you wish you were with Lucas and Haley and Mouth and Jimmy and Skillz and Lucas and so you let Brooke get lost in the boys and you retreat to the room of a boy who looks cool enough.

He has such an amazing music collection, and you don't refuse the drink he offers you.

The next thing you know, you wake up with Lucas brushing the hair from your face, his eyes concerned and his smile widening at the sight of your slowly opening eyes. "Hey babe," he greets softly. He explains what happened, how Brooke got you away from the jerk who tried to hurt you and how she called him.

You let him cradle you in his arms and you can't really fully comprehend what happened, but you're okay now, and that's what you focus on. Brooke is at Luke's house, too, and she talks with you and smiles and then she smiles at Lucas and you realize they've bonded over what happened to you. It's weird, really, having the two worlds collide.

Brooke starts spending more time on the river court with you and with Lucas and Haley, and you kind of like it, because they bring out the hidden part of her and she's the person you've always known she could be but have so rarely seen her as. You wonder what it would be like if everyone could be a part of Lucas's world, if everyone would be better for it the way that you and Brooke are, but then if everyone were an outcast, would the world of outcasts still be the secret, sacred thing it is?

If Lucas were popular and played basketball, would Haley still be as sweet and dorky as she was? Would Mouth and Jimmy still be his good friends who teased her endlessly even as they blushed every time she or Brooke joked with them? Would Lucas still be the good person that he was? Would you still be unafraid to be with him? Would you still be slowly opening your heart to him as you have been over the last few months?

You don't know the answer to any of those questions, but you are glad that things are the way they are. You can't imagine them any other way.

Fin.

A/N: For some reason I like writing my One Tree Hill fics in second person! Hopefully you didn't mind that. I've been rewatching old episodes of OTH and the idea of what would have happened had Lucas not made the team got stuck in my head. I actually thought about how everything might have happened differently with Keith and Dan and with Ellie and with Derek, but I ended up sticking to first season events. What'd you think? Does it make sense? I played a little with the timeline but not too much. I really wanted to only tweak the OTH universe a little ;) Please review! Also -- who caught the allusions to the fact that Lucas and Peyton aren't the only ones who'd end up together regardless of whether or not Luke made the team?

Ooh, and the lyrics and title are taken from the song "My Eyes" by Travis, one of my favorites by them!

Fic: What Will Your Legacy Be (ten steps to growing up)

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:04:22 GMT

Title: What Will Your Legacy Be (ten steps to growing up)
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: One Tree Hill (Peyton and Lucas; Sawyer's POV)
Rating: completely innocent
Summary: How Sawyer Scott grew up.

i.

Your parents start fighting worse than ever before. You come home from school to the sound of shouting, and a peek in the kitchen reveals the battle lines clearly drawn: your mother, tears streaking down her face, is waving her arms about wildly, and your father has a kind of furious fire in his eyes.

You hate it when they fight, because they fight so rarely that it always means something when they do. You wonder what they're fighting about now and if it'll affect you in any bad way.

You never thought so highly of your life; you hate the girls at school and you know your mother doesn't understand: she was never an outcast, however much she'd like to believe she was. You fight with your parents because they want you to follow your dreams but you don't have any dreams to follow, and you're tired of trying to find some — you'd rather watch TV.

But your life is your life and it's what you know, so when they announce that you're moving, that the whole family is moving, your head explodes. Is this what they were fighting about? It doesn't matter, because now they're fighting with you. You scream and cry and throw a book your dad wrote into a lamp, sending it crashing to the ground, but the temper tantrum doesn't do any good.

The school year comes to an end and the next thing you know, everything you own is in the moving van and you're on your way to Tree Hill, your parents' home town, your least favorite place in the world.

You hate the house they buy. It's too big, too white, too unlike everything you've ever known. You hate when Aunt Haley comes by with casserole and croons over how very much you look like your mother. You hate how happy Anna and Keith are to be in Tree Hill, and you hate how no one seems to care that you're so full of hate.

You lock yourself in your room, leave everything in boxes except for your ipod speakers, and as you lie on your bed blasting the music, you wonder why your life is so hard.

You've been in Tree Hill for nearly a month when your mother collapses in the kitchen, splattering spaghetti sauce and completely terrifying you. She's in the hospital when your father squats down in front of you in the hospital waiting room, his eyes wide. He tells you the truth, then, and you learn why your parents were fighting and why you've moved back to Tree HIll and why your mother collapsed and why your life was nothing close to hard before now.

Your mom's dying.

ii.

Anna and Keith were adopted. You were five at the time, and you didn't understand why your parents wanted more than you. For five years they had been your parents, yours and yours alone. You had been the center of their lives, the center of their day, the center of their hearts. How could they possibly want any more than you?

But they did, and you can still remember when they came home with two babies, Anna Elizabeth and her twin brother Keith Larry. You stared at them, not understanding your mother when she told you how wonderful it will be to be a big sister. You didn't see anything particularly brilliant about it, and the babies weren't so very cute: they were small and squishy and they cried too much.

When you suggested your parents take them back to wherever it is babies come from, they laughed and you pouted and they assured you that you'd always be their baby, but that the family had grown now, and you had to accept it.

You did, eventually, and years later you understood why it took them so long to have more children: your birth was a risk, and they were too scared to try again, so scared, in fact, that in the end they didn't try again; they adopted, and you suppose that they could have done worse. Keith and Anna are pretty okay, you think.

When you're sixteen and they're eleven and your mother is dying, you realize for the first time what your father had meant the day he told you what a responsibility it was to be a big sister. Because Keith and Anna don't understand why Mom is in the hospital; they don't understand why Dad is crying for the first time in memory. You don't want to understand, either, but you think you do: the world is an unfair place.

You can't explain that to them, so you take them to ice cream and play video games with them and they're so happy to be cool enough to play with you that for an hour or so a day they forget how the world is crumbling down around them and you think that's about as much as anyone can expect of you.

iii.

Tree Hill was always like a movie set to you. It was where you went on Christmas and Thanksgiving and sometimes during Spring Break. It was the picture perfect family vacation, and it contained picture perfect families that ought to be on postcards. When you arrive in Tree Hill at the start of summer, you see your extended family as you've always known them.

There's Aunt Brooke and Uncle Julian, always bickering and making out and bickering and making out like they can't decide whether they want to be an eighty-year-old couple or a seventeen-year-old one. They have two sons, both of whom look like models, and you hate them both, because they're so very much the epitome of jocks that you look at them and think of all the boys at school you despise.

Then there's Aunt Haley and Uncle Nathan, the ever-endearing example of a loving mom and dad, the perfect family with four children, two boys who have dark hair, boyish grins, and sharp basketball skills, and two girls who have light brown hair, sweet, innocent eyes and a love of all things school. You think maybe your cousins weren't born but rather manufactured, and you suspect that Aunt Haley has a secret lab in the back of her house that contains the chemicals she used to clone her husband and herself for her perfect little angels.

Of course, that summer is the first time you've spent any extended period of time in Tree Hill and therefore with your aunts and uncles and cousins. Tree Hill doesn't represent vacation anymore, and for the first time you see your relatives as less than perfect: Uncle Nathan fights with his son Bobby more often than any father and son you've ever known; Aunt Brooke desperately wants a daughter, and she looks at you and your mom like she wishes she could redo her life.

Nobody gets whatever they really want in life, you think, and it annoys you, because you realize that maybe it would be better to have gone on thinking of Tree Hill and the people within it as little dolls who knew no pain or suffering, and you hate that everything has changed. You hate that you see all the cracks and you hate that your mom is sick and you hate that you still can't stop hating everything.

iv.

Anna is a dancer who has a talent for writing music and singing it too, and Keith is a basketball champion true to the Scott family legacy. You've never understood how Anna and Keith could be so like your parents when they're adopted. But at eleven years old they are, and it just doesn't make any sense.

Because you're not adopted and you're nothing like your parents. You can't draw to save your life; music is only music to you. You have the grace of a club-footed duck and you can't even be a cheerleader, which isn't even a real sport to start with. The only connection you can see is your blonde hair and green eyes and penchant for reading books with a fury.

Apparently that's good enough for your mom, though, because for as long as you can remember, seeing you read has always made your mom smile. You would sit curled up on the couch while she ironed and you'd look up from Dickens to see her eyes warm as they watched you. You would lay on the grass in the front yard and as she passed to fetch the mail, you'd see the slight change in her expression, the slight upturn of her lips, and you'd wonder how seeing you read Pride and Prejudice could really mean all that much to her.

But it does for some reason; you think it must have to do with your father being an author, but you've never really thought of your love of reading as something that made you like him. Your mom evidently does, and when you visit her in the hospital and you walk in on the doctors telling her the options for women with brain cancer, you go straight home, pick up the first book you find, and go right back to the hospital.

You sit on the chair beside her bed, pull your legs under you, and you start to read, waiting. From the corner of your eye, you see her watching you. You see her slowly start to smile, the expression reaching her eyes for the first time since she became sick, and you feel proud of how simply you can make her happy.

You start spending every afternoon reading beside her bed. You don't talk with her, not really. You've never been able to talk with her for very long. What does a teenager talk about with her mother? That hasn't changed now that's she's sick. It's only gotten worse. But you don't need to talk. You sit there and you read and she smiles and you don't hate it.

v.

You always liked Jamie. He's the kind of cool cousin that's in movies. He's in college now, the star of the Duke basketball team, but he's home for the summer, and you can't help it: you ask him what it's like to live out the dreams his parents had dreamed for him.

He tells you that they might have dreamed it, sure, but he dreamed it, too, and that's what matters. He seems so wise, then, grinning at you like he knows and understands everything, and you know that you adore him the way everybody does.

Everybody does adore Jamie: his parents, your parents, even Aunt Brooke and Uncle Julian. You know that he was born when they were all young and in a way they all feel as if they had a part in raising him. You realize they probably look at him and see their youth and the beginning of parenthood and being grown-up and you wonder what it would be like to be Jamie and if he ever gets tired of being so important to so many people.

You resolve to be more like Jamie.

You start with Aunt Brooke; she's always tried to be close to you. She always wanted to talk to you on the phone when you were little, to play with you whenever you were in Tree Hill, to spoil you and make you think of her as your favorite aunt. She still hasn't given up, so when you stop by her store and ask if maybe she wants to hang out, she jumps at the chance.

She takes you out shopping but you hate shopping; you hate trying clothing on and standing around in stores. But it doesn't seem to bother her that you're bothered. She tells you that you're just like your mother and drags you back to the store to give you a make-over.

You look at yourself in the mirror when she's done. Your flat blonde hair has been curled, and the curls shorten it so that it barely passes your ears. You're wearing green eyeshadow; you've only ever worn brown, and not very often. She's put you in a sundress with large lilies on it and a light green cardigan, but you don't wear dresses; they pinch what little cleavage you have uncomfortably and you think them silly in general.

She fawns over how gorgeous you look, and when your dad stops by a few minutes later he says you look amazing, too, but all you can think about doing is getting out of the store, away from your crazy Aunt Brooke and into the t-shirts and jeans you so much prefer.

That night, you lie on the couch in sweatpants and a blue wife-beater, your hair in a messy ponytail and a bag of goldfish resting on your stomach as you watch television. When you notice your dad watching you and you turn to glare at him, he only smiles, and he tells you that he's glad to see you look like you again.

He calls you baby and kisses your forehead, the smell of his aftershave familiar.

You think maybe all the fighting you've been doing with your dad lately isn't worth it.

vi.

Your mom goes into surgery on a Thursday night. They're going to try and remove the tumor. It's a make or break situation, and you can taste the fear in your mouth like old cheese. Anna and Keith talk with your mom first and then leave the hospital with Aunt Haley and Uncle Nathan. Your dad talks to her next, and you talk to her last, five minutes before the surgery is scheduled.

The two of you are quiet at first, and you realize that she could die. She could die. You suddenly start to cry, because why didn't you realize this sooner? You knew it, of course, but you didn't really know it. You wouldn't let yourself know it. She reaches for you and wraps her arms around you and shushes you and you feel like you're a little kid again and you know that you shouldn't have stopped yourself from missing this so much as you grew older.

She whispers that she loves you and you repeat the words through your tears. The last thing she tells you is to take care of your dad, and the words echo in your head as they wheel her away, because she spoke them like they were words to live and die by. She spoke them like they were the words by which she had lived and would now die; she was telling you to take care of your dad because she wouldn't be around to take care of him any more.

You sob outright as she disappears down the hall, and its Aunt Brooke who wraps her arms around you, then, and she's sobbing, too, and you cry together, trembling and rocking in the worn hospital chairs. She doesn't tell you its going to be okay; she doesn't try and change the subject. She holds you and cries and she's there and she's warm and welcoming and you begin to comprehend for the first time why your mother was always so close with Brooke Davis.

The surgery goes well, the doctors tell your father. Most of the tumor was removed.

But when your mother wakes up four days later, she's not your mother anymore.

vii.

When you were eight, you broke your arm falling out of a tree.

Its such a cliche that you almost feel silly telling people. But you secretly love remembering that time, because your parents spoiled you rotten in the weeks in took you to recover. They bought whatever food you wanted at the grocery store. They let you watch TV all day long and eat ice cream out of the carton. Your mom drew pictures that you described to her and your father started to write a story that you had devised, and you felt like a queen with her two most adoring subjects.

When school starts up in Tree Hill, you're a celebrity. You're Lucas and Peyton Scott's child; you're Mrs. Scott's niece; you're the new girl that everybody knows about by the time homeroom ends. You try and ignore it and when your English teacher — and aunt — assigns an essay on a childhood memory, you focus on collecting your thoughts for that essay.

You decide to write about breaking your arm, and you sit on your bed and use your dad's laptop. He would let you if you asked, but you don't have to ask because he hasn't touched it in weeks; he's barely been home in weeks. As you're writing you start remembering more than falling out of that tree.

You remember going to the circus with your dad and sitting on his shoulders. You remember Parents' Day at your elementary school and how when all the mothers were asked to write a word describing their child on a card to post on the wall, your mom wrote mine. You remember when you found out that the boy you'd been in love with for all of sixth and seven grade was dating Stacy, the most beautiful red-head on Earth, and you'd cried until it hurt and your mother had stayed up all night watching movies like Pretty in Pink with you and talking about how stupid girls like Stacy were.

You remember how it hadn't only been those weeks after breaking your arm that your parents treated you like a queen. They've always treated you like a queen. And somehow, in becoming a teenager, you forgot how wonderful they were and are, you forgot that they didn't care if you weren't a cheerleader, if you had only a handful of friends and they were all as nerdy as you, if your only dream was to figure out a dream. You forgot how much you loved them.

You finish the essay and turn it in and ignore the stares of the Tree Hill high school students, because you've finally remembered.

You only hope its not too late.

viii.

Your mom is bald now; they shaved off all her hair for the surgery. She has a nasty scar on her bare head where they cut her open, and you can't look at it. She doesn't remember you; at least, you don't think she does. She doesn't talk. Her stare is vacant, and the doctors say her memory has been severely affected, as is often the case in these situations. You think it'd be more accurate to say she's simply brain dead.

They start her in on chemotherapy in hopes of fully destroying the cancerous cells that remain. Your dad decides it would be best if Anna and Keith don't see your mother too much; they can't handle it, he says. They end up going to live with Aunt Haley and Uncle Nathan, because your dad doesn't have the time for them anymore. He doesn't have the time for you, either, but you refuse to leave him.

You sit and read next to your mother, but she doesn't smile anymore. She doesn't seem to care at all that you're there. It becomes the worst part of your day, but you go every day after school anyway, because you can't think of anything else to do.

ix.

One night you leave the hospital particularly late and when you arrive home your dad isn't there. You know he's not at the hospital. He doesn't pick up his cell phone. You call Aunt Haley. He's not there either. Where else would he be? You call Aunt Brooke. She picks you up ten minutes later and the two of you begin searching for him.

You find him at a bar. You don't ask why Aunt Brooke knows to look for him there. He's past drunk when you find him, and you've never seen him like that. Your aunt Brooke takes over. She takes the beer out of his hand and splashes it in his face. She begins to lecture him, dragging him out of the bar. She looks so much like your mother at that moment that you feel your heart break in the same instant you realize why its easy for Jamie to let Aunt Brooke think the world of him.

You want Aunt Brooke to think the world of you, too.

The days drag by slowly, your mother stuck in limbo, your father slowly falling apart, and your own world a world you don't recognize. You want life to go back to the way it was before. You were so young and immature and unburdened then, and you want that back. You want to hate the world again, because right now you're not angry, you're just . . . lost. You're sad and scared and lost and this isn't something you've ever been before.

Your mom told you to look after your dad but you don't know how.

When you go to the hospital and find Uncle Nathan sitting and talking to your unresponsive mother, you don't know how to respond. You never thought Uncle Nate and your mom were all that close. You find yourself talking to him as you haven't talked to anyone in a long time. He's doesn't put the pressure on you that everybody else does; he's never tried hard to be close to you, and its kind of like the theory of how easy it is to talk to a stranger.

He listens and nods and he doesn't tell you about all the stories he found on the internet of people who gained back full functioning skills after having brain cancer like his wife does. First its Aunt Brooke and now its Uncle Nathan, and you wish you'd been raised in Tree Hill so you could have known how amazing these people are all along.

You wish it didn't take losing your mother to gain everyone else.

And you can't begin to decide who you'll go to live with when your father finally loses it altogether.

x.

Something is different. You sit in your mother's hospital room reading Joy in the Morning and something is off. You realize what it is: she's watching you. Her green eyes, the same eyes you see every day in the mirror, are staring at you. The daze that you've become accustomed to associating with her is gone.

"Hey Mom," you say. "Are you okay?"

She reaches for you, and her bony hand lies on your arm strangely. She stares down at her hand, and her fingers seem to flex, and suddenly they clamp around your arm and she looks back up at your face. She's so bony now. The doctors say she hasn't been eating well. Her grip is tight on your arm, and you repeat your question, scooting closer to her. She squeezes harder, and you feel like she's telling you something, but you don't know what.

Ten minutes later the doctors are checking her vitals, your Aunt Haley is hovering around firing off question after question, and your dad has arrived on the scene. He runs to her, literally shoving aside a nurse, and falls to his knees beside the bed. He murmurs her name, his countenance desperate. He looks different now, too; some of the desolateness is gone from his face, replaced by sudden hope.

Her hands cup his face, he begins to cry and she starts to make sounds, strange, groggy sounds that are thick as they slip from her dry throat. She never does say anything, not that day. Not for a long time after. But tears streak her face too, and as you watch your parents, you see that there's no such thing as a perfect life, as a perfect child, a perfect couple or a perfect family. The world is an unfair place and the wrong people suffer all too much.

But even if your life isn't perfect, you'll take what you can get. It's an okay life, and you've never been happier recognizing that everything is going to be perfectly okay.

A/N: One Tree Hill was on sale at Target when I was there to pick up new towels a few days ago, and I couldn't help myself: I added to my collection and bought season three (I am now the proud owner of seasons one, three, and four!) I've naturally been re-watching the season, and something about the friendship (squee! I love the scene in the gym when Dan attacks Luke and Peyton tries to stop him) that Lucas and Peyton develop in the third season inspired me to write this (although it was much more Sawyer focused than anything else -- my brain draws bridges in strange ways). I wrote it all in one sitting and all mistakes are mine; feel free to point them out so I can fix them! Hopefully this was enjoyed :) Review and let me know what you thought!

The title was inspired by the song War Sweater by Wakey!Wakey!, a song that I listened to over and over again while writing this. It's great! It was actually in the season six finale.

Fic: Truth Be Told, part 10

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:28:06 GMT

Title: Truth Be Told
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: Veronica Mars
Rating: Teen (for later implications and such)
Summary: Marlie Echolls has as many doubts as any other sixteen-year-old girl. One thing she never doubted, however, was who her parents were. At least she didn't until a woman knocked on her grandfather's door and dropped the bombshell. Logan/Veronica; future fic.

"So Marlie's coming home?" he asked. It was about time. Without Marlie around, there was no one to watch baseball with or play chess with or do anything with. Ben wasn't much fun. And without Marlie around, they had to have the weird babysitter with the blue hair come, and she talked on the phone the whole time and didn't even want to do anything with them. When Marlie babysat she would do cool things like help him on his lego castle or bake some brownies to eat.

"Looks like it," his dad replied.

"Does that mean we get to go out to dinner tonight?" he questioned, grinning at the thought.

His father glanced away from the road to shoot him an amused look. "Why would that mean we're going out to dinner?"

"To celebrate and stuff!" he exclaimed. "That'd be cool, right, Benny?"

From the back of the car, his little brother agreed with an enthusiastic, "Yeah!"

His dad only chuckled, though. "Your mom is cooking a celebratory dinner."

"Mom's cooking?" he asked. "How's that a celebration? Mom cooks every night. It's no fun at all."

"Anytime you want to cook dinner, just say the word," his dad replied. Before Jason could think of a reply to that, his dad's cell phone went off, buzzing wildly against the car console. "Get that for me, will you?" his dad asked as he turned onto the highway towards home.

Jason loved answering the cell phone. His mom said he couldn't get one until he was thirteen, but he had already picked out which one he'd get. Marlie said there would be a cooler one by the time he was thirteen, but he didn't care. "Hello?" he asked.

"Jason?" Marlie asked breathlessly.

"Hey Marlie!"

"Is Dad there? Where's Dad? Put him on the phone!" Marlie demanded. Jason frowned.

"He's right here, but why? Is something wrong?"

"PUT HIM ON THE PHONE!"

She didn't have to be mean about it. "It's Marlie," Jason said, holding the phone out for his father to take. "She really needs to talk to you or something."

"Hey kid, what's the matter?" his dad asked. "Wait, hold on, slow down — what happened?"

Jason was curious. Was Marlie not going to come home anymore? What was so great about living with their grandma anyway? He was pretty sure it was their grandmother she was living with. She said the woman was her other mother, but Jason didn't really get it.

It would be cool to live with Grandpa Keith, sure, but Grandma Alicia was always cooking weird green stuff that was supposed to be extra healthy or something and it was so gross. Mom at least made stuff like mac n' cheese and burgers and spaghetti with really big meat balls.

"Did you get her to the hospital? . . . Okay, alright, just calm down; I'm on my way right now. Call your grandpa and grandma and your uncle Wallace. . . . No, thirty-four. Tell the doctor she's thirty-four weeks along. Okay. Yeah. It's gonna be okay. Call me if anything else happens, okay?" He hung up the phone.

"What's happening?" Jason asked. A moment later he grabbed the door to steady himself; his father had slammed suddenly on the accelerator, swerving off the highway and onto an exit. "Dad, what's happening? Is Marlie okay?"

"Marlie's fine," his dad replied, speeding down the ramp. "We're going to the hospital."

"The hospital?" Jason repeated. The only time he had been to the hospital was when he'd broken his arm at the carnival. It had been horrible. The whole place smelled funny and they made you sit through all those awkward x-rays and everybody stared at you and prodded you where it hurt. "Why are we going to the hospital? Did Marlie break her arm?"

"Marlie's fine, Jason," his dad insisted. He took a sharp turn and Jason felt his stomach go in the other direction. They were speeding back onto the highway again. The hospital must be in the other direction from the house. "Your mom is having the baby."

"Cool! Did you hear that Ben?"

"Yeah. I hope its a boy."

"It's a girl, Ben. Mom already told you that."

His dad didn't say anything.

Five minutes later the car was swinging into the hospital parking lot. His dad was in a hurry — probably wanted to be there when the baby was born; Katie Hudgins got to be there when her little brother was born and she said it was really cool — and the car went up on the curb, banging loudly and jarring Jason.

"Get out of the car," his dad said, already shoving his door open. The key was still in the ignition but his dad wrenched it out a moment later. Jason fumbled with his buckle. "Now!" his dad shouted. It finally came undone and he started out of the car. His dad never got this worked up.

Dad was now nearly dragging Ben out of the backseat, and before Jason knew what was happening, he was running to keep up with his dad as the man raced into the hospital. "DAD!" Marlie shouted, coming out of nowhere. She had been crying — she still was. Was the baby ugly or something? It was worse than that, wasn't it?

"What's wrong, Marlie?" Ben asked.

Marlie didn't spare him a glance. "They took her in to have a c-section," she told Dad, breathing heavily. "They were saying — I don't know, its like a placental, um, a placental abruption or something. They think. They don't know for sure. I don't know," she said, shaking her head wildly and looking as if the whole world were about to come crashing down. "There was all this blood and —"

"Blood?" Jason exclaimed. No one paid him any mind.

"Where are the doctors?" Dad asked Marlie.

"I don't —"

"Hey, YOU!" A tall, balding man with a bright green clipboard looked up when their dad shouted loudly. "Where's my wife? Veronica Echolls? What's happening? My daughter brought her in and —"

"Calm down, sir," the doctor replied. "You're the husband? Logan Echolls?"

'YES, I'm the husband! Who the hell do you think I am?!"

"Calm down, sir. I was here when they brought her in. She's in surgery right now."

"Jay, what's going on?" Ben asked, tugging on Jason's shirt.

"Mom — Mom's in surgery," Jason replied, not taking his eyes away from the scene. He didn't understand. Nobody said you had to have surgery to have a baby. He glanced back and forth between Marlie, his dad, and the doctor, but no one was about to explain anything.

"What's wrong with her? Is she gonna be okay? What about the baby?"

"Calm down, sir; you need to calm down. She —"

"I WILL NOT CALM DOWN! TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THEY'RE DOING TO MY WIFE!" Other people in the hospital were staring at them now, but neither Marlie nor Dad seemed to notice or care.

"She is in surgery," the doctor replied, not seeming very fazed by their dad's yelling. "We're not sure, but we suspect the abdominal pain and bleeding she experienced were due to a late-term placental abruption; it happens in about one percent of pregnancies —"

"What does that mean? Is she going to be okay?"

"The doctors are doing everything they can, Mr. Echolls —"

"They damn well better be or I'll sue this hospital into the ground!"

The doctor kept talking, their dad kept shouting, and Marlie kept crying. Jason had never been more confused. Something bad had happened to Mom. Was she going to be okay? She had to be okay. He thought suddenly of his friend Susan. She wasn't really his friend but she was pretty cool and when she was seven her mom had died and . . .

But Mom wasn't going to die . . . no way!

"LOGAN!"

Jason whirled around to see his grandpa and grandma running towards them.

"Mommy's in surgery, Grandpa!" Ben exclaimed, grabbing onto Grandma Alicia, who wrapped her arms around him.

"What's going on? What happened?"

"Veronica felt pain in her stomach and her — you know — started bleeding," Logan answered. "Marlie was with her and brought her in."

"Bleeding? I thought she only went into premature labor . . . bleeding is. . . ." Grandma Alicia looked worried; she was shaking her head, her eyes wide.

"They're doing a c-section," Dad answered, "and. . . ."

Jason stopped listening, his eyes locking on Marlie. She was crying so hard her face was contorted and she was rocking on her heels. "Marlie?" he asked, going closer to her. "What's going on? What happened to Mom?" Marlie clutched her mouth with her hand.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON'T KNOW? THIS IS MY DAUGHTER WE'RE TALKING ABOUT!" Grandpa shouted.

"Sir, Mr. —"

"Sweetie," Grandma Alicia said, standing in front of Jason and blocking his view of his dad and grandpa chewing out the doctor. "Why don't you come with me to the cafeteria? We'll get something to snack on, okay? Come on. I'll get you anything you want."

"What's happening to my mom?" Jason demanded. "She's going to be okay, right?"

Grandma hesitated. "Right?" he repeated.

"Right," she said, giving a tight smile. "Let's get something to eat and leave the doctors to Dad and Grandpa, okay? Doctors are boring anyway, right? And I bet they have pudding in the cafeteria. . . ." Grandma Alicia began herding them away.

The last view Jason got of his family was his grandpa waving his hands about and yelling at the doctor, who had called over a nurse, and Marlie standing curled against their dad, his arm over her shoulder. Everything was going to be okay. Mom would get out of surgery and have a really cool scar and it'd all be okay.

"Grandma?" Ben began. "Is Mommy —?"

"Mommy's just fine," Grandma Alicia assured. "We'll even get her some pudding in the cafeteria. What flavor do you think she'll want?"

"Chocolate," Ben guessed. Grandma Alicia smiled.

"We'll get her chocolate, then. That's my favorite flavor, too. What flavor do you like?"

It would be okay. It would.

"You're up early," Mrs. Navarro said. She was sitting on the couch folding laundry.

"Yeah, couldn't sleep," he replied, slipping onto a stool at the kitchen counter. "You're here pretty early. When you said you liked working in the mornings I didn't realize you meant the crack of dawn."

She only smiled. When they'd moved to LA he hadn't sold the beach house; he was so attached to his first real home that he couldn't let it go. It was a good thing, too, because they were living in it once more until they found a more permanent place — and if Veronica got her way they would be finding a more permanent place outside of Neptune.

It was weird to be back in the little house, though; so much had changed since they'd lived there.

"You want to talk about it?" she asked kindly. He glanced over at her and she must have seen something in his expression. "I'm happy you're back, but you don't seem happy to be back," she told him. "What's the matter?" She put aside her laundry. She had gone on working for Keith after Logan and Veronica left; she only stopped by his house once a week and Keith paid her a little something, just enough that she didn't have to get another job. She was really too old to have any job, but there was only so much they could do about that.

Now that Logan and Veronica had moved back into town with Marlie in tow and another baby soon to come, Mrs. Navarro had volunteered to help Veronica around the house for free. Logan paid her for it despite her protests, but it was kind of nice thinking of the little old lady growing so fond of them.

"It's not that," he sighed. "It's . . . the baby."

She frowned. "Is everything okay with the baby? Veronica is healthy, yes?"

"Yeah, of course, that's fine, it's just . . . she's having a boy, did you know that?"

"I know, a sweet little chico. Marlie told me. She's excited to be a big sister." Mrs. Navarro smiled as she spoke of Marlie. She had always liked the little girl and Logan was pretty sure the older woman had first begun to like him and Veronica because she was impressed by their decision to raise Marlie.

He smiled. "It's all she talks about any more." He turned away, deciding to have a glass of water. Maybe that would make him feel better.

"But what's making you upset? You don't want a boy?"

"No, I want a boy," he said, using the tap to fill the glass before taking a sip. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it." She didn't say anything for a moment and he thought perhaps she had dropped the subject. But she hadn't.

"You'll be a good father," she said slowly. "Not like him."

He looked over at her to find that she was staring intently at him. How did she know he was thinking about . . . that? And how did she . . . ? "How . . . how do you know?" He almost felt ashamed asking it, but it was Mrs. Navarro. She had seen a hell of a lot worse than doubt from him before.

"I see you with Marlie. You're a good father. Better than my sons ever were. You will treat your son well. I know it." She gave him an encouraging smile, not breaking her steady gaze. Logan didn't know much about Mrs. Navarro's sons. He knew that Weevil was the son of one of her daughters, but that was about all he knew. He tried to imagine what it would be like to raise Marlie's kid because she didn't care enough. He couldn't fathom it. He thought suddenly of Lianne. He hadn't thought about her in a long time.

But it wasn't about Marlie, because Marlie . . . well, honestly. . . .

"But Marlie's . . . Marlie's a girl," he said, feeling as if he were admitting to some sort of sin by even alluding to it. "He never . . ." he paused. A part of him knew he shouldn't say anything. A part of him was desperate to nonetheless.

"He never touched Trina."

There. He'd said it. If only Veronica could have gotten pregnant with a girl. He could take care of a little girl; he knew it. He was doing an okay job with Marlie, wasn't he? But a boy . . . and how could he even say anything to Keith or Veronica? They would tell him it wasn't the same, that he wasn't like Aaron, but how would they know? They didn't understand. . . .

Mrs. Navarro stood up and came towards him, taking his hands in hers. "You are a good man, Logan Echolls. I knew the maids who worked for your parents got paid better than anyone else but I didn't know why until I went to work for him. He was a bad man, Logan. But you are not him. You might have become him. When you were young I thought you would. But you did not. You have not. You are a good man. Your son is lucky to have you."

"You really believe that?"

"I know it," she assured, squeezing his hand. "Veronica knows it. Marlie knows it. Keith knows it. You should know it, too. You are like Eli. You are a good man." She smiled again and finally released his hands, returning to the couch and the laundry.

"I've raised many children," she told him, starting to fold a shirt. "My children and my children's children. It is not easy. But you do a good job. Marlie is lucky she got you. Her real mama would not have taken good care of her. I know. Not good care at all. But you do. You give her all the love she needs. Just like you will for your son. You and Veronica are good parents. You have grown into good people." She gave him another smile and began to hum softly to herself.

Logan didn't know what to say. That was probably one of the longest conversations he had ever had with her, despite the fact that she had worked for his parents for years and had then worked for himself and for Keith. He took one last sip of water and then started back to the bedroom. He glanced over his shoulder before he disappeared into the dark room.

"Thanks," he said.

She smiled. "De nado."

Veronica was still sound asleep in bed. It was only seven in the morning, after all. Still, she was generally an early riser. She would probably be up soon. He crawled into bed beside her, slowly pulling back the sheets to reveal her large stomach. She was eight months pregnant now, and it still amazed him. He hoped it all went okay.

Wallace had gotten him a book about 100 things that could go wrong with a pregnancy, and things had been pretty scary for a while. It had come to a climax when a six months pregnant Veronica threatened to clobber him to death with an oven pan if he didn't give it a rest. Things were better now. She was healthy and in a month the baby would be born healthy and then. . . .

Well, then pigs would fly, because Logan Echolls would be a member of a standard family, complete with son and daughter, a new puppy, a cute little house and a happy marriage. Who knew it would ever happen? Even Mrs. Navarro had admitted she hadn't seen it coming.

"You're a good man," she'd told him. He let the words play over in his mind again and again. He ran his hand over Veronica's stomach. Was the baby sleeping too?

"I'll never hurt you," he whispered to her stomach, pressing a kiss to the stretched skin.

"Good," Veronica murmured sleepily back. "He's thrilled to hear it. Stop ogling me." Logan only smiled, pulling the covers back up and closing his eyes. It would be okay. It would.

"I don't drink coffee."

"That's why I got you Hot Chocolate." She drew her eyes away from their important task of staring at the wall and accepted the cafeteria cup he held out to her. He smiled but she couldn't return the favor.

"Thanks," she muttered. He sat down beside her, another cup in his own hands.

"I must say: Hospital coffee leaves something to be desired. That's not news, though, is it?" She didn't bother replying. "How are you doing?" he asked softly.

"Okay," she replied. "I'll be better when this is all over and my mom's not about to die."

"She's not going to die," he told her.

"You don't know that, and I'm not ten, so you can't convince me you do." He didn't say anything. That was something nice about him: sometimes he knew when not to say something. She sipped the Hot Chocolate. It was luke warm. That was probably better, wasn't it? She couldn't exactly drink it if it was scalding.

She hadn't eaten anything since lunch. "We're going Italian tonight."

"Do you know what caused it?" she asked suddenly, looking over at her grandfather.

"What?" he asked, looking startled.

"What caused her to have a, you know, torn placenta or whatever?" she asked. She had to know.

He started to shake his head. "Honey, I don't —"

"Was it because of stress? Can stress do that to a pregnant woman? I mean, I know stress is bad for them and stuff but . . . did I — did I do this? Because I've been so mean to her lately, and even when she was there for me and I knew, I knew that she was my mom, I was still yelling at her because of those stupid letters."

"Marlie," he said softly, "you did not cause this. Your mom knows you love her. I'm sure that this happened because . . . it happened. She's a tiny girl who's had multiple babies. Those aren't the best odds."

"But the stress couldn't have helped." He didn't seem to have a response, but she let him wrap an arm around her shoulder and press a kiss to the crown of her head.

"It's gonna be okay, kid. Just hold in there."

A few minutes later her grandma Alicia arrived back at the hospital and she ushered Grandpa Keith over to her, leaving Marlie by herself on the worn, hospital chairs. Grandma had taken Jason and Ben home to get some rest, and apparently she had found someone else to babysit them. She talked to Keith in a hushed voice. Marlie didn't care.

She looked down at the frayed edge of her seat. How many people had sat in this chair? How many people who sat in this chair finally stood from it only to learn from some doctor that someone they loved was dead? Wives, husbands, children, sisters, brothers, aunts, grandpas, mothers.

She wasn't going to be one of those people. As far as she could tell, the doctors were more worried about the baby. But if her mom lived and the baby died . . . that would still be her fault, too. And her parents would be devastated. Wasn't that the worse thing that could happen to a parent, losing a child?

Marlie glanced at her grandparents for a moment only to do a double-take. Clutched in her grandma's hands were, unmistakably, the letters. How had she gotten them? She must have found them at the house. Marlie hadn't exactly been paying much attention to them when she was hysterically crying and trying to get her pregnant mother to the hospital.

Suddenly Grandma Alicia and Grandpa Keith were both looking at her. As one, they came towards her. She didn't want to talk about it. She knew one of them must have been sending the letters back. She didn't want to hear their excuses.

"Honey, are these what you were fighting with your mom about?" her grandpa asked as they sat on either side of her. He was holding the letters out to her. She glared at the envelops as if they were to be blamed — cursed things.

"Yeah," she murmured.

"Sweetheart, I don't know what Lianne told you," Grandpa began. "But none of us have ever seen this letters. I think — we think — that maybe —"

"I don't care," she replied.

"Marlie —"

"I don't care. Okay? I just don't — I don't want to deal with it. My mom's in surgery. Either she's gonna die or my little sister's gonna die or . . . and even if they live I . . . and I just . . . I don't care about the stupid letters. It doesn't matter."

"Okay," Grandma Alicia murmured, running a hand over Marlie's hair and tucking a loose lock behind her ear. It was silent then. Marlie took another sip of her drink. It had gotten even cooler and was now a little gross. She wasn't thirsty anyway.

The next thing Marlie knew, she was being shaken awake. She wasn't sure when she had fallen asleep or even how — how could she possibly sleep when this was happening? But she had, and she blinked rapidly to clear away the grogginess. Pain shot through her neck and she realized she'd fallen asleep leaning on Grandma Alicia, who appeared to have left the conscious world, too.

Her grandpa was squatting in front of her. "Hey? Sleep good?"

"Fine," she said. "What — what's going on? Did something happen?" Alarm swam through her. Then he smiled and it looked genuine.

"Everything's fine," he assured. "Come with me. Grandma will be fine." She took his hand and let him lead her down the hall. Where was he taking her? To see her mom? How much time had passed?

He lead her into a room in the maternity ward, and there was her dad, his hands pressed to a clear box. She thought suddenly of all the doctor shows she'd seen on TV. "How's she doing?" Grandpa asked. Dad glanced back at them for a moment.

"She's doing okay. They got all the blood out."

Not sure what was going on, Marlie approached her dad and saw the occupant of the little plastic box: a tiny baby, small and pinkish with her eyes squeezed shut. Her sister. But what was she doing in a box? And there were . . . there were cords twisting all around her and in her. What had happened?

"Dad . . . ?" she asked as she stood beside him.

"She swallowed some blood so they had to pump her stomach. It's okay, though. They're giving her oxygen and have her hooked to an IV. They said it'll only be for a few days at most. She's gonna be okay." He finally looked away from the baby to muster a smile for her. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to his side. "How are you doing? Get some sleep?"

"A little bit," she answered. His hand ran assuredly up and down her back. She looked at her little sister, born fighting. Her mother would be proud. "Have you thought of a name yet?" she asked.

"Not yet," her dad answered. "We didn't ever really . . . come to a consensus or anything. Unless we go with Tangerine."

"Tangerine?" Marlie repeated. "You're not serious, right?"

He glanced at her, a small, familiar smirk on his face. "And if I am?"

"Then I — I use whatever big sister vetoing powers I have and veto that. God, Dad." He only chuckled. It was quiet for a minute. She had to ask. She had to know. "How, ah, how's Mom? Is she — okay? Or —"

"Your mother's going to be just fine." Marlie and her dad both looked back to see the doctor who stood in the doorway smiling at them. She was a young, blonde woman with a pretty face; she looked smart and competent, the sort of doctor whose picture hospitals put in advertisements. "The surgery went very well. She's a healthy woman, your mother."

"So she's gonna be fine?" her dad asked.

"Yes, sir," the doctor answered, nodding her head. "The surgery went very well. She's sleeping now but she'll wake. It may be a little while; her body needs to rest. But she should be fine." Marlie felt relief flood her. It was all going to work out.

"You know," Marlie told the doctor, "I never really liked doctors, but I totally love you now."

The woman grinned. "Good to know. Now, Mr. Echolls, if you could come with me, I need you to sign a few things. . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, sure," he said, and he left with the woman. Marlie looked over at her grandpa, who was smiling widely now.

"I knew she would pull through," he said. "She's too stubborn not to."

"So, that's it?" Marlie asked. "It's all over?"

"Looks like it," Grandpa replied, coming towards her. "It was a placental abruption, as they thought, but they got her into surgery right away and were able to get the baby out without a problem. She swallowed a little blood, like your father said, but she's going to be fine, too." He let out a soft chuckle, glancing down at his tiny granddaughter, and Marlie could see tears gleaming in his eyes.

She glanced at her sister. All the time that she had been fighting with her parents, all the time she'd been living with Lianne, all the time she had thought her world was coming apart, this little girl was safely inside her mother. She thought suddenly of the movie Look Who's Talking. If babies were really like that, could really think and understand what was going on around them, what did her little sister think of her, the girl who was so mean to the woman who served so kindly as a warm, squishy incubator?

"I'll make it up to you and to her," Marlie whispered, touching the glass as if to touch her sister, just as her father had been doing earlier.

She visited her sleeping mother, whispering words to the pale, small woman she loved so much, but her grandpa had finally prodded her into going home with him and grandma. Her father stayed at the hospital, telling them he would follow in a few hours. On the car ride home Marlie thought of her unnamed little sister, of her mother who lay sleeping in the hospital, smelling not like herself but instead like the sterile smell of hospitals.

But it would all be okay. Still, Marlie couldn't sleep. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about it all, about Lianne and her mother and the letters and her father and her grandparents and her sister and everything.

When she heard the front door opening downstairs, she slipped from her bed, hoping it would be who she thought it was. She was right: her father was popping open a beer when she came downstairs. The kitchen clock said it was past four in the morning. "Is everything still okay?" she asked.

He glanced over at her. "Everything's still fine," he assured. He looked tired but he gave her a small smile. "You can't sleep?" She shook her head. "I don't think I could either. Want something to drink?"

"Beer?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

"I was going to suggest orange juice."

She only smiled. 'I'll get it." He sat down at the table and it was silent as she poured herself the juice, glancing back at him to see him staring off into space as he drank his beer. It was light beer, something her mother had begun insisting he drink a few years ago, along with adding salads to his dinner. "Don't think I haven't noticed what might be a gut starting to form," her mother told him. It occurred to Marlie suddenly that her dad put up with a lot from her mom and still loved her so much.

She wanted someone like that someday, to put up with her that way, to love her that way.

"How'd your talk with Lianne go?" he asked her at last.

"Okay. She showed me a box of stuff, pictures and a baby blanket. I think she really does love me."

"Nobody ever doubted that. Okay, well, maybe we did, but it's not like we're mad that she does." He smiled a little, as though to lighten the mood. She didn't need it lightened.

"But I'm coming home," she told him, not letting her gaze waver and making sure her voice held all the finality her statement containted. She meant it. And she was happy to see the slight curve of a smile on her father's face as he took another swallow of beer. When he put the beer back down, though, he looked as if he were preparing himself for something.

"Did she . . . did she tell you about your father?" he asked.

"She told me he was her college sweetheart Craig," Marlie answered. "She said that he . . . he wasn't exactly the greatest guy in the world."

He sighed. "There's kind of more to the story. I don't know if she was telling the truth when she talked to me — I don't know why she would lie — but —"

"It doesn't matter," she cut him off. "I don't need to know. If he doesn't want to be a part of my life or can't or whatever it doesn't matter. I have Grandpa and Uncle Wallace and Uncle Dick and I . . . I have you. That's the best part. I've always had you." She smiled.

"You want to know a secret?" he asked, grinning a little. She nodded. "When you were really little and I would take care of you, I tried to teach you to call me Dad. I never told anybody. They were all so shocked when it worked."

"Really?" she laughed.

"Yeah," he said. "I was sneaky like that."

"Oh, I'm sure." They smiled at each other for a moment, but she couldn't help asking, "Why did you . . . why did you want me to call you Dad? Why were you willing to raise me and stuff?"

"It's complicated," he answered. "For starters, I loved your mom . . . a lot. For a while there she was really the only family I had. And I — I would look at you and think about how my mom dove off a bridge instead of sticking by me and I . . . I felt like maybe I could make up for how bad my family was by being good to you. And . . . I never thought I would have kids. I thought I would just screw 'em up if I did. But for a wealthy, privileged kid who never went by the rules and never wanted kids, I got attached to little baby you pretty damn fast."

He smiled. "That sort of the stuff . . . it's not what you plan. Most of life isn't. But if you can take the hits, take the bad stuff in stride, then the good stuff will be all the better. You'll be able to appreciate it and . . . and realize it's good when other people wouldn't."

"That's very . . . poetic," she said slowly.

"You say that as if I'm not a poetic person."

She grinned. "Oh, no, Dad, you're an amazing poet, really." She looked down at her orange juice. "You know what I was thinking about in the hospital?" she asked. He looked at her curiously, waiting for her to go on. "I think . . . and get ready, 'cause this is real poetic — I think the best things in life are also the worst."

"That is very poetic," he replied.

"No, I mean think about it. Like, take food, for example. The best food in the world is also really unhealthy. Popcorn with melted chocolate on top is so good but its also a gazzilion calories. And also . . . family. Families are . . ."

"Messy?" he suggested.

"Yeah. Families are messy. But they're pretty cool, too."

He laughed a little. "Cool, huh?"

"Is there a problem with that?"

"No, no, of course not."

She finished the rest of her orange juice. "I think I'm going to try and get some more sleep," she told him, setting the glass on the counter. "As soon as I wake up, though, we're going to see Mom."

He nodded. "Before you go to bed, though," he said, turning towards her. "Your grandpa told me about the letters. Do you want to, ah, talk about them or something?"

"It's okay. I'll want to eventually, I guess, but . . . it was probably Grandma Keith or Grandma Alicia who sent them back, right? Probably doing it in my best interest or something. And I guess it was, but still. . . ."

"Actually, I was talking with your grandpa and he claims it wasn't them."

"Then who was it?"

He sighed. "Do you remember your nanny very well?"

She frowned. "I had a nanny?"

"Sort of," he answered hesitantly. "She was also a kind of maid."

"A maid?" Marlie repeated in disbelief. "Mom allowed you to employ a maid? Does Uncle Dick know about this? Because he would definitely rip Mom a new one if he did."

"He knew. You really don't remember her at all?" She thought back. She did remember someone, an older woman who smelled the way you imagined little old ladies were supposed to smell. Not really a bad smell, just a little old lady smell. She used to sing to her in Spanish, Marlie thought.

"I sort of remember," she said. "She was . . . she was related to us somehow, right?"

"She was Weevil's grandmother, if that's what you mean. You used to call her Nana."

She did remember. She couldn't believe she had forgotten her. "Where is she now?" The last time she'd seen her was probably right after Jason was born and before they'd moved to Virginia.

"She died a little while ago," her father said. "Years ago, actually, when you were nine or ten. Her name was Lettie Navarro."

"Okay. But what — what does that have to do with anything?" He didn't say anything at first and it occurred to her suddenly what he was implying. "Wait, you think Nana, my old sort of nanny and sort of maid, sent the letters back? Why would she care?"

"I don't think that; your grandpa does — though I guess it makes sense. Mrs. Navarro was nearly living with your grandpa and your mom when you were really little, and she was still around for a while after you were born. Keith said that even when she was only doing a few chores for him, she always got the mail, but he never really thought much on it. If Lianne was sending the letters to Keith. . . ."

"But that still doesn't make sense," Marlie argued, repeating, "Why would she care?"

"Mrs. Navarro raised Weevil and a lot of his cousins because her own children were incapable. I think she knew a little something about people other than the parents raising kids. We were all pretty sure that you were better off with us — I think that's why your grandpa only tried so much to find Lianne — but while we were pretty sure, Mrs. Navarro was positive."

"That seems so . . . strange to me." He nodded.

"We don't know for sure," he said, "but I think if your grandpa or grandma had done it, they'd admit to it, and if it's not them, who else would it be but her?" Marlie had to admit it made sense.

"I wish I could talk to her," Marlie said softly. "But it doesn't . . . I don't think it really makes a difference. Sending letters doesn't make her any better of a person, right? And besides . . . Nana, Mrs. Navarro, whoever, was right. I am better off with you and Mom. As soon as I get the chance, I'm packing my stuff up and bringing it home. Uncle Wallace was here earlier looking after Jason and Ben and he said he'd help me."

Her dad nodded. "You know that if you want to stay with Lianne, you — you can." He looked as if it pained him to say it, but he said it nonetheless. "Hopefully we'll still see you a lot, but if it's important to you to get to know her, you can live with her. . . . And you'll always have a home here no matter what."

"I know," she replied, coming closer to him. "I know that you'd let me live with her and that you'd always welcome me back. And that's . . . that's why I belong here." She smiled at him, and he ran his knuckles across her check.

"When the monsters under the bed are big and hairy, who do you call?" he asked her. It had been so long since they'd played this game, even though she'd loved it when she was little. She wasn't little any more, but she still loved him.

"My daddy," she answered.

"When the bullies at school are big and bag, who do you call?" he asked.

"My daddy," she repeated.

"When Mrs. Kemp's dog is slobbering all over you, who do you call?" he asked.

She laughed, remembering the large black dog that should have come with a warning on his collar. "My daddy," she told him.

"That's my girl."

"Ah, my first born."

Marlie smiled at the sight of her mother, propped up against fifty pillows and wide awake. The color had returned to her cheeks. She really was okay. "Hey Mom," she greeted. Her father had been by the hospital while Marlie was still asleep and when he came home he told her she could go on in and see her mom if she wanted.

Marlie suspected he wanted to give her a chance to talk with her mom by herself.

"Are you just going to stand there and stare at me?" Veronica asked.

"Does that bother you?"

"Come here," Veronica demanded, not answering her question. "You dad told me about the letters and how you claim it's all okay. Is it . . . all okay?" She could sense the slight wariness behind her mother's words, as if Veronica expected Marlie to start yelling at her again. Guilt flooded her.

"It is. I talked to Lianne on the phone earlier," Marlie told her. "I still want to get to know her, but she'll . . . she'll never be my mom. I already have one."

Veronica grinned. "If I knew all it took to get that out of you was a little blood, I would have been sure to do something about that earlier," she said.

"Okay, it is way too soon for you to be joking about that," Marlie said, sitting down on the edge of her mother's bed.

"Did you see the baby? They brought her in earlier. They said she's really strong and if she keeps it up, she'll be off the oxygen and IV by this time tomorrow. Of course any child of mine would only need a machine to stay alive for so long. The women in this family are stronger than that." Her mother seemed almost proud of her newborn, and Marlie found that rather amusing.

"I know. She's not really very cute, though," Marlie teased. "I give her a 7.5 out of 10."

"Hey! She had a hard entrance into this world. Be nice." Her mom was smiling and she looked so happy, much happier than she had seemed in a long time.

"Mom, can I say something?"

"What happens if I say no?"

"Mom, please. Be serious."

It looked as if her mom were trying hard not to smile. But Marlie had to get this out; she had to, and her mom would just have to hold in her strange, bubbly mood for a moment. "Okay. Go on."

"I love you. And I have a feeling I'm going to be really mean to you again. I'm not the world's greatest kid. But I do love you. And I want you to know that, so the next time I yell at you, you know and . . . and yeah. That's it. I love you."

Her mom reached out to her, and the next thing Marlie knew she was lying curled up beside her Mom, her head on her mother's should and her mother's hand running over her hair. "I love you, too, Marlie. You might not be the world's greatest kid, but you are top ten, at least." Marlie smiled. Her mother smelled like her mother again.

"Good to know." She paused. "And if you get pregnant again, I swear I won't do anything to complicate the pregnancy." Her mother snorted. "What? I won't!"

"No," her mom replied, "you definitely won't because I am not getting pregnant again. Much as I love all my children, none of you were exactly planned and I think four is plenty." A few months ago Marlie would have found some reason to resent that statement. It didn't sound bad at all, now, though.

"So how do you know you won't have another unplanned one?" Marlie questioned, imagining what her mother would do if she got pregnant again. It would be a lucky kid, though. Anyone who had Veronica Echolls for a mom was lucky. Jason and Ben were lucky. The little pink bundle in a glass box was lucky. Marlie was lucky. There was no way to deny that. If there was such a thing as fate, and it honestly thought her mom wasn't meant to be a mother, fate sure got a kick in the ass from Veronica Echolls.

"Because I just spoke to some very nice doctors," her mother replied. "And he doesn't know it yet, but someone is getting a vasectomy this afternoon."

It was good to be Marlie Echolls again.

Fin.

A/N: That's it! That's the end. I could have dragged it out a little longer but I think it was best ending like this. Please review! While I've written VM before this was the first VM story I really poured myself into -- it's kind of taken over my life, as of late -- and I'd love to know what everything thinks of the story as a whole :) And thanks to all who have reviewed before now!

Fic: Truth Be Told, part 9

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:30:38 GMT

She slowly put the phone down. Something must have happened at the party. Right? But why wouldn't Marlene come home? A cynical voice in her head told her that Marlene did go home, but home wasn't with her. She sighed. There was no way to . . . maybe it would have been better for her never to have come back to Neptune.

She had thought that often in the time since her return.

But how could she resist? She really was sober. She was finally rid of Craig, and she was tired of sacrificing everything. And Marlene had understood, Marlene had . . . had moved in with her, had let her be a mother again. At least, she had until she spent the night with Logan and Veronica.

The doorbell rang. Wondering if it was Marlene — hoping it was Marlene — she slowly stood and answered the door. She hadn't expected to see Logan Echolls standing on her door mat staring at her. "Hi Lianne," he said. "Can I come in?"

It took her a moment to gather her wits. "Ah . . . of course, of course, come in," she finally said, stepping aside and opening the door wide enough to allow him entrance. He really was tall. She lead him to her living room. Marlene's backpack was leaning against the couch. He stared at it for a moment. "Would you — would you like something to ear or drink or —?"

"I'm fine, thanks," he replied. She nodded nervously.

"Well, then, please just . . . have a seat," she offered. He sat on the couch and she slowly sank into the opposite chair. What was he doing here? It had to be about Marlene. It had to be. He was a handsome man, in his own way. He had been a cute kid, all knees and elbows. She could still remember him coming over to the house to play video games with Veronica. She would tease her daughter about it, asking if she liked-liked Logan, and Veronica would always say. "Mom! Logan likes Lilly."

Then Veronica had started dating Duncan and Logan had started dating Lilly and the four of them were inseparable but Lianne couldn't stand to see them together, because. . . . A lot had changed since then. Logan Echolls had gone from the twelve-year-old who played video games with her daughter to the man who married her older daughter and raised her younger one. And now he was sitting on her couch in her living room and staring intently at her. She shifted nervously. "Do you —?" she began.

He cut her off. "My daughter was attacked last night." She stared at him in shock. "My daughter." His eyes were burning. "I let her move in with you because it was what she wanted. But it's your job to protect her — I'm not sure how much experience you have in this, but mothers are supposed to protect their children." His voice was cutting.

"I didn't —" she said, shaking her head.

"She's a kid. Do you understand that? She's a kid. She might not realize it, but she still needs people to take care of her. You want to show up out of the blue and take her away from the people raised her and have been taking care of her for the last sixteen years? Fine. But that means you have to start taking care of her."

"If I had known —" she started, swallowing thickly, her mind whirling with images of all the horrible things that could have happened to Marlene. "Is she okay?"

"Is she okay? You're asking that now? Yeah, she's okay, but you're a little late in asking. Weren't you worried about her? She's a teenager who didn't come home! Didn't you care even a little?"

"Of course I cared!" she protested. "But I went to bed a few hours after she left and I didn't realize that she hadn't come home until —"

"Who's her father?" he asked abruptly, taking her by surprise. "Is he going to come looking for her? Is he going to try and take her away from me?"

"No, he's not, I swear, he's not," she assured him.

"Who is he?" he pressed, staring at her so keenly she felt at any moment he would lunge and attack her. But he wouldn't. She knew that. She knew the sort of men that hit women, and one look at him revealed he wasn't that sort of man. Still, he was so angry and. . . . It wasn't her fault! She had tried so hard to make amends and. . . . "Who is he?"

"Jake Kane."

There. She had said it. She had admitted it. He stared at her for a moment, as if he had half-known what she would say but now that she had he could barely believe it. "Jake Kane," he repeated slowly, as if trying to process the information. She stood, crossing her arms over her chest and looking out the window.

Maybe if she just said it all, it could finally be put to bed and. . . .

"I love him. Even after all these years, I love him." The words came out at a near whisper. "I probably always will. I always have. I loved Keith, too, but Jake just . . . if there's such a thing as soul mates, I think he's mine." Logan said nothing and if he had any sort of reaction to her words, she didn't see. She only stared out the window, remembering.

"I ended up with my college sweetheart Craig after I left Keith and Veronica. He lost his job, though, and he started hitting me and I left him and ended up . . . ended up with Jake. It was only for a few weeks. He — he finally told me it was a bad idea. Said he was working on his marriage with Celeste." She felt bitterness rise in her. What was so amazing about Celeste?

"I went back to Craig. I had no where else to turn, and he promised me . . . he promised me he wouldn't hurt me again. I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later, he didn't keep his promise and I . . . I wound up going to the last safe place I knew: Keith."

She finally turned back to him. He sat on the couch, watching her. "I wanted to start over. But Veronica wouldn't let me. And I didn't belong with her or Keith anymore. I hadn't in a long time. So I had the baby and I left with her, hoping at least Veronica could thank me for that, but . . . but I couldn't do it on my own. I was so lonely and scared and —" She felt tears building; she could still remember vividly how she sat in the hotel room by herself, desperate to make Marlene stopping crying and just wanting something to drink and someone to take care of her.

"I shouldn't have just left her there. But I didn't know what else to do. It was so hard to just leave . . . just like it was hard to walk out on Veronica all those years ago but I . . . I knew if I went back to Craig with a baby he would hurt her and. . . ."

"But you went back to him," Logan said, finally speaking again. "You went back to a man that hit you." She could see the disgust in his eyes. He must think her as weak as Veronica imagined her to be; he did, after all, marry her tough, hardened daughter. He would expect nothing less of women than to be as tough as his wife.

"I never said I was proud of the decisions I've made," she said, bitterness thick on her tongue again. Her life hadn't exactly turned out the way she planned. It was silent for a moment.

"Does . . . does Jake know?" Logan finally asked. "Does he know that Marlie is . . . ?"

"He knows. I told him, when she was about three, that . . . I missed her so much and I hoped maybe that he . . . I thought it would. . . ." She had gone to see him at his office. She had been planning it for weeks, planning how she would reveal the truth to him. He had lost his daughter to murder and his son had runaway but she . . . she could give him a new hope, a new child. He would take her away from Craig and they would get Marlene and raise her together and maybe together they would even find Duncan and. . . .

He hadn't reacted like that at all. Not even close.

"What did he say?" pressed Logan.

"He said he couldn't handle a daughter. He said it sounded as if I had already given her up and that it wouldn't be easy to get her back and maybe it would be better for everyone if . . . if he didn't claim her." The silence that came then threatened to stretch into forever. "He even," she said at long last, willing her voice not to tremble, "he even offered me money."

She still couldn't believe he had done that to her. Had treated her like that. He was not the man she had known in high school. He was a broken shell of that man, and Lianne hated Celeste for what he had become. "I didn't take it," she went on, "but when Craig died last year he left all sorts of debts and I . . . I went back to Jake and demanded the money. He gave it. I used it to. . . ." She met Logan's gaze.

"Craig couldn't hurt me or Marlene once he was dead, and with the money I could support myself and I could . . . it was my real chance to start over, don't you see? Marlene and I could start fresh! I never meant to hurt Veronica or Keith or anyone but . . . I waited a long time to get my baby back."

Logan nodded slowly and stood. "Marlie didn't need to start fresh. She had us. She still does. If you want to be a part of her life and she doesn't mind, then that's fine. But Veronica will always be her mom. And she's not Jake Kane's daughter. She's my daughter. I wanted her; I claimed her. That's not going to change because your circumstances have."

He turned away from her, not giving her a chance to say a word, and started out of the living room. He grabbed Marlene's backpack as he went. She wanted to say something; she wanted to stop him. Desperation clawing at her insides, she called out his name, following hot on his heels.

He turned to her with one hand on the doorknob. "Just imagine that — Veronica's pregnant, right?" He nodded silently. "Okay and, and just imagine that the only way to keep that baby safe was to give her up. To let someone else raise her. You would do it, wouldn't you? But — but the moment you had the chance you would want her back."

"It's not that simple, Lianne," he told her. "You didn't have to go back to Craig. No one was forcing you. That was your choice. It was a fucking stupid choice, even if you were smart enough to know you couldn't take Marlie with you. But it was your choice. And honestly? Even if you didn't have a choice, Marlie's a person. You can't expect her to live her life according to yours. Once you do something, you can't always go back and fix everything."

He left then, before she could stop him. Not that she had the right words to stop him. She didn't have any words. And for what was surely the millionth time, Lianne wished that she could close her eyes and open them to a new world, to a better world, to one that had gone another way, a different way, any other way.

"Mommy, if you could have anything in the whole world, what would it be?" Marlie asked. They were sitting on a bench, waiting for Logan to return. They had celebrated the New Year with dinner and a movie and were now walking along the beach. They'd had to make a pit stop for ice cream, though. Logan had been sent on the errand.

Marlie was wrapped up in her brand new Christmas coat, a bright blue and green knit hat from Alicia on her head and her beloved stuffed panda clutched tightly under one arm. Her cheeks were pink from the cold but she looked up at Veronica eagerly. "Mommy?"

"Anything at all?" Veronica asked. "Hmm, I don't know. That's a pretty big question. A pony, maybe."

"A pony?" Marlie repeated, her eyes wide with wonder. "What sort of pony?"

"A pretty pony," Veronica answered knowingly.

"I want a pony, too!" Marlie exclaimed. Veronica only grinned. "But I want something else, too," Marlie went on, looking as if she had rehearsed this. "Ask me what I want, Mommy."

"What do you want?" Veronica asked.

"No, ask me what I want more than anything in the whole world. Even more than a pony!" Marlie looked up at her as if it were the most important question in the world. Giving a puzzled smile, Veronica played along.

"What do you want more than anything in the whole world?" she asked.

Sitting up straight, Marlie told her importantly, "For you to marry Daddy."

Veronica stared.

"And I've pa-papared a list of reasons why you should," Marlie went on, and it was clear she was not coming up with this on her own. Veronica was still dumbstruck "First, it's easy for you to pay taxes. And get health 'surance and stuff." Veronica couldn't help but smile a little at that.

"Is that so?"

"Mmm-hmm," Marlie nodded.

"Second, Mommies and Daddies are su'posted to be married," Marlie told her, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, Mommy, everybody knows that!"

"Wow. Everybody?"

"Everybody." She smiled at Veronica.

"Are there any other reasons?"

"Oh! Yeah!" she said, her eyes bright. "Also number third, you should marry Daddy 'cause you love him lots and people who love each other lots should be married, like Grandpa Keith and Grandma Alicia. And —"

It was then that Marlie glanced past her and Veronica realized her little four-year-old was looking at someone else. Veronica whipped her head around and found a smirking Logan standing a few feet away. "How long have you been standing there?" Veronica demanded.

"I think I can take it from here, Marlie."

"Did I do a good job?" asked Marlie as he came to stand in front of the bench.

"You did a very good job."

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome." Logan faced Veronica. He got down on one knee.

"How long have you been planning this?" she asked. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen this coming. She had been sure she would know weeks in advance; he was never any good at keeping things from her, not even surprises. He only smiled, not answering her question.

"Veronica Mars," Logan began. "When I first met you, your hair was in pigtails, you had grass stains on your knees, and you were the hottest soccer player I'd ever seen."

"Logan . . ."

"Now we've had a rocky relationship and I'll be the first to admit that I did not see this moment coming for a very long time. But I love you, Veronica. I love everything about you, even your ingrained suspicious paranoia. I've had my heart broken, by you and by others, but as long as I've got you, I'll be okay. I'm ready for a lifetime of Veronica Mars." He pulled out a box, opening it to reveal the ring. "Marry me, Veronica."

"I . . . I can't believe this," Veronica finally said. He was grinning up at her. She glanced down at the ring. It twinkled up at her tastefully. He always did have good tastes in jewelry. She had known he would propose to her eventually; they were raising a kid together, for God's sake. . . .

But marriage was still so. . . .

"Mommy, do you want to know what I think?" Marlie asked. She scooted closer to Veronica on the bench until she was right up beside her. She tugged at Veronica's sleeve. "Mommy!"

"What do you think?" Veronica asked, not taking her eyes away from Logan on bended knee and the ring in his hand.

"I think you should marry him," Marlie said. "I would, but Daddy says I'm too little to be married. He says I can't get married 'till I'm forty." Veronica chuckled despite herself, and she and Logan both glanced at the little toddler who was smiling at them, so pleased with her performance.

Veronica met Logan's gaze again. When she'd first kissed him, when they'd gone out, when they'd come together again the summer before Hearst, all along, she'd been unable to imagine marrying him . . . or anyone, for that matter. Marriage was a reckless endeavor; it was just setting yourself up for disappointment and heart ache.

But at that moment, she saw it.

She saw herself marrying Logan Echolls and it . . . it wasn't so scary.

"Veronica?" Logan asked. There was the first trace of doubt in his voice. "I don't care when or where. I just want to be married to you."

Veronica turned to Marlie. "You know what I want more than anything in the whole world?" she asked her daughter, smiling and trying not to cry. She so did not need to start crying.

"A pony?" Marlie guessed.

"Even more than a pony," said Veronica.

"What?" asked Marlie.

"To marry your daddy."

"To — to marry — YAY! Did you hear that, Daddy? Did you hear it? It worked! Our plan worked!" Marlie jumped from the bench, twirling around in excitement.

"I heard it, baby," Logan said, his eyes on Veronica. She smiled at him, her hand clasping over the ring box. The next thing she knew, he was kissing her. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, the velvet box clutched tightly in her hand, and she was kissing him at nine o'clock at night on a bench in the middle of the street.

And she was barely conscious of Marlie standing up on the bench, shouting out to the passersby, "MY MOMMY AND DADDY ARE GETTING MARRIED!"

"What do you want to know?"

Her parents sat side by side on the couch, looking at her, ready for any questions. This is what she had wanted all along. Why had it taken so long?

"Why did Lianne leave you when you were my age?" she asked. Had Veronica truly been threatened? It wasn't as if Marlie didn't believe the older woman; she simply knew there was more to the story . . . there had to be more to the story.

"Celeste Kane wanted to get rid of her," her mom answered. "I should have told you this when Lianne first came back but . . . there was a time, when I was your age, when I didn't know if your grandpa Keith was really my father."

Marlie could only stare. "What . . .?"

"Lianne cheated on Keith," her father said, picking up where his wife had left off. "She didn't know if he was really Veronica's father and it didn't come out until we were in high school. And Lianne was . . . she —"

"She was cheating on him again, with Jake Kane, again. She claims she wasn't, but . . . but Celeste tried to get rid of her with threatening photos of me," her mom explained. "That's why she fled. Celeste told her to or else."

Marlie was barely listening; her mind was stuck on the fact that had just been revealed. "Grandpa Keith isn't your real dad?" she asked.

"No, no," Veronica said, "he is. I didn't know it for a while, but there eventually was a paternity test and he was proved to be my father. Even if he hadn't been, though, biologically, I mean, he still would have been my father. But I . . . it made me resent Lianne, because not only had she left, but she had — she nearly took away my father, who had stayed, who was all I had at that point."

There was silence as Marlie tried to take it in. "When did she come back? Lianne?" she finally asked.

"I found her," Veronica said. "I had been looking for her ever since she'd left. I finally found her, got the full story out of her. But she was an alcoholic and she needed help. I paid for her to get sober. I wanted her to come home. I wanted my mom back."

"But when she came home —," Marlie said, trying to put all the pieces together.

"She was still an alcoholic," her mom told her, nodding. "She had wasted my money."

Again, no one said anything immediately.

"It was around the same time," Veronica finally went on, "that we discovered who really killed Lilly. Apparently Lianne couldn't handle it all, because she left again, taking with her what little money your grandpa and I had. I didn't see her again until she came to us six months pregnant."

"And how — how old was I when she left?"

"She actually . . . she took you with her when she left the hospital," Veronica said, and it seemed suddenly as if it pained her to speak of it all. "Two weeks later you were found alone in a hotel room. We didn't see or hear from her again until she came back a few months ago."

"She left me in a . . . hotel room?" Marlie asked in disbelief.

"There was a note," her dad said. "Your grandpa saved it and he gave it to us to show you." He held the folded paper out to her, and the room was quiet as she took it, slowly unfolding it and reading it. Her mother sounded as if she really loved her, but . . . but a hotel room? What if someone had taken her and . . . done something . . . bad or something?

"So . . . you two decided that you would raise me instead?" she asked, handing the note back to her father.

"Simply put," her mom replied, "yes." Her mom sighed. "There's something you need to understand. I was the only person who could be your legal guardian, but Keith still could have been the one to raise you. But he didn't because I . . . I chose to raise you. I wanted to."

Marlie didn't want to start crying again. She really didn't. She wouldn't. She refused.

"Do you, ah, do you have any other questions?" her dad finally asked.

"Do you ever wish," Marlie began softly, looking down at her chipped blue nail polish, "some times . . . do you ever wish you hadn't decided to raise me?" She met her mother's gaze at last. It was a stupid question, she knew, but. . . .

"There are lots of things I regret in my life," Veronica said slowly, "so much I would change and do differently, and I think sometimes I think about all the things I would change too much. But one thing that I have never, ever regretted and never will is my decision to raise you as mine. Never, Marlie. Not once. I promise you: you have never been a regret." She spoke with such conviction, her eyes so fierce, that Marlie felt the words burn into her.

Veronica glanced at Logan and when Marlie did the same he looked back and forth between them for a minute before telling her, pointing his thumb at her mom, "What she said." Marlie let out a soft chuckle, Veronica shook her head at him, and he smiled at her.

"So," her mom asked, "does this mean you're coming home?"

She went to Lianne's house. She had talked with her parents but she still needed to talk with Lianne. She still had questions. Lianne hugged her when she arrived at her house and it was awkward. Though Marlie had been living with her, they hadn't often showed one another any real physical affection.

"I was so worried about you," Lianne told her as they sat down in the kitchen and Lianne gave her a diet Dr. Pepper. "Is everything okay? Do you want to talk about what happened?"

"No, I . . . I'm okay. It's gonna be okay." She popped open her soda can but didn't make a move to drink from it. "I actually wanted to talk to you about . . . about everything. I'm just so . . . confused and I don't even know what to think or feel anymore." She finally looked up at Lianne. "I really want to get to know you. And I . . . I want to be a — a daughter to you, but I don't think . . . I don't want to hurt you, but I don't think I belong here."

"Sweetheart," Lianne said softly, reaching for Marlie and grasping her hand. "I know that this is hard for you. I know it's a lot to handle and that it's a lot of change. And I would never ask anything of you that you couldn't handle. But . . . moving in here, it was a big deal, and it's going to take some time to get used to."

Marlie didn't know what to say. Lianne seemed to realize that. She stood slowly and went to the pantry under the stairs. "What are you doing?" Marlie called as she heard Lianne began to rummage around out of view. A moment later she emerged holding a shoebox.

She placed it down on the table and pushed it towards Marlie. "I think this will help."

Marlie felt she was entering a world she didn't want to enter when she lifted the lid off the box, but she couldn't say no. The box was filled to the brim with things. There was a blanket, a soft pink one that seemed new it had been used so little.

"That's your baby blanket," Lianne told her. "I took it with me when I . . . when I was so selfish as to leave you. I thought you would be better off with Keith and Veronica, but I knew I was going to miss you so much, so I took the blanket because it smelled like you."

Marlie gingerly lifted the blanket from the box. She already had a baby blanket. It had dancing penguins on it. Her dad had gotten it for her, and it was so tattered and frayed now that it looked pathetic. But she still kept it in her room, a fond reminder of the childhood she had loved. This blanket didn't remind her of anything at all. But it was soft and . . . and there were tears in Lianne's eyes.

She put the blanket aside gently and reached into the shoebox for a stack of pictures. The first showed a tall man with black hair. He wore jeans and a black t-shirt; his hands were greasy and he was leaning against a partially restored car. "That's Craig," Lianne murmured. Marlie stared at the picture for a moment, finally putting it aside to find a picture of a tiny little baby held in Lianne's arms.

"Is this . . . ?" she began.

"You?" Lianne said, a slight smile to her voice. "Yes, that's you in the hospital on the day you were born. You were such a beautiful baby." Marlie stared at the picture for a long time. There was one just like it, framed and sitting on her grandpa's mantel. But in his picture it wasn't Lianne holding a little newborn Marlie; it was Veronica.

Before Marlie could go to the next photo, however, her eyes caught on something else in the box. A stack of letters tied with a ribbon sat innocently there in that box, and clear on the top envelope was black cursive writing that said Return to sender. Marlie put the pictures aside, reaching in for the letters. As she had suspected, they were all addressed to Keith or Veronica or even Marlene Mars. They were all from Lianne. And they all were unopened with the words Return to sender written on them.

"What are these?" Marlie breathed.

"Letters that I wrote to you. I sent them to Marlene Mars at first, but when that didn't get me anywhere I tried writing to Keith and Veronica. Every single letter was sent back unopened." Her voice was soft and sad. "The first one is from when you were only two. I eventually gave up a few years later. I knew no one would ever show you the letters or answer any of my . . . questions. I wasn't going to take you away from them; I just . . . I wanted to make sure you were okay, but. . . ."

"You sent them letters and they never told me?" Marlie asked, frowning as she finally looked away from the letters to look up at Lianne. "They never even read a single one?"

"The first. I should have said that. The first was opened. But that was it." She came to sit beside Marlie at the table. "You can read them now. I know this might be too little, too late, but I want you to know that even if I wasn't around, I always cared about you."

Marlie couldn't believe it. She had just talked to her parents. They had made it clear that they hadn't heard from Lianne after she'd left Marlie with them. But they had heard from her. Lianne hadn't completely abandoned her. "Do you want to stay for dinner?" Lianne asked softly.

"I need to talk to my parents," Marlie said, standing up abruptly and clutching the letters to her chest. "But I'll . . . I'll come back for dinner, okay?" She mustered a smile for Lianne, and the older woman smiled in return, nodding.

"Okay."

She sped the entire way back to her house. Why did this all have to happen to her? Why couldn't everything just go back to a mere semblance of normalcy? Why did the hits have to keep coming? She pushed open the backdoor and entered the kitchen, the letters heavy in her hand. Her mother was making dinner. "Marlie!" her mom exclaimed happily on sight of her. "I was hoping you'd be back in time. We're going Italian tonight."

"Where's Dad?" Marlie asked. Veronica must have noticed her mood, because her mother frowned, wiping her hands on a dish towel and coming towards Marlie.

"He and Ben went to pick up Jason from basketball practice. Is everything okay? Did something happen?"

"How come you didn't tell me about the letters?" Marlie demanded. "You made it sound like Lianne abandoned me without looking back but she didn't! She sent letters and you — I know you love me, but how could you still be lying to me?"

Her mom shook her head slowly, her eyes wide. "I have no idea what you're —"

Marlie thrust the letters at her and her mom took them hesitantly, her frown deepening as she began to flip through the letters. She finally looked back at Marlie. "I swear I have never seen these," she said. "I swear."

"Then who sent them back? Dad?"

"No, he would have — he would have told me. No. Neither of us ever saw these letters. I swear, Marlie. We haven't lied to you. Everything we know, you know," her mother assured. She looked as if she really meant what she said, but. . . .

"Was it Grandpa, then? It was him, wasn't it?" Marlie asked. It made sense. If Lianne thought Keith was raising Marlie then of course she would send the letters there.

"Your grandpa wouldn't do this," Veronica said, shaking her head. "Just calm down. We'll figure this out. Here, have a glass of water and just sit down and —"

"No," Marlie said, snatching the pictures from her mother before Veronica could stop her. "I need to talk to Grandpa. I can't believe he would do this."

"Marlie!" her mother yelled. "Marlie, stop —"

Marlie slammed the door shut behind her. But she didn't slam it fast enough, because she still heard the sudden shatter of glass, the sound piercing through her. Had her mother thrown something at her? Marlie turned and tore the door back open, only to freeze, horror flooding her.

"Mom!"

The shatter she had heard was the sound of a water glass falling to the ground and breaking. It had fallen because her mother had dropped it. And her mother . . . her mother was lying on the ground, her face contorted in pain, her arm wrapped around her stomach.

A/N: There's only one chapter left! One last memory, one last final twist, and one last decision Marlie must make! Please review : )

Fic: Truth Be Told, part 8

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:23:40 GMT

The party took place on the beach.

Marlie spent nearly two hours getting ready with her friends beforehand. Lianne had been all smiles, obviously happy that Marlie was happy. The older woman didn't even care that it was a Wednesday and therefore a school night.

And then Sam had come to pick her up. He had come over to her house, had made nice with Lianne, and was driving Marlie to the party. It was a date. While she would have preferred their first date to be a little more . . . personal, she didn't really care. This was more relaxed, anyway.

"So that woman wasn't your mother, was she?" he asked her when they first got into the car. She had introduced Lianne simply as Lianne. He must have noticed the look on her face, because he added hastily, "I just mean that I thought your mom was Veronica Echolls."

"She . . . she is," Marlie answered. "Lianne is also my mom, though. It's complicated." Thankfully, he asked nothing more, only gave her an understanding smile.

But then, as he punched the radio on and commented on how much he liked the song that was playing, Marlie suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to say something, to say everything. "I just found out, actually," she told him.

"Yeah?" he asked, sounding interested but not about to press her. She liked that.

"I always thought Veronica was my mom. But then I found out she was really my sister. My real mom was the same as hers, was Lianne. But Lianne hadn't been able to raise me so Veronica did."

"That's . . . kind of crazy," he said slowly.

"Tell me about it," she murmured. She caught him looking at her. "Eyes on the road, buddy," she teased. He smiled and looked back out the windshield. She grinned to herself.

A few minutes later he started talking, his voice smooth and perfect, and he spent the rest of the care ride telling her a story about his lab digging up his mother's rose garden that afternoon, and he had her laughing so hard she was crying by the time they arrived at the beach.

She talked with his friends, most of whom she had known for years, and at one point he put his arm over her shoulder. She was delighted. They both got drinks from the keg, and though she thought it had a little too much of a kick to it, it didn't matter; she didn't take more than a few sips. He was certainly drinking a lot, but he looked as if he could handle it.

"Are you having fun?" he asked her at one point. He was leaning down towards her as he spoke, and she could feel his breath warm on her face, making it all the better of a moment. She nodded, smiling.

"Of course."

"You want something a little stronger to drink?" he offered, his voice lower, and he flashed her a flask from his pocket. Veronica Echolls would have been proud at that moment, because her voice managed to worm its way into Marlie's thoughts. "And never, under any circumstance whatsoever, take a drink from someone else. It doesn't matter if it's your BFF. You get your own drinks, always."

Why was she thinking of her mother at that moment?

She brushed all thoughts of her mother aside, but she still shook her head at his offer. "I'm good, thanks," she told him, smiling again. He nodded in understanding and then drained the rest of his cup before proceeding to refill it with the drink in the flask.

Marlie glanced over and Amy caught her eye. 'How's it going?' Amy mouthed. Marlie gave her a large grin and Amy mimed clapping in excitement. Marlie was chuckling softly as she turned her attention back to Sam and his friends. An hour later, however, and she was starting to get a little bored. His friends were all getting wasted and it had long since passed amusing and was now annoying.

"You want to go somewhere else?" Sam asked, noticing her slow change of mood. "We can talk or something. We really haven't had a chance to talk yet."

"I'd love to, actually," she said.

He grabbed her hand. "C'mon, we can walk down along the beach. Nobody'll be over on Dog Beach this time of night. Hopefully." He made a face, she laughed, and off they went.

"So what do you think of Neptune?" she asked him as the sounds of the party started to fade. They walked hand in hand, and she felt herself pretty in the blue dress Amy had helped her pick out and her favorite little purse tucked beneath her arm. "I mean, I know you've lived here for a year now, but still. How's it compare to the rest of the world?"

"Better parties here," he answered. "And better girls." She nearly melted under his gaze. "But I still miss Chicago a little bit, too. There was a lot more to do there. But you haven't lived here your whole life, either, have you?"

"No," she said. "We used to visit all the time because my parents grew up here, but we didn't move here until five years ago when my mom had my little brother Ben. I have such a bad memory, though," she joked, "I might as well have lived here my whole life." He chuckled and there was a brief moment of silence.

"So, what's with your name?" he finally asked.

"It's short for Marlene. I think my dad came up with it. The nickname, I mean." He nodded but didn't say anything. He had stopped walking and turned to face her.

"Do you like it?" he finally asked. "Or do your prefer Marlene?"

She shrugged. "I don't mind it — Marlie. It's my name, you know? I've always been Marlie. It's a little weird when people call me Marlene."

"Well, Marlie," he said slowly, grabbing her left hand so that he gripped both her hands now. He stepped closer. Her heart suddenly started racing. She had been kissed before, but she already knew his kiss would be better. He leaned down. She started to lean up. His eyes were on her lips. She closed her eyes.

It was a good kiss. It was an amazing kiss. She opened her mouth to his and let him wrap his arms warmly around her back, pulling her to him. It was perfect. There was nothing else in the world but him and her and the waves crashing softly on the short a few feet away.

And then it spiraled out of control.

Eli Navarro stepped out of his truck, sighing. Before he slammed the door shut, he looked back at the passenger seat and the yellow lab that sat happily panting. "You coming or what?" he asked the dog. The large animal, understanding, scrambled across the seats and jumped out of the truck before allowing Weevil to clamp a leash down on him.

"Let's go," Weevil muttered and they started across the beach. Sometimes he couldn't believe this had become his life. He got in a fight with Rachel and blew off steam by walking his Labrador dog on the beach. Who did that?

And who had a lab for a dog? Of all the animals, Rachel had to choose that one. "They're so playful, Eli," she told him, smiling with those big blue eyes. Those would be the death of him. He always went for the girls who had big blue eyes. He snorted to himself. It could have been worse: the woman could have pleaded for a Chihuahua or poodle or some other white plaything.

Of course, Rachel might have blue eyes, but she also had brown hair. Blondes were too much work for Weevil. Not that Rachel wasn't work; the day Weevil had actually married her he had been setting himself up for a lifetime of Labrador puppies and manipulative blue eyes and leaving after a fight to walk on the beach rather than go to a bar or something any sane man would do.

It's not like that would change anytime soon. Rachel was pregnant. Weevil wasn't going anywhere now; she officially had him for good. Even as he thought it, Callie tugged on her leash so suddenly that a distracted Weevil didn't stand a chance: the leash slipped through his fingers and Callie was off, barking as she raced across the beach. "Hey! Get back here!" Weevil shouted.

Groaning to himself, he started after the dumb dog. He didn't have to run too far, however, because Callie had reached her destination and stood happily with Marlie Echolls. Weevil slowed. He was pretty sure it was her. He hadn't seen her in a long time, but he could probably recognize Veronica's Mini-Me anywhere. But what the hell was she doing on Dog Beach at this time of night?

"Marlie?" he asked as he came closer. It was definitely her. And she was crying. Her make-up ran down her face and . . . and her shirt was ripped. Weevil saw red for an instant, his mind reeling with sudden conclusions. "What's going on?"

"Hey Weevil," she greeted softly. "I — I was just at the party and . . . can you give me a ride home, please?"

"Did somebody hurt you?" Weevil asked darkly. "He still here?"

Marlie shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself and not even seeming to notice the eager dog that nudged at her legs. "Can you please give me a ride home? I don't . . . I need to go home."

Weevil didn't ask anymore questions. He never did. Those blue-eyed blondes always got to him. He nodded and led her back to his truck. She didn't meet his gaze as she climbed into the truck, but he saw her fingers curl into Callie's fur as they started out down the road.

He had talked to Veronica the other day when she'd called to congratulate him on the pregnancy. He didn't really know what was going on, but. . . . "Where you want to go?" he asked softly.

"Home," she repeated. "Home."

"Home it is," he told her and she mustered a small smile for him.

The rest of the ride was painfully silent. It wasn't the longest drive in the world, but it was long enough. Weevil found himself hoping Rachel didn't have a girl. He couldn't handle the things people do to sweet little girls. He pulled his truck into the big-ass house Logan Echolls had bought and put it into park. But Marlie didn't make a move to leave. Weevil frowned. "I thought you meant —?"

"I did mean here," Marlie murmured. "But I just realized I . . . I can't go in that house." He didn't know what to say. "Ah, I guess can you just . . . can you take me to, um, this house up on . . . it's kind of far away, but I can't go in there and see my parents."

"Look, girl, I don't know what's going on with you and your mom," he began hesitantly, "but V will want to know what happened. She'll want to help you."

"You don't understand," Marlie told him. "My mom always warned me and she'll . . . she knew something like this would happen and I didn't listen to her and . . . I can't face her."

Weevil didn't know much, but he knew enough to know Marlie was wrong. He could drive her back to where ever she was staying now with the woman Veronica had sneered about over the phone. Or he could honk his horn. Loudly.

He did.

"What are you doing?" Marlie asked him. He couldn't read her expression through the dark.

"Waking someone up," he replied, slamming his palm on the horn and letting it blare through the night. A light turned on in a room on the second floor of the house. Marlie suddenly started swatting at her eyes, trying to wipe her running make-up with her hands. All she managed to do was smear mascara on her cheeks and her knuckles.

The porch lights turned on. Weevil started to get out of his truck. Marlie didn't move.

Logan Echolls, wearing boxers and a t-shirt, opened the front door and stood squinting at the headlights of the truck. When Weevil stepped all the way out of the car, he saw recognition dawn on the white boy's face. Echolls started towards him.

"What are you doing here?" he shouted, not angry but clearly confused. Weevil looked back into the car at Marlie and saw her staring at her father.

"I got something for you," Weevil yelled back. Before he could say more, though, the other truck door opened and Marlie barreled out of it and at her father. The shocked man didn't hesitate in hugging his daughter as she sobbed into his shoulder but he looked over at Weevil as if for some sort of explanation. "Found her at the beach," Weevil said simply.

Echolls didn't seem to have a response, but Weevil gave him a small nod and then climbed back into his truck. He needed to go to his own home. He needed to see Rachel. Callie barked as they pulled out of the drive, bathing Marlie and her dad in darkness, but he only patted her head. "Good girl," he murmured. "Good girl."

Marlie barely knew how she got into the house. Her father lead her, probably half carried her, and before long she was on the couch in the living room, trying to stop crying. He hadn't asked her anything and she was glad for that. She had missed him so much and. . . .

"Who was it, Logan?" her mother asked. Marlie sat with her face pressed against her father's chest and she couldn't see her mom, but she heard when the woman whispered softly, "Marlie. . . ."

A moment later, small, soft hands were stroking her hair. "What happened?" her mom asked. She didn't say anything. "Baby," her mom whispered, and slowly she drew Marlie from her father's grasp. Marlie sat there, then, curled up against her dad with his arm around her shoulder while her mother knelt on the ground, her hair in a messy bun and her eyes large and searching as she brushed at Marlie's face.

"You've got a bruise forming on your neck," her mom said softly, her fingers dusting across the spot. Marlie swallowed thickly. There was no point in trying to deny anything.

"You know," she said, forcing herself to stop crying, "you know how you always used to stick pepper spray in my purse and every time I took it out you would put it back in until I finally gave up?" Marlie asked. Her mom nodded, not saying a word. "Well, it was still in there when I went to a party and . . . and Sam and I were kissing and then he — and I had to use it."

"You — you had to . . . did anything —?" her mom's voice had gotten very soft and it was clear she was at a loss for words.

"It worked," Marlie whispered. The tears began to well up in her eyes against her will as she remembered the whole series of events. Her face began to contort in an attempt to hold back the tears. It was a failed attempt.

"Come here," her mom murmured, and as Veronica sat on the couch, Marlie found herself hugging her mom, enveloped in the soft, sweet smell that was her mother, that was reassurance when the doctor put the needle to her arm and comfort when the nightmare was too real, that was so very much like home. "It's okay," her mom whispered, rocking slightly and stroking her hair as Marlie began to cry again. "It's okay. It's okay. I've got you. I'm here. Daddy's here. It's okay. It's okay."

"I'm sorry for — for everything," Marlie whispered, "and I . . . I —"

"Don't think about that now," her mom murmured, "it's okay." Her tears started to subside slightly and she said nothing more, letting herself melt into her mother. "Let it out. Cry it out. It's all okay. That's my girl," her mom said softly, her voice reassuring. "That's my baby."

He had volunteered to get more beer. He couldn't believe they'd run out: as seniors in college, shouldn't they know how much beer they'd need? He was the only one who could really go out and get anything, though, as he was the only one still sober. It wasn't even that late at night! They were pathetic.

He was in the grocery store right on the edge of the campus, trying to load the basket he'd gotten and wishing he'd chosen a cart instead when he saw her. She had cut her hair short, so short it didn't even brush her shoulders, and was wearing a t-shirt and jeans while she tried to choose between two different kinds of peanut butter.

No one else was in the aisle. Unable to resist, he called out her name. "Veronica!"

She looked away from the peanut butter and he saw recognition quickly followed by shock dawn on her face. "Piz?" A smile split her face. He approached her, grinning. "Hey, I didn't know you were in town!" she said as glanced briefly back at what must have been her cart.

"Yeah, I came home for winter break to see my parents and I thought I'd visit Neptune for the weekend to see Wallace and some of the boys. Hearst hasn't changed much."

"Yeah, no, it hasn't," she agreed, smiling. She looked much the same as she did years ago when he had known her, when he had dated her; she had the same sparkling blue eyes, dark make-up, and addictive smile. "How's the East coast?"

"Amazing!" he immediately assured. "I love it out there."

"Still in the radio biz?"

"Definitely," he nodded. "I already have a job starting in July for a local radio station."

"That's great, Piz," she told him, smiling widely, "that's really great."

"What about you?" he asked. He had heard tid-bits from Wallace, such as the fact that her mother had come home the summer after they'd broken up. But he didn't really know much; over the years Wallace had shared less and less.

"I'm graduating, of course, and it's pretty open-ended after that," she answered. "I'm not sure what I'm doing."

"Think you might go into the FBI?"

She hesitated. "I . . . I really don't know. There's a lot of . . . factors, I guess." He nodded. He didn't know what that meant but he was sure whatever it was, she would figure it out. Uncertainty was one thing with which Veronica Mars did not allow herself to be familiar.

He opened his mouth to ask after her dad and Mac when someone shouted, "Ma! Cookies!" Veronica turned at the voice so Piz did as well. A little girl, probably about two, if Piz had to guess, was standing a few feet away holding up a package of Oreos as if it were the Holy Grail. "Cookies!" she repeated.

"You don't need cookies," Veronica told her. Piz looked back and forth between Veronica and the little girl, confusion rising in him.

"Yes cookies," the girl said.

"No cookies," Veronica replied slowly. The girl ran up to Veronica, her shoes lighting up as she went.

"Yes cookies," she insisted, holding them out to Veronica.

"If you get those then they're your one pick. You only get one special Marlie food. Is that your special food?" The little girl nodded.

"Yum cookies!"

Sharking her head softly, Veronica took the Oreos. "In five minutes when you want goldfish," she told the girl," remember this moment." The little girl didn't seem wary of the warning; she only smiled, her big blue eyes turning on Piz.

A little blonde girl with big blue eyes who begged Veronica for cookies and called her . . . Ma. The little girl had called her Ma. Veronica looked back at Piz. His shock must have shown on his face, because she sighed knowingly. "You have a kid?" he asked, unable to help being blunt. If the girl really was two then she was probably born right after Piz left, which meant Veronica must have gotten back together with Logan — was Logan the father? He had to be, didn't he?

But Piz didn't like the idea of Veronica getting back together with Logan so soon after she dumped Piz. He had known they would get back together; he had known it since that day in the cafeteria. But still. . . .

"Her name's Marlie. Marlene, actually, but we call her Marlie," Veronica told him. "Can you say Hi to Piz, Marlie?" Veronica asked the girl.

"Hi Piss," she said.

"She's been spending time with Logan, hasn't she?" Piz asked, trying to joke. Veronica made a face, picking Marlie up and balancing her on her hip. Marlie grabbed for her cookies, hugging them to her chest. "He, ah, he's the father, isn't he?"

He hoped he didn't sound too hurt. He wasn't hurt. Not really. It had been a long time since they'd dated. He'd moved on. He had dated other girls. But the idea of Veronica having a kid with Logan Echolls, of all people. . . .

"Depends on what you mean," Veronica answered. "If you call me her mom, then yes, Logan's the father." Piz wasn't sure what to make of that. Once again, Veronica seemed to read his expression. "She's not really my kid."

He was even more confused now.

"Didn't Wallace . . . he didn't tell you anything, did he?" Veronica asked. Piz shook his head.

"My mom came back the summer after freshmen year. She was pregnant. Long story short, she had a baby girl and left it with me and my dad. Piz, say hello to that baby."

"So you . . . you're raising the kid?" he asked. This was unbelievable. He had never thought Veronica even wanted any of her own kids. How much had changed in the past two years?

"Looks like it," she replied. "I had to be her legal guardian and I . . . I really didn't plan on making her mine. But . . . I just . . . I want to do this for her. Be her mom. So she never has to know . . . she deserves better than my mom, than our mom." Piz nodded slowly. "She called Logan her dad before she called me her mom. I don't really know when I decided that I didn't just want to take care of her, I also wanted to be her mom . . . it just . . . happened."

She seemed to realize how much she was saying and she looked away, giving an awkward smile. "That's really amazing of you," he told her, "to, you know, do that. I don't think most kids our age could do it." There was a pregnant pause. "Then again, most kids our age couldn't do any of the things you do."

She smirked. "That's true, I guess." There was another brief silence. "Hey, so it was really good to see you but I should actually get going —"

"Oh, yeah, me too," he agreed.

"— It's late enough as it is and Marlie's got to get to bed before too long," she finished.

"Yeah, yeah," Piz told her. "I get it. I got to get back to Wallace and stuff." Her eyes flickered to his beer and he felt sort of embarrassed. She and Logan were raising a kid that wasn't their own and he was . . . he was buying beer for his buddies.

"Have fun," she told. "It really was good to see you."

"Ditto," he replied. She started to turn away, heading to her car. Marlie looked at him, waving goodbye. She was kind of adorable, certainly cuter than his cousin's fat newborn with the rhombus-shaped head.

"Hey Veronica!" he called out suddenly. She turned back to him with raised eyebrows. "Are you happy?" he asked. She smiled slowly.

"You know . . . I think I am," she replied. "Having a kid . . . it's not so bad." He nodded. "You?"

"I'm happy, too," he answered. She gave a soft smile.

"Good. See you around, Piznarski. Say bye-bye, Marlie. Say bye-bye to Piz."

"Bye-bye, Piss," said Marlie. And then they were gone, and Piz was left wondering how Veronica Mars could still manage to shock and amaze him.

Logan Echolls was a man on a mission.

"I'm here to pick up Sam Winters," he told the receptionist.

"Are you . . . a relative of his?" the young woman asked. It was clear she recognized who he was, and he was going to use that to his advantage.

"He's a friend of the family," Logan asked. "You know how that is." He was leaning against her desk, smiling warmly. She blushed. He had no idea what he was talking about, and if she did then she was a lot smarter than he thought.

"Oh, of course," she replied. "Well, ah, I'll just call him to the office, okay?" she asked, patting her blonde hair.

"Thank you so much, Sally," he said, his eyes barely making a movement as they flittered to her desk and saw the name. "And I like your necklace."

"I made it myself!"

"It looks like a piece of costume jewelry Reese Witherspoon wore in her new movie," he told her. "You wear it better, though." He winked. She nearly fainted. She didn't, though; instead, she picked up the phone and asked Mr. Albrect to send Sam to the office for early dismissal.

Sam Winters looked like an asshole.

He walked with a swagger in his step, had beady eyes and blonde hair too perfectly jelled. If Logan still went to Neptune High he would have beaten the kid to a pulp on principle. "Hi, Ms. Evans," Sam Winters greeted the secretary. "Did my parents call in to say I could leave or is someone here, because I have my BMW and —?"

"A BMW? Well, we might just have to go for a spin," Logan said. The punk kid looked over at him. He frowned.

"Are you —?" he began hesitantly.

"Let's take a walk," Logan said, grabbing the kid by the shoulder and steering him out of the office. If Ms. Evans noticed anything strange about the interaction, she didn't say a word. As soon as they were out of the school, Logan shoved the boy from his grasp.

"Okay, what's going on?" the little jackass asked. "You're Logan Echolls, right?"

"And you're Sam Winters, the boy who tried to force himself on my daughter."

The kid looked momentarily stunned. "Look, ah, I don't know what Marlie told you, but I didn't —"

"Shut-up," Logan cut him off. "I have a gun, a wife who has an unnatural obsession with tasers, and a reputation as the son of a murdering jackass. You will never go near my daughter again. You so much as look at her, say a bad word to or about her, or happen to be within fifty feet of her when anything bad happens to her — I don't care if it's a freak lightening storm — you'll still be to blame, and I'll make sure your perfect little life becomes hell."

A part of Logan expected the little pimple of a boy to make a fight, to say, "Gee, Mister, you don't scare me!" but such was not the case. The pathetic kid looked at Logan with wide, fearful eyes.

"I swear, I didn't — I won't —!"

"Shut-up," Logan repeated. Winters clamped his mouth shut.

"You want to drink, go ahead, kid. But the moment you start reaching for girls who don't want to be reached for — that's when you cross the line. Cross it again and you'll see how your pretty little self fares in Neptune prison. Or worse. Got it?"

Sam Winters nodded wordlessly.

"Have a nice day, then. And remember — I'll be watching."

When Logan left the parking lot, he smiled at the spot from which a BMW had been taken to the impound lot and turned into a nice, shiny cube by an angry but useful Mexican man. As he turned down the road, he settled his mind on his new task: he was going to spend a little quality time with one Lianne Mars.

A/N: This chapter was a little choppy, but I wanted to get the different POVs in. For those of you who saw what was coming concerning Sam, hats off to you. The story has almost come to an end, though there is still a little bit more important background to be revealed; I hope you're excited to see how it all comes together! Please review : ) It makes my day!

Fic: Truth Be Told, part 7

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:42:41 GMT

She hadn't wanted to go, not really, but as those sorts of thing go, she was happy once she arrived. She had been so caught up in her own troubles for the past few months that she hadn't been paying much attention to anyone and it was good to rejoin the rest of the world. Marlie had never been a big partier, but with a father who wrote screenplays and best-selling books and was the son of a murdering actor, she was always invited to every 09er party.

Her mother had never liked that fact, but Marlie had never cared less in her life than she did now. And it was rather nice, really, getting to go to a party and not having Veronica around to give her yet another lecture on not accepting drinks from anyone and always keeping an eye open and taking that pepper spray I got you and this and that and this and that. . . .

Marlie was not stupid enough to get herself into whatever horrible thing Veronica was always so sure would happen.

The best part of the evening, however, was not the chance to get all of her family problems off her mind or getting to catch up with her friends or not having Veronica around to ruin the night. No, the best part was Sam Winters. He had moved to Neptune the previous year and was put in Marlie's trig class. She had fallen for him immediately.

She had dated boys before; she had even come close to having a serious boyfriend, but Logan Echolls had nipped that one in the bud before anything really came of the relationship. But something was different about Sam. Most of the boys at Neptune who were good-looking were also complete idiots or complete jerks. Sam was perfect as far as looks went and he was smart and sweet.

She had found herself shy around him, something she hadn't thought possible considering her parents were the least shy people ever. Now, though, Marlie wondered: was shyness genetic? And did that mean that maybe Lianne was shy? Was that why Marlie was shy? But she wasn't really shy . . . just around Sam Winters.

"Sam's looking at you again," Amy murmured, her voice both delighted and teasing. Marlie only shushed her.

"Don't let him catch you staring at him, then!" she said, blushing and hoping people assumed it was from the heat of the crowded room. She had bumped into Sam at the start of the night and they'd talked briefly. It was the first time they'd really spoken outside of school. And though they'd gone off in different directions, he'd been staring at her all night. Marlie was thrilled.

It was nice to feel normal again.

A little past midnight he finally approached her again. "Hey Marlie," he greeted, smiling. He had the bluest eyes she'd ever seen. She had blue eyes and she'd always liked them, but her eyes had nothing on his. Nothing.

"Hi Sam," she said, smiling and trying hard not to blush.

"Tim and Riley are both too drunk so I'm giving them rides home," he told her, "but I was kind of hoping I could ask you something before I go."

"What's that?" she asked casually, her heart hammering.

"You got a boyfriend?" The way his blue eyes seemed to smile at her only made her heart beat faster.

"Nah," she answered, painfully maintaining the casualness of the conversation. "Why?" she continued, biting back her nervousness as she added playfully, "Interested?"

He leaned close to her and pressed a kiss on her cheek, murmuring into her ear so closely that she could feel his warm breath, "Definitely."

When she arrived back at Lianne's a few hours later with Amy, she had been all giggles. He had left her a moment after that one whispered word, and the rest of the night had been a blur. She was sure it was only a matter of time before they went out.

Staring at the darkness of the living room, a part of Marlie's good mood evaporated as thoughts of her family and her new, upside-down life flushed through her once more. She wondered what it would have been like to come home to Veronica and Logan after that party. They would have both still been awake to assure that she was still alive and all in one piece.

"It's a little late, isn't it?" Veronica would ask while Logan would frown, perhaps saying softly, "How was it?" They would stare at her with a mixture of suspicion and fear, as if she were going to tell them something terrible. Maybe they wouldn't care that much, or maybe her dad wouldn't, because he usually wasn't too bad, but maybe. . . .

It didn't matter. No one was awake now.

A part of her was happy about that. She was responsible. She wasn't going to get herself killed at some party. She went up to her room, got ready for bed, and fell onto the mattress thinking to herself that it was nice living with an adult who trusted her.

But was it wrong that a part of her was a little sad, too?

The next afternoon Marlie picked Ben and Jason up from school. She called her mom on the way and asked permission. Veronica had given it in a clipped tone. Marlie had tried not to care; she took Ben and Jason to ice cream. It didn't go well. They were in such a good mood, so happy to get ice cream and see her, but they couldn't stop asking again and again, "When are you coming home?"

"How about Katherine?" suggested Logan, "Katie, for short?"

Veronica didn't reply.

"Katie Echolls. That's cute. What do you think? Veronica?"

"Hmm?" Veronica asked, looking at him rather distractedly.

Logan sighed and Veronica realized he was probably annoyed with her. They were sitting in the living room trying to make some crucial decisions concerning the baby, as she was now more than eight months along, but she couldn't help but be distracted. All she could think about was Marlie. It had been weeks since her daughter had left her.

Had left her.

How could she do that? She had told Veronica that it was what she deserved, that if Veronica were in her place, she'd want the same thing. But that wasn't true! Back in high school Veronica hadn't demanded to move in with Jake Kane! She had loved her father no matter what, even if he wasn't her real father. Because . . . because he was her real father, biological or not.

Was it wrong for her to want Marlie to feel the same way concerning her?

"Veronica!"

Veronica's eyes snapped back to Logan's face. She had gotten distracted again. "I'm sorry," she sighed. "I'm just. . . ."

"Thinking about Marlie?" Logan finished for her knowingly.

"Is that a crime?" Veronica snapped. Logan chuckled softly, looking away. Veronica immediately felt bad. Logan had been nothing but good to her these last few months. She knew everything with Marlie was killing him, but he had stood by her. And during that one fight . . . well, he hadn't exactly been right, had he? She'd talked to Marlie, and nothing good had come of it. Still, he was trying.

"Not Katie," Veronica told him. "It's too common."

"Jason and Ben are common names," Logan pointed out. "You didn't have a problem with them."

"Veronica and Marlene aren't common names," Veronica countered.

"Sweetie, honey, darling, dear," he said, leaning towards her as if about to tell a great secret, "you didn't pick either of those names."

Veronica snorted, rolling her eyes dramatically and telling him breezily, "Psh, details." He only shook his head, smiling, and pressed a kiss to her forehead before leaning back in his seat.

"So do you have any not common suggestions?" he asked lazily.

"I want Alicia to be the middle name," Veronica told him.

"Shocker," he replied. She frowned.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means Marlene Mackenzie and Jason Wallace and Benjamin Keith have set a, what's the word now? Precedent. Middle names chosen after loved ones is your specialty, sugarpuss," he said.

"And once again, I repeat: is that a crime?" she asked, this time with a teasing note in her voice.

"Of course not. But why not use names of loved ones for first names, too? How about we have another Veronica? Because God knows we need another Veronica,” he told her, all seriousness. “We can call her Little V. She’ll be inspiring hatred left and right.”

Veronica made a cutesy face at him. “Yeah, hon, that sounds great. We’ll call her twin brother Little Logan.”

“But now that might get confusing for you,” he said, clucking his tongue. “There’s already a Little Logan in your life, Missy. He caused your current state, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“You mean this?” she asked, indicating her balloon of a stomach. “How do you know he did that?” she questioned conversationally.

“He better have,” Logan replied with a slight growl. Veronica only laughed.

“But of course Little Logan isn’t a part of my life right now,” she went on, “considering I’m a ways into my third trimester.”

“Little Logan can wait,” he replied smoothly.

“See, now, I’ve heard differently before. . . .”

When Ben came into the room and found them kissing, he made a face. “Ew, stop it!” he protested. “Cooties are contagious!” he exclaimed.

As they separated, Veronica told him, mockingly outraged, “You can’t get cooties from your parents!”

“Yeah, you can!” he told her earnestly. “Hannah says so!”

“Hannah says so?” repeated Logan, his voice in awe.

“Yeah!” Ben assured.

“Wait a minute,” said Veronica, “how do you know Hannah didn’t give you cooties?”

“‘Cause she gave me the cootie shot so we could be friends, Mommy, duh,” he answered.

“Well maybe you should have the cootie shot again,” Logan told him, “so that you can be friends with us, too.”

“We’ve already had the cootie shot,” Veronica added. “Twice, in fact. So we’re extra protected.”

“You don’t need it twice,” Ben told them matter-of-factly.

“Did Hannah say that?” asked Logan. “I bet it’s just because she hasn’t had it twice.” Veronica nodded enthusiastically in agreement. Ben seemed to consider, and after a moment he marched up to his mother and stuck his arm out to her.

“Do it,” he told her bravely.

“Magic word?” she asked. “These things aren’t easy, you know.”

“Please do it?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Okay,” Veronica nodded solemnly, taking his arm in her hands, “Circle, circle, dot, dot,” she said, tracing the shapes on his arm, “now you’ve got your cootie shot. Circle, circle, square, square, now you’ve got it everywhere.”

“Thanks!” Ben said cheerfully.

“You’re very welcome,” Veronica replied, smiling at him as he skipped out of the room again, probably already having forgotten why he came downstairs in the first place. As she watched him go, though, she couldn’t help but think of the last time she’d administered the cootie shot. It hadn’t been for Jason. He’d never been too concerned about cooties.

It had been for Marlie.

That seemed so long ago. It was so long ago.

“We can get a list of celebrities’ names for children. There would be some less than boring ones for you,” Logan suggested, drawing Veronica away from her nostalgic thoughts.

“Sure, sure, little Tangerine Echolls will get along with the other kids really well.”

“Which celebrity named her kid Tangerine?”

“I don’t know; I’m sure one of them has,” Veronica told him. “Besides, we can’t be complete copy cats and call her Apple, can we?”

“Good point.”

There was a soft moment of silence. Veronica’s thoughts started to wander. . . . She had given Marlie everything. She had told her enough about her own past to keep Marlie from the same horrors but she hadn’t told her enough to jade her. She had always made sure she knew she was loved and cared for and . . . and it hadn’t been good enough.

“You could always talk to her,” Logan said. It took Veronica a moment to pull herself away from her thoughts and process what he said. “There’s so much she doesn’t know, Veronica. She doesn’t know about Lianne leaving you the first time and —”

“We’ve told her,” Veronica interrupted. “And we already had this conversation.”

“We’ve told her but we haven’t explained anything. She’s old enough to hear it. To hear all of it.”

“Oh, is that so?” Veronica asked angrily. “Should we tell her about you smashing in my headlights? Should we tell her about that whole little rape thing? She would —?”

“Don’t do that,” he cut her off. She looked away from his gaze. It wasn’t as simple as he made it out to be. “She can’t understand what she doesn’t know. She’s only a kid.”

“I dealt with paternity issues when I was a kid,” Veronica countered.

“Do you really want Marlie to have to deal with all the things you dealt with?” Veronica didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. He was right: she would never want Marlie to deal with any of the things she herself had faced. But. . . .

“If you don’t want to talk to her about it,” Logan finally went on, his voice soft, “can you talk to me about it?” Veronica frowned, looking at him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . do you know . . . do you know who her biological father is?” He was staring at the far wall.

“I told you that —”

“I know you don’t know for sure, but I also know you have a guess,” he said, looking at her again. “We have to know, Veronica. If Lianne is back, what if the father shows up, too? What if I lose my rights to her?”

“That would never happen!” Veronica protested, alarmed at the thought.

“When you adopted Marlie you had to terminate Lianne’s rights to her, didn’t you?” he asked knowingly. “But you never did that for whoever the unknown father was, did you?”

Veronica was silent for a minute. “I think . . . I think it’s Jake Kane.” She’d never said that aloud before. “He’s her greatest weakness.” Logan didn’t have a response. “So . . . Tangerine? Or Clementine?” Veronica asked, giving a weak smile. She hoped Logan would accept the subject change; she couldn’t stand to talk about it all for another minute.

“Well,” Logan said, wrapping an arm around her, “whatever we name her, she’s going to know we love her.”

“Not if we name her Tangerine, she won’t,” Veronica told him.

“No, she’ll know,” he insisted, leaning close and murmuring, “the same way she knows.”

“I did it,” Veronica declared.

Logan looked up from the box he had just finished packing. “You did what?” he asked. She didn’t answer. Her eyes were scanning the Grand, which was currently filled to the brim with haphazard stacks of all his worldly possessions and boxes, some empty, some full, and some on their way from empty to full.

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked him, frowning slightly.

“I’m moving out of the Grand,” he told her.

“And going where?” she insisted. How come he hadn’t told her about this?

“I bought a house. It’ll be cheaper in the long run and it’s closer to the beach,” he said.

“You bought a beach house?” she asked. She really should have known about this.

“You could call it that,” he answered, and his voice had taken on a tone of wariness, as if he could sense that she was not pleased with what he was saying.

“And when did you buy this house?” she questioned, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, officer, I signed the papers last Saturday. I started searching for houses over two months ago, though, and I promise I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And as for the time of the murder, I was at the Wal-Mart so my alibi is air tight.”

“Why are you joking about this?” Veronica exclaimed. “You bought a house, Logan!”

“Yeah, ah, I just told you that, so if I’m supposed to be surprised —”

“How could you buy a house and not tell me?” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “This is the sort of thing you tell me, Logan! I’m your girlfriend!”

“I just did tell you!” he said.

“You should have told me before you bought the house!” she snapped.

“I wanted it to be a surprise!” he finally yelled. “I wanted to get partially moved in and take you there on Sunday night and show it to you. Is that really so horrible? Can’t I try and surprise my girlfriend?” She didn’t say anything immediately and he took the chance to get everything out.

“Look, I can’t live in the Grand anymore. It’s a waste of money and it’s . . . I want a real home. School is out and I have nothing to do this summer. I figured this would be a good time to settle into a real house. When junior year starts up in a few months I’ll be all ready. I bought the house on the up and up; I did the hunting for it myself and everything. You have nothing to be angry about.”

“You bought a house,” she said, sighing. He nodded. “I’m sorry I got a little . . . upset,” she told him, “I just . . . I like being in on big changes in your life.”

“Understandable,” he said. “But like I said: it was supposed to be a surprise, Veronica.”

“Okay,” she swallowed, nodding.

“Okay,” he agreed. It was awkwardly quiet for a moment. “So . . . what did you do?” he finally prompted.

She frowned. “What?”

“When you came in here just earlier,” he said, “you said —”

“Oh, right, yeah, I officially adopted Marlie. I signed the papers and everything.”

“That’s great!” Logan exclaimed, smiling.

Veronica returned the smile. “It’s weird. She’s been ours all along, really, all these months, but now it’s official. If Lianne ever does come back, she can’t take her away. Marlie’s ours.”

“Do you think . . . do you think she ever will? Come back, I mean?”

Veronica looked away before she answered. “Probably not,” she said. “I think she would have come back by now if she were planning on it. If she does come back it’ll be because she needs money or something.” Logan nodded in understanding and it was quiet for a moment again.

“So,” he said as she began to pick through his stuff and he started packing up again, “are you her actual legal guardian or did you work out everything with your dad?”

“I’m her actual legal guardian,” Veronica answered. “It’s okay, really. Dad will help me raise her no matter what. And, honestly . . . after I graduate and I’m living on my own I’ll probably — I think I — I’ll want Marlie with me. So it makes sense.”

They had intended to have Keith adopt Marlie. He had been more than willing and Alicia had understood as well. But it wasn’t that easy. Keith wasn’t exactly rolling in the cash, he didn’t have a lifestyle conducive to children — according to the government, anyway — and he would be a single father who wasn’t a relative of the child.

But Veronica was a relative. Even if she was much less qualified to take on the legal guardianship of a child, she was the one who could, with a simple signature, make Marlie her own. It had taken a lot of research and a lot of time with Cliff, but this was what they had finally settled on. Veronica would be Marlie’s legal guardian, plain and simple.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Logan, taping shut a box and pushing it aside as he grabbed an empty one with which to start fresh.

“What I’ve gotten myself into,” Veronica admitted honestly. “I can’t believe I’m responsible for a kid now. . . . I’m not even twenty-one years old yet.”

“You’ve been taking care of her for months,” Logan said. “It’s not like anything’s really changed, right?”

“I know,” she said, shrugging slightly. “Still, it’s . . . it’s weird.” He nodded. “I guess I’ll never get to go wild in college, huh?” She gave a small smile.

“Well, let’s see,” Logan said, standing up and starting to tick off fingers. “You spent some time in prison, you got to know all the boys in a Frat house, oh, and there was that whole sex tape thing, too.” He smirked at her.

“Point made,” she told him, rolling her eyes. He watched her for a minute but she didn’t meet his gaze as she started to fold clothing to put in a box. So much had changed for her and for them in the last few months. She felt she knew him better than ever before. For the first time he was truly involved in her life. He knew her father so well it was sometimes annoying: they had their own running jokes now, to her outrage. He even had dinner at their house two or three times a week. He had actually started spending time with Wallace without Veronica, and he probably saw as much of Marlie as Veronica did.

All of a sudden she felt his arms wrap around her as he came to stand behind her. “I love you,” he murmured.

“You better,” she replied, so proud of herself for not shrinking from those words the way she once had. There were not many people Veronica could count on in her life; in fact, there were not many people Veronica even liked in her life, but she had long ago accepted that in addition to her dad, Wallace, and Mac, Logan was one of those people too.

It certainly took her long enough.

“And I was thinking,” he went on.

“Thinking?” she repeated. “Was it hard?”

“Actually, it wasn’t so bad,” he replied. “I might have been avoiding it all these years for no reason. Crazy, isn’t it?”

“Very,” she agreed.

“So, anyway,” he continued, “I was thinking about Marlie and you . . . and me, and I sort of have an idea.”

“You sort of have an idea? What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve been thinking about this for a long time but I’m still not sure how you’re going to take it. I’m going to say it, though. But don’t get all worked up. Don’t run away or anything.”

She turned around, slightly concerned. What was he getting at? “I’m not going to run away. . . .”

“I know you,” he said, “and you’re going to want to flee the moment I say it.”

“Then should you really say it?” she asked, wondering suddenly if he was going to ask her to marry him. Oh, God. That was it. He was about to ask her to marry him. She couldn’t believe this. Things had been going well, yes, but marriage? They were way too young to be married!

“Veronica,” he began, “how would you like to —?”

“No,” she said, walking away from him and starting in on another box. They weren’t even going to have this conversation. “It’s not a good idea, Logan. It’s not. It’s too soon. We’re too young.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet!” he protested.

“I know what you’re going to say and the answer is no.”

“So you’re not even going to hear me out?” he asked. She paused, taking her time.

“No.”

“Veronica, just listen!”

“No.”

When he opened his mouth to say something more she started for the bedroom. She could not have this conversation. How could he even bring it up? He had to know she would react this way; he had to. He followed after her.

“It’s not like I’m asking you to marry me or anything!” he yelled. She stopped walking away and turned to face him with a frown. “What?” he said, obviously frustrated.

“You’re . . . you’re not?”

He stared. “You thought I was asking you to marry me?” He looked so incredulous that she felt herself starting to blush. It hadn’t been that crazy of a thought, had it?

“Well . . . yes!” she admitted, feeling suddenly defensive.

“Veronica, much as I would like to marry you, we’re still in college. And there is no way either of us is ready to be married.”

“I know,” she said, “obviously.”

“And I know that you know,” he told her. “I wasn’t planning on asking you to marry me. And, trust me, if I were, it wouldn’t have been like this. Give me some credit, will you?”

“But then what were you . . . ?”

“I wanted to know if you wanted to move in with me,” he told her. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t guessed that. Of course he would think that; he had bought a house. Why wouldn’t he want her and Marlie to move in with him?

“Logan,” she said slowly, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea either. . . .”

“Why not?” he immediately demanded. “That way you and Marlie would be out of your dad’s hair so he could spend some actual quality time with Alicia, and if Mrs. Navarro comes to work for me she can look after Marlie when we both have classes.”

He made good points, but still. . . .

“Do you really think we’re ready to move in together?” she asked him. “And do you really think you could handle Marlie all day, every day?”

“I spend nearly all day, every day with Marlie as it is,” he replied, not even batting an eyelash. “And as for me and you . . . yeah, I do think we’re ready. I want this, Veronica, and it’s smart, too. You can’t live with your dad forever. He has his own life. Besides, if you and Marlie don’t move in with me then Mrs. Navarro will have to keep cleaning your apartment and I have to go find a new cleaning lady for the beach house and, let me tell you, hiring help is not one of my many strong points.”

“But I really don’t think. . . .”

“Just think about it, okay?” he asked. “It’s an open-ended offer. Anytime you want to move in with me, you’re welcome to. And if it helps, I took cooking classes. That was part of the surprise. I’ll still cook you dinner when I show you the house, but it’s not going to be a surprise anymore, obviously.”

“You . . . you took cooking classes?”

He nodded. “If I decide to sign up for glass-blowing classes, strap me to some train tracks, please.”

“So you bought a house and took cooking classes and . . . is there anything else I don’t know?” She didn’t expect there to be more. There was more.

“Your dad thinks it’s a good idea, which actually surprised me because I thought he would —”

“You talked to my dad about this?!”

He only grinned at her. “Just think about it. Take however long you need. When you want to move in with me, I’ll be waiting.” Veronica nodded. There wasn’t anything else to say.

The rest of the summer passed slowly, and though she helped him pick out furniture for his new house, helped him christen every room, and even helped him sharpen his surprisingly not bad cooking skills, he didn’t bring up moving in with him again until the summer was coming to an end.

She still said no; he still told her to think on it. Junior year began and everything was routine. Marlie even started talking, much to Veronica’s delight. It was around Christmas when it happened. Logan was over at the apartment playing on the ground with Marlie while Veronica made dinner and Keith read the mail.

She blamed it on Keith constantly asking Veronica, “Who’s your daddy?” But she never did understand how Marlie made the mistake. A part of her wondered if maybe Logan had . . . but he never admitted to it. She had read that children usually say particular words because parents encourage the sound, and no one, as far as Veronica knew, had encouraged Marlie to make that particular sound to that particular person.

But she did.

Logan got up to look at something in Sports Illustrated that Keith wanted to show him. Logan had gotten Keith the subscription for his birthday, and Veronica secretly loved watching the two most important men in her life bond over it even though she had never really pinned either of them as a sports lover.

Marlie did not enjoy the loss of attention, however. She started to pout. No one noticed. She reached out her chubby little arms, whining in the back of her throat. No one noticed. She wiggled, kicking a Barbie with her foot. No one noticed.

“Da!” she shouted.

Everyone noticed.

“What did she just say?” asked Logan.

“Who was she talking to?” asked Keith.

Veronica went over and picked her up. That wasn’t good enough for Marlie. She wiggled in Veronica’s arms, still reaching her tiny hands out and repeating insistently, “Da!” It was clear she was talking to Logan.

Veronica and Marlie moved into Logan’s house a month later.

“Could I ask you something?” she began hesitantly one night. She had been growing more and more curious, and she couldn’t help herself any longer.

“Of course, honey,” Lianne answered, smiling as she took a sip of sparkling cider. Dinner tonight was as fancy as it always was; Lianne didn’t work, and it afforded her plenty of free time. Marlie wondered how she had gotten the money, but it wasn’t what she wanted to know most of all.

“Why did you leave my father?”

Lianne froze, and Marlie was irresistibly reminded of the way Veronica had frozen all those months ago when Marlie had brought up the topic of sisters. “Your father,” Lianne repeated slowly.

“Yeah,” Marlie nodded. “I just wanted to know . . . something about him, is all.”

Lianne slowly put down her knife and fork. “His name was Craig Olsen,” Lianne began. “I dated him in college. At the time I had just broken up with my high school boyfriend and I was upset . . . I was a mess, really. Craig made me forget about, well, everything. He wasn’t good for me, though; he drank a lot and he was failing out of school. . . .”

There was silence for a minute, but Marlie was too afraid to break the flow of information by saying anything. It was just a pause; any moment Lianne would go on. . . .

“I left him for Keith,” Lianne continued at last, to Marlie’s relief. “Keith was . . . he was the perfect man,” she finished, smiling warmly and finally let her gaze land on Marlie. “But you know that. I’m sure you love him very much.”

“I do,” Marlie admitted quietly.

“I messed up that, though, as you know. After I was on my own again . . . around the time Veronica graduated from high school, I . . . I ran into Craig again. He had just gotten divorced, too, and he was so. . . . He made me forget, just like before. It was weak and it was wrong, but I was weak and I had done a lot of wrong, too, so. . . .”

Slowly, Lianne began eating again. Marlie waited for more. There had to be more. There had to be. “I moved in with him,” Lianne said after a few minutes. Marlie nodded, desperate to hear the rest. “He hadn’t been drinking for years and he had a steady job and he was . . . he offered the comfort and security I had missed for so long. He listened to me when I talked about how much I missed Veronica and he . . . he could be really sweet, your father.”

She swallowed the rest of her meat loaf and took a long sip of cider. Marlie opened her mouth to ask for more, to ask about Lianne getting pregnant, but she didn’t have to. Once again, slowly, softly, Lianne went on.

“But it turned out that he was with me for the money I had,” she said, so quietly that Marlie had to strain to hear her. A voice in her head, one that sounded suspiciously like Veronica, murmured darkly, Money you stole from Keith and Veronica. Marlie ignored the voice.

“He started drinking again and . . . and when I found out I was pregnant, I was afraid. I didn’t want him to hurt the baby — hurt you — the way he had hurt me.” Lianne was staring determinedly at the table cloth. It took Marlie a moment to process what she had just been told.

“He . . . hurt you?” Marlie whispered. Lianne looked up from the table with wet lashes.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she assured, forcing a smile as she reached out and grabbed Marlie’s hand in her own. “I left him and I ended up with Keith and Veronica, and they took care of both of us. I wasn’t very strong, but I was strong enough to get you away from him.”

Marlie had meant to ask more. She had meant to ask if her father had known about her; she had intended to ask where he was now. She had wanted to ask why Lianne had left her; she had wondered if Lianne had gone back to her father after leaving Marlie with Keith and Veronica. But the news that her father, her biological father, had hurt her mother. . . .

“It’s okay,” Marlie said, smiling at Lianne. “I understand.”

The rest of dinner passed in silence.

As she lay in bed that night, she grew angry. Veronica had always spoken ill of Lianne, but she had no idea what Lianne had been through! Had she even thought to ask, when Lianne was pregnant, about the father? Had she wondered why Lianne had run to them scared and alone? Probably not, Marlie thought viciously.

What kept her awake more than her anger, however, was her horror. Her father, her own flesh and blood, the man from whom she had come, had. . . . It was impossible. It had to be. She tried to imagine what he looked like. Everything her mind conjured was . . . unpleasant, to say the least.

It was 12:17 when Marlie called him on his cell. His voicemail picked up. She listened to his peppy little message, wondering if she should hang up. But she couldn’t. When the beep sounded, she let out a deep breath.

“It’s me,” she said. “I’m just calling to say . . . I don’t know. I just wanted to talk to you or something, I guess. I shouldn’t have called. Never mind.” She was silent for a minute, feeling like an idiot. But before she hung up the phone, ending the inane message, she whispered tearfully, “I love you, Daddy.”

Because he was her father; he was. She was Marlie Echolls, and Logan Echolls was, always had been, and always would be her father, and that was all that mattered.

A/N: This chapter was sort of Daddy-orientated and I hope you enjoyed it! I'm sorry it took a little longer to post. My sister set up a new firewall on my laptop and it messed up all of my documents! I was lucky enough to save this story, but it had all sorts of spacing issues I had to work out before I could post. Hopefully now I'll be able to get the last few chapters up at a chapter-a-day pace. :)

Fic: Truth Be Told, part 6

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:15:50 GMT

Title: Truth Be Told
Author: monroeslittle
Genre: Veronica Mars
Rating: Teen (for later implications and such)
Summary: Marlie Echolls has as many doubts as any other sixteen-year-old girl. One thing she never doubted, however, was who her parents were. At least she didn't until a woman knocked on her grandfather's door and dropped the bombshell. Logan/Veronica; future fic.

“Do you want something to drink . . . maybe?” she offered hesitantly. He shook his head. She nervously flattened her hair. “Well . . . maybe something to eat? I can make you —”

“How long are you back for, Lianne?” he asked, cutting to the chase. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to spend an afternoon that could be spent making money or with Alicia or with Veronica here, with the ex-wife who’d torn him to pieces years ago, trying to gauge her end game.

But he didn’t have a choice. Obviously, his last visit hadn’t been effective.

“Keith. . . .”

“I came over here weeks ago and you said that it was a mistake to try and see Marlie,” he said. “You said that you didn’t want to throw her life into chaos. You said that you had moved here a year ago because it was cheaper here than San Diego. You said that she wasn’t part of the decision. But, honestly, Lianne, I’m not really buying that any more.”

“I wasn’t lying to you, Keith, I wasn’t,” Lianne immediately defended. “That was why I moved here. And going to your house that night — it was completely spur of the moment! I really did mean to keep out of it after that. But she called me, Keith! How could I say no to her?”

“Probably the same way you left her in a hotel room sixteen years ago,” he replied. She looked away from him, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Why can no one forgive me? I made a mistake, okay? I made a lot of mistakes, I know.” She faced him again, her face pleading. But I’m trying, here! I’m trying as hard as I can! But no matter how much time passes and no matter how hard I try, you and Veronica never seem to care!” Keith only stared, sighing.

She turned away, fishing out a pack of cigarettes from a nearby drawer and lighting one up. She smoked for a minute, leaning against the kitchen counter with her hand tightly gripping the edge and her eyes closed. She looked so much older.

“I still have it, you know,” he finally said. Her eyes flickered open.

“Have what?” she asked softly.

“The note you left. Veronica threw it out, but I went back and rescued it from the trash. I kept it. I thought maybe Marlie would want to see it when we . . . when we decided it was time for her to know the truth.” She didn’t say anything. He didn’t need her to. He took the folded, yellowing paper from his pocket, unfolded it and smoothed it out, laying it on the kitchen table.

She stared at it.

“Do you remember what you wrote?” he asked. When she didn’t say anything, he began to read aloud. “Dear Keith and Veronica, I know this isn’t the best way to do this, but it is the only way I can. I want to be better than this. I want to be better than I am. But I can’t. I’m not.”

“You don’t have to — to read it,” Lianne protested softly.

Keith didn’t heed her. “No matter how hard I try, this is all I am, and I know that you both deserve better; I know that you demand better. I’m sorry. I tried to leave you to live your own lives separate from me. I wanted to raise this baby on my own without burdening you. But I can’t do it. I’ve already used up what money I had and I have no idea how much longer I’ll be able to stay sober. I’m sorry. It would be better for her to have you as her family, not me. She deserves you as I do not. Please don’t deny her that because of what I am and what I’m not. I’m sorry.”

“Keith,” Lianne said, her voice a whisper.

“Wait, wait, I’m getting to the best part,” he told her. “I really do love her and both of you. For as long as I live, you’ll always be my family and I wish only the best for all of you. Love, Lianne.”

There was silence then as he finally looked away from the old, fading cursive hand-writing and at the woman to whom that hand-writing belonged. “If you only want the best for us, why is my family falling apart because of you? Why is Veronica crying herself to sleep every night? Why is Marlie running away every other day?”

Lianne shook her head, looking away from him determinedly.

“I understand that you want to get to know your daughter, Lianne,” he said softly. “But if you truly loved her, you wouldn’t be doing this to her. Or to her sister.”

“I’m not doing anything to her!” Lianne defended. “I — you have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for her! I have done the best I can, and no one will . . . no one understands.” Keith said nothing. There was pity rising in him. There was no way not to pity her. How had she become this woman? How had things changed so much?

“How long are you here for, Lianne?” he finally asked again. “How long are you staying this time? That’s all I want to know.”

“I’m staying for good,” she answered him. “I’ve been saving money for years and I bought this house. I’m staying for good.” She said it firmly, bravely, fiercely.

He met her courageous gaze. “Did you save the money or did you get it from your husband when he died?” The color drained from her face at his question. There. She wasn’t expecting him to know that. He had discovered her second marriage; he had finally found out the vital piece of information that had been hidden for so long.

“I — I . . . don’t —”

“When you came to me all those years ago, pregnant, saying you had made a mistake, saying that there was no where for you to turn, I took you in,” Keith said, ignoring her stuttering. “I found out that you had been living with Craig and that he was probably the father, but I didn’t do anything about that fact. I didn’t confront you. I didn’t tell Veronica. But —!”

“I didn’t get a penny from Craig!” Lianne insisted, interrupting. “He was trailer trash. He was . . . I saved the money, Keith. I’m here all on my own. His death was just . . . How do you even know? What gives you the right to — to dig into my past like that?”

“What gives me the right?” Keith repeated. “Perhaps it’s the fact that you’re the mother of my daughter and her daughter? Perhaps it’s the fact that my entire family is suffering because of you?” he said, standing up in his anger.

“It’s not my fault if things are. . . . She called me. She called me. She wants to get to know me. She’s the one person in my life who can forgive me for all the mistakes I’ve made. And you can’t blame me for wanting to make up those mistakes to her, to the one person who. . . . I know I’ve ruined everything with you and Veronica, but you can’t take Marlene from me. You can’t.”

Keith said nothing. He turned away from her and started out of the house. When he glanced back at her, she wasn’t trying to stop him or say anything. She was simply lighting another cigarette. “I remember Craig,” he told her. She stared at him. “You dated him in college before we met. When I found out you were having an affair, I thought it was him before I learned it was Jake.” He paused. “He was the one who’s girlfriend putting a restraining order on him around the same time we got married. You sure know how to pick ‘em.”

“I picked you,” she said softly.

“But I wasn’t what you really wanted. I never was.”

And he walked away without looking back this time.

“I want to talk to you about something.”

No one responded to her announcement. Jason was spending the night at a friend’s house; Ben was trying to sneak his peas to B.J. without anyone noticing. Her mother didn’t even bat an eyelash. The closest thing she got to a response was the slight stiffening of her father’s back. She hadn’t talked to either of them in nearly two weeks, not since that disastrous fight, and they obviously were wary of what she would say.

They couldn’t hold this against her, though; they couldn’t.

“I’ve made a decision, and I hope you respect it, because it’s what I want. I think it’s what I deserve. And I think it would be best for all of us. I know that you can say no, but I’m asking please to let me do this.”

“Ben,” Veronica said softly, “it’d be easier to flush the peas down the toilet.”

Ben looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

“I’d use the upstairs bathroom if I were you,” Logan recommended. “It’s less temperamental.”

“Really?” Ben asked, looking rather confused.

“Just this once,” Veronica said. When he hesitated, she added, “act now on this special offer; it wouldn’t come around again.” Ben looked back and forth between his mother and father before gathering his peas onto a napkin and racing up the stairs. Veronica smiled after him for a moment. Her smile disappeared when she faced Marlie again.

“What do you want?” Logan asked softly, putting down his fork.

Suddenly they were both staring at her. Marlie swallowed. She had made her decision. This is what she wanted. She had already told Lianne she was going to ask. There was no backing out now.

“I want to move in with Lianne.”

Veronica pushed back her chair and stood up. “Veronica,” Logan began softly. Ignoring him, she walked out of the room. A moment later Marlie heard the front door open and slam closed again. And Veronica thought that she was immature. Marlie looked at her father.

"This is your hard for your mother," her father said softly.

"I can tell," Marlie replied dryly. It was quiet for a moment.

“Was it her idea or yours?” he asked.

“Hers. But I . . . I really want to do this, Dad. I want a chance to get to know her. It’s not fair that I can’t have that. I know what you and Mom did was in my best interest and everything but . . . but I deserve the chance to get to know her.”

“What about school?”

“I’ll drive the extra miles,” Marlie told her. “If . . . if you’ll let me have the Honda.”

“I gave it to you, didn’t I?” he asked. Marlie nodded, waiting for him to say something more. “Marlie, I know we haven’t really talked about any of this . . . about your adoption and everything. Things haven’t been so good lately in this house. Your mom and I have just been . . . do you want to talk about it?”

“I do,” Marlie nodded, “but it won’t change my mind.” He stared down at his plate and she felt guild prickle her spine. How could he always do that to her? “I love you, Dad,” she told him, and he met her gaze again, “and I . . . I love Mom, too.” Those words came out more hesitantly. But they were true, really.

“But I,” she went on slowly, “I want to get to know Lianne. I think maybe this would be the best way. It’s not like I won’t see you and Mom at all or anything. I’ll still be in Neptune.”

It took him a little while to answer. She had always thought of all the people in her family he was the one who understood her best, the one with whom she was closest. How had they gone from that to . . . this? “This is really what you want?” he questioned. His brown gaze bore into her. “You want to leave us? You want to live with her?”

“Yes,” Marlie answered, and it came out as a whisper. He stood up, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “Dad?”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Move in with her.”

“Really?” She had expected more of a fight than that. She had expected shouting and tears and . . . more.

“We can’t force you to live with us if you don’t want to, Marlie.”

“I’m not saying that I don’t. . . .”

“It’s okay,” he told her. “If this is what you want, we’ll make it work.” He gave her an encouraging smile. The fact of the matter, however, was that as good as her dad was at writing screenplays and best selling novels, the man was not an actor. He was nothing close. And the smile he gave her didn’t reach his eyes.

Before she could say anything he was gone. He had left the room. She heard him climbing the stairs, probably to check on Ben. Marlie looked around the empty kitchen.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," she said. She had meant to say that. She had planned to say that.

But now there was no one was there to hear her.

Ben ran into her room. His pajamas were a little too small for him but he refused to let anyone buy him new ones. He had a ratty rocket-ship blanket with him, one that Grandma Alicia had gotten him when he was a baby.

Marlie knew why he was there. It was a shock the whole house hadn't come tumbling down at this point, her parents were shouting so loudly. Any minute the neighbors were going to call the police about a domestic dispute.

"Come here, Benny," Marlie whispered, inviting her little brother to join her in her bed. He looked relieved and crawled eagerly under the covers before wrapping his little arms around her. She smiled down at him.

"YOU'RE THE ONE THAT TOLD HER TO GO ON AND MOVE OUT OF THE HOUSE! YOU MIGHT AS WELL HAVE PACKED HER BAGS FOR HER!"

"Do you want to read a story?" Marlie asked him, as if she couldn't hear her mother shouting. Ben nodded. "The usual?" she said knowingly. He nodded. She fished out the Percy Jackson books from her bedside table. Her father had gotten them for her years ago but Jason and Ben had always been more attached to them; they were falling apart at this point, with yellowing pages and torn covers.

"I'M NOT THE ONE WHO NEEDS TO TALK TO HER!" Logan bellowed.

"Which one do you want to read?" Marlie asked. "The Titan's Curse? That's my favorite."

"Mine, too," Ben agreed. His favorite was always whichever one Marlie suggested first. It was adorable, really. He had once told her that his two favorite heroes were Percy Jackson and his mom. He was such a mama's boy.

"I'M DOING THE BEST I CAN!" Veronica screamed. A door slammed.

"Marlie, why are Mommy and Daddy fighting?" Ben asked, his eyes wide.

"Let's start at the beginning, okay?" Marlie said, opening the book and not answering. She knew the answer. But she couldn't deal with it. Because this fight . . . this fight was worse than any of the others. She hadn't realized it; she had thought her parents fought all the time.

But they didn't.

They bickered and argued but it never lasted more than day; the shouting never got too loud. The last time they had gotten in a fight remotely close to one this bad, she and Jason had been shipped to spend the weekend with the young couple that lived down the street in Virginia. On Sunday night Mr. Lewis went by their house to see how things were going.

When he came back, Marlie had heard him telling Mrs. Lewis that she and Jason had to stay another night because, "they were on the kitchen table, Sally! The table! I can't believe I had to see that!" Marlie hadn't known what that meant at the time. She wasn't sure if it meant her parents were fighting anymore or not.

Ben was born nine months later.

Maybe they had fought like this more often when she was little. She had hazy memories of such. But they had fought badly less and less over the years. This fight made all their squabbles over carpools and screenplays and even babies seem silly. They were better parents than ones who fought viciously in front of their children. They were better spouses than that.

At least, they had been, and she hadn't even realized it until now.

"Marlie?" Ben insisted. "Are they fighting because they don't love each other any more?"

"What?" Marlie said, looking down at him in alarm. The day her parents, as crazy as they were and as rocky as her relationship with them currently was, decided to split would be the day the world really came to a screeching halt.

"Jesse's parents stopped loving each other and now he only sees his daddy once a month. Am I only gonna see Daddy once a month?" He looked truly afraid.

"Mom and Dad still love each other, Ben, I promise you," she told him. "You're going to see them both every day for years and years. Okay?"

"But then why are they shouting?" Ben asked.

She looked away from him. "Because of me. They're fighting because of me."

“LOGAN ECHOLLS!” Veronica shouted, storming into the Grand.

Alarmed, he looked up from where he sat on the ground playing video games with Dick. “What’s up?” he asked frowning.

“What’s up?” she repeated viciously. “What’s UP?”

“Dude,” Dick exclaimed, his eyes still glued on the scream, “I just totally ripped your head off!” Her eyes flashing, Veronica stepped forward and ripped the x-box cord out of the wall. Dick let out a yell of protest.

“Scram!” Veronica replied angrily.

“Did you forget to take your happy pills, Mars?” Dick asked, grinning. The fact that he took her anger less and less seriously over the years was really starting to bug her.

“OUT!” Veronica yelled.

“Okay, okay, jeez!” Dick said, making a face at Logan as pushed himself to his feet and started for the door. “I hate it when you PMS.”

“Dick, I swear to God,” Veronica began threateningly.

“I’m gone, I’m gone,” he assured, and then he really was, disappearing out of the suite. Veronica looked back at Logan, who had gotten to his feet.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“What’s going on is that you are paying Mrs. Navarro to come by my house and do ALL the cleaning and cooking and I can’t kick her out without being mean and she keeps insisting she’s being paid, and then I found out you paid all the my mom’s hospital bills and you paid for the rest of my Hearst education and you set up a trust fund for Marlie!”

Logan stared at her. “To be honest, I expected you to figure it all out a while ago. Better be careful or they’re going to take your Nancy Drew badge away.” When she only stared at him, her jaw locked with indignation, he sighed and asked, “Is there a problem with my paying for any of that?”

“I DON’T NEED YOUR MONEY!” Veronica shouted at him angrily.

Three months ago she had agreed to let him pay Mrs. Navarro to clean the house twice a week. Since that time she had found herself running into him more and more often, as he suddenly seemed to think that being financially invested in her life he could once more be an actual part of her life. He had started helping her dad at the office, saying he needed to get some experience in the working world, and for the first time, Keith was actually starting to speak well of Logan. And he was always volunteering to babysit Marlie and. . . .

She was rather enjoying it, truth be told, and she couldn’t help but be touched by how much he liked playing with Marlie and how well he seemed to get along with her, but. . . . And suddenly Mrs. Navarro was coming around more and more often and doing more and more and then Keith was saying that all their money problems were disappearing and, damn him, that sneaky little —!

“Actually,” Logan said, not at all affected by her anger, “you kind of do. But don’t worry. I have plenty to go around.”

“You can’t do that, Logan! You can’t just —!”

“Why not?” he demanded, his calm demeanor gone in a flash. “Why can’t I help the few people I care about? I don’t have any family, Veronica. I don’t have anyone but you and Dick. What I do have is money. So I’m giving that to you. I don’t need it. And I want to help you. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Yes, there is,” Veronica insisted.

“Well, too bad!” Logan yelled. “You can’t do everything yourself! Let me help you! I’ve gotten attached to Marlie too and I don’t want to see you have to give her up! If that means paying for a few things, then okay! I’ll do it!”

“It’s not that simple,” Veronica told him.

“Because you won’t let it be,” he replied. “What are you so afraid of? Do you think I’m going to turn on you again? ‘Cause I hate to be the one to shatter all your ideas, Ronnie, but I’ve haven’t abandoned you at all in years. I was an ass back in high school, but with a father who beat me —,"

Veronica flinched at that; he spoke so rarely of that part of his life. But he just plowed right on, not seeming to care at his admission of weakness or her wincing response.

"— and a mom who drank and drank and then threw herself off a bridge and a girlfriend who got murdered, can you really blame me? But you know what? Fine, blame me. The fact is I’m not that bastard any more. I grew up. I slept with Madison, yeah, because the one person who meant anything to me was out of my life for what I thought was forever and I was drunk off my ass! I would have fucked anything that moved! That doesn’t mean I was betraying you!

“And it doesn’t mean I will betray you!

“I’ve been doing everything I can, Veronica. I’ve been going to all my classes; I’ve stopped drinking as much and I haven’t so much as looked at a girl in months. I’ve started helping your dad at the office and I actually like spending time with Marlie. What is it gonna take, Veronica?

“Why won’t you let me fucking help you?”

Veronica turned away from him. Every word out of his mouth was true. What was it about him that got her so riled up? Why did he bring out all the anger and bitterness in her? She turned to face him again. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly, crossing her arms over her chest defensively, “I just. . . .”

“You just don’t want someone like me, I get it, really,” Logan told her bitterly. “You can’t have me be a part of your life in any way, because if I am then it means the Pizs and Duncans of the world can’t be in your life, and that’s who you want, isn’t it? Whatever. I obviously can’t change that.”

She hated when he got self-deprecating like that. She hated it. Unable to stop herself, she told him furiously, “I wish it was that way. I wish that I wanted boys like Piz and Duncan. I wish I was the sort of girl that went with that sort of boy. But I’m not. Opposites don’t really attract. Piz called himself a lover. But I’m a fighter, Logan. I wish I could change it, but —”

“I thought you were proud of that fact,” he told her coldly. "Superwoman Veronica Mars to the rescue! Powers activate! The world needs me but I don't need anyone! Does your coat transform into a cape, Veronica? Be honest now — does it have a stripe?"

She shook her head. “You think you know me so well —” she began angrily.

“Oh, I do,” he told her, his eyes blazing. “That’s what you wish you could change. No one's supposed to really know you, no one's really supposed to care about you —!”

“No!” she exploded. “You don’t know me! And you don’t get it! I don’t want to be a fighter but I am! I wish I wasn’t but I am! I’ve tried so hard not to be. But I’m a fighter and you’re a fighter too and. . . .”

“And what?” he asked.

“And I’m afraid to be with you because loving you means admitting I’m a fighter and admitting that . . . admitting that means admitting I can’t control who I am and not being able to control who I am is the scariest fucking thing I’ve ever had to face!” The words poured out of her before she could stop them.

He stared at her and her at him, and for a moment the only sound was their harsh breathing. Their yells lingered in the air; their wounds were open and raw. And an instant before it happened, she knew it would, and she also knew there was no use pretending there was anything else she wanted in the world at that moment.

He ran at her, clutching her face in his hands and slamming his lips to hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck, sinking into him, into what was right and familiar and everything she had been too afraid to miss in all those months. He lifted her off the ground even as he began trailing kisses along her jaw.

“Saying you don’t want to love me really isn’t the most romantic thing in the world,” he told her between pants, even as they stumbled backwards towards his bedroom, “but I’ll take what I can get.”

She captured his mouth with hers again, desperate for more, and as her knees hit the bed and she folded onto it he came after her, his weight warm and right; her little hands slipped under his shirt, feeling his chest and his arms as she pushed the green t-shirt up, hoping to discard it and much, much more soon. . . .

“Wait, wait,” he said, pulling away from her and holding her back, his arms tight around her arms. “Say it,” he demanded, his eyes burning determinedly into hers even as she felt him hard against her leg. “Say it.”

She didn’t have to ask what. She stared at him for an instant, knowing what would happen if she said it. There was no going back after this. They couldn’t keep playing the on and off again game. It would kill them both. Either they ended it for good now, stopped what they were doing and she left, or . . .

“Say it, Veronica.”

She took a breath. She was what she was. It was about time she accepted that. It was about time she accepted herself . . . and him.

“I love you.”

"I wanted your life to be a fairy tale," Veronica told her.

Marlie looked up from unloading the clothing in her dresser to stare at her mother. In the week since she had said she wanted to move out of the house, her mother hadn't said a word to her. She had gotten permission, though, so she'd begun to pack.

"What?" Marlie asked.

"Maybe not a fairy tale, but something close," her mom went on.

"My life was once. I had a boyfriend I loved, a best friend I adored, and parents who couldn't have been more amazing. Then my boyfriend dumped me for no reason, my best friend was murdered and all I had left were my parents. And then I didn't even have them both."

"Your mom was sixteen years old, too, the first time Lianne left her."

"Mom . . .," Marie began hesitantly, not sure exactly what she was going to say.

"I didn't want that for you," Veronica said, and she had this look on her face, a look of near confusion, as if she couldn't understand how all her plans had gone so horribly awry. "I wanted you to have . . . I wanted it to be so that even if you . . . even if you didn't find that perfect boy and even if your best friend was murdered or something equally bad happened, I still wanted you to have parents who loved you no matter what.

"I tried so hard to give you that."

"You did give me that," Marlie said, suddenly flushing with guilt for all the things she'd said to her mom. How did parents do that? How could they be so horrible for so long and you were perfectly within your rights to rip them to pieces, and then suddenly they made guilt your new best friend?

Was there an instruction manual? Did they take a class? Because Logan and Veronica Echolls aced that class. Straight 100s across the board.

"If you go to live with her, Marlie, she'll only hurt you."

Marlie looked away from her mom. "I don't believe that," she replied softly.

"I know you don't. You don't want to believe it. I didn't either once upon a time. My mom left me when I was your age, she abandoned your grandpa and . . . and she abandoned me, but I searched for her. I couldn't believe she really. . . . I found her. I used all my college money to put her in a clinic to get sober. I didn't believe she'd really meant to abandon me. But when she came home, she was still drunk, she'd wasted my money and she left again."

"Maybe she's changed," Marlie said defiantly. She still couldn't look at her mother. Why didn't Veronica understand? It wasn't the same. It wasn't. It couldn't be.

"She hasn't."

"You don't know that!" Marlie insisted. Her mother didn't say anything for so long that Marlie finally looked back at her. Veronica's face had gone steely. That was never a good sign.

"I do know that," she answered slowly. Her eyes darted around the half-packed room. "And you will too eventually." She left the room before Marlie could get a word in. If that was her idea of convincing Marlie not to leave, it wasn't very effective. She went on with her packing.

But as she lay in bed that night, her mother's words echoed in her head. The words, though, weren't nearly as bad as the look on her mother's face as she spoke those words, a look that swam before Marlie's eyes until she finally fell asleep.

Marlie started slow. "You haven't really said anything about . . . and I haven't asked or . . . about my mom. Veronica. Why did you . . . why did you leave her and Grandpa Keith?"

Lianne paused with her fork halfway between her plate and her mouth. They had finished painting Marlie's soon-to-be room and were having a celebratory dinner. Marlie didn't want to ruin it, but she had to know. The nagging voice in her head courtesy of her mother wouldn't let her not know.

"I was scared for her," Lianne answered, slowly lowering her fork back to her plate. "Lilly Kane's murder . . . it was terrifying and Keith was so involved in the investigation. Someone started to threaten Veronica's life if I didn't leave. It's hard to . . . it's really complicated. But I had to leave. I didn't want to come home to find my daughter dead the way Celeste Kane came home to find Lilly."

It didn't make much sense to Marlie, but she knew one thing: Veronica hadn't said a word about a threat on her life. It was kind of something pretty big to leave out.

It took her about a week to pack up the rest of her things after that. The room in Lianne’s house that had been set aside for her was larger than her room at home, and Marlie and Lianne had gone out on a Saturday afternoon to pick out a bedspread and furnishings and curtains and it had been actual fun.

There was a word that the Echolls family didn’t seem to remember anymore: fun. At least not as far as Marlie was involved. It didn’t matter, though. She was going to live with Lianne; the decision had been made. Ben asked her why she was going. She told him she wanted to get to know Lianne. “Why?”

“Because she’s my mom.”

“But Mom is your mom,” he replied, frowning in an adorable way.

“I have two moms,” she told him.

“Why?”

“I just do.”

“But what’s wrong with our mom? Don’t you love her?”

“I do, of course I do, I just . . . I need to live with Lianne.”

“Why?”

She gave up at that point. She had talked to Keith and Alicia, explaining her choice. They’d been rather nice about it. Grandpa Keith had given her one of his large, warm hugs, telling her that she was his beautiful baby girl no matter what, and that she could always come to him for anything.

That was the sort of response she wanted from her parents. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t.

When Jason had asked her why she was leaving, she’d tried to explain it to him a little better than she had with Ben. It didn’t really work. “So you’re just leaving us?” he asked, ten-year-old anger radiating off him. “Getting a new family?”

“No, I’m just —!” she protested. He didn’t let her get a word in.

“You’ve been acting weird for weeks!” he yelled. “You never want to do anything with me anymore and you’re the worst big sister in the world. I don’t care if you leave!”

That was probably the worst of it all. She could handle her parents ignoring her. She could shoulder the confused “Why?” that Ben continually gave her. She could take her grandpa and grandma’s quiet disappointment. But she had always liked to think of herself as a good big sister; it was something she had prided herself on before everything had changed. . . .

She had been nothing close to a good big sister for months.

But there was nothing she could do about it now. Two and a half weeks after she made the announcement to her parents, she moved out. She packed all of her things into Lianne’s truck. Her father had actually helped her.

Her mother, on the other hand, had watched from the kitchen window, her face blank.

When they were finished, she found herself wrapped in an awkward hug with her father. “If you need anything,” he told her, “I’ll be around.” She nodded as she pulled away.

“Thanks,” she murmured. He said nothing more, only gave a stiff nod to Lianne, waiting nearby, and walked back to the house. As he went in, Veronica came out, and Marlie wondered if her mother would finally show some sort of emotion, any sort of emotion. Would she get angry and demand Marlie didn’t leave? Would she break down into tears? Would she hug Marlie tightly the way her father just had?

“Hi Veronica,” Lianne said hesitantly. Veronica only stared at her. Marlie felt bad. Lianne didn’t deserve the cold shoulder from Veronica. She really didn’t.

“Let me talk to her,” Marlie told her, smiling. She turned to face her mom again.

“Don’t — don’t worry about it, sweetie,” Lianne said, wavering under Veronica’s glare.

“Sweetie?” repeated Veronica, her lip curling. Lianne flinched.

“Mom,” Marlie began, “I. . . .”

“Goodbye, Marlie.”

Marlie heard Veronica lock the door after she slammed it shut. That was it. They left.

Lianne had a huge Italian dinner to celebrate Marlie’s first night with her, and it had been a lot of fun dancing around the kitchen listening to music blasted at full volume. They’d stayed up late watching old TV and talking about stupid, silly things.

The next morning, a new routine began. She had cereal for breakfast instead of pancakes; no one argued over packed lunches. Lianne kissed her on the cheek before she left for school. It was strangely normal and yet. . . . School passed without incident. Marlie updated her friends on what had happened; they all understood, even if none of them really understood. How could they?

Dinner was fun again. But Marlie spent the whole night wondering what her parents were doing right then, what they were having for dinner and if they were thinking about her. It was past ten at night when the phone rang. “It’s for you,” Lianne said, holding out the cordless.

“Hello?” Marlie asked, wondering who had called. All of her friends would use her cell phone. . . .

“Hey, Marlie,” her father greeted softly. She was surprised. She hadn’t expected him to call. “How are you?” he asked.

“I — I’m good. How are you?”

“I’m fine.” There was silence. “How was school?”

“Good. I think my English test went well. And I got an A on my paper.”

“That’s good.” Again, the line went quiet. Marlie was glad he had called, she really was, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. There were a thousand things to say, really, but suddenly, somehow, her mind was blank. “Ben says Hi,” he told her.

“Tell him I said Hi, too,” she replied.

“Your, ah, your mom, Veronica, I mean, says Hi too.”

“Does she really?” Marlie asked skeptically. He didn’t answer right away. She knew that was her answer. “You don’t have to lie to me, Dad,” she went on sharply, angry at her mother.

“Goodnight, Marlie,” he said, a sigh in his voice.

“Goodnight, Da —.”

He’d already hung up the phone.

"What did he have to say?" Lianne asked kindly as Marlie handed her the phone.

"He was just saying Hi," she answered softly. Lianne smiled.

"That's nice."

"Yeah."

Her dad didn't call the next night or the night after that. Soon fun dinner was just dinner; her new house was just her house. Her first week at Lianne’s house passed into her second and then suddenly she had been there for a month. It was fun, in away. But at the same time . . . it just wasn't home.

A/N: This was kind of a big chapter and I hope you enjoyed it! The next chapter will hopefully be posted soon. Happy July 4th everybody! : )