The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope
Epilogue
Logan
Three weeks later
‘Don’t you have to go back to work?’ asks Logan.
‘No, Maya told me to take an extra-long lunch break. We’ve no women in labour up there at the moment. I know that’s going to change soon, so I’ll just be here with you, unless you have someplace else to be.’ She is darting around the room, quick and light on her feet, straightening his linen, filling his water jug and making sure the flowers in the vase next to his bed are arranged neatly, all in one whirling movement. Her hair is held back in a tight bun with bobby pins keeping everything smooth, but there are still stray escaping curls. He can see bluish-grey shadows under her eyes that he would like to smooth away but knows not to mention.
‘Not leaving, are you?’ she asks.
‘Ha, ha, very funny,’ says Logan and he chuckles and then raises his hand to his chest as the pain rattles through his body. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘Sorry, babes.’ She grimaces as though she has felt the pain in her own body.
‘You should sit down instead of doing that,’ he says as Debbie keeps moving, fixing the blinds so that the sun doesn’t hit his face and make him squint in the bright light. He wishes she would sit still so he could touch her. He loves her in her uniform, loves it when she transforms herself from home Debbie to work Debbie, ties up her hair and becomes someone completely capable and efficient.
‘I’m pregnant, babes, not sick.’ She stops in front of the window, a secretive smile touching her face.
Logan smiles at the words. When he woke up from surgery, she told him the news before he’d even said anything, before he’d even remembered fully what had happened and thought to ask about Katherine and the kids. He had opened his eyes, somewhat surprised to see a blurry white ceiling above him. He had blinked twice to clear his vision and then Debbie’s face had appeared above him. She was pale, her hazel eyes rimmed in red, a new line just above her nose as she creased her forehead. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
‘You make sure you get through this, big man. I’m not raising a kid on my own,’ she whispered.
‘What kid?’ he managed to ask, his throat cracked and dry.
She moved his bed a little, tilting him up. He didn’t feel any pain, which he assumed meant he was loaded up with drugs.
Debbie took a cup off the table next to his bed and let him take a few sips. ‘Not too much,’ she warned in her most competent nurse voice.
‘What kid?’ he asked again, his brain struggling to understand.
‘Our kid. Turns out that I get a runny nose along with everything else when I’m pregnant.’
‘You’re pregnant?’
‘I am and…’ She grabbed his hand then, tears appearing in her eyes and spilling onto her cheeks. ‘I was so scared, Logan. They called me to come in to emergency and I explained I was sick but then they told me… you were here and I’d been waiting for you to call…’
‘But I’m okay?’
‘You’re okay. The bullets missed all the important bits.’ Her light tone made it sound like a joke even as her face told him how worried she was.
‘A dad needs his important bits,’ he rumbled.
‘He does,’ she laughed, swiping away stray tears.
There have been a few rough nights, nights when he has wrestled with raging anger at Patrick for what he did to Maddy, and at himself for allowing the man to be in his sister’s life, even though he knows that he couldn’t have stopped her.
‘It’s not like I would have listened, even if you told me I couldn’t see him,’ his sister has since said. ‘You did your best – and I’m an adult. I’m going to make mistakes and you can’t save me from them.’
‘Maddy, growing up and making your own mistakes usually involves buying a lemon of a car, not getting involved with a psychopath.’
‘Yeah, well, big lesson learned there.’
Maddy has just been released from hospital in Melbourne. Logan was so relieved to hear that she has a friend to stay with until she heals. She told him they’d met at university. ‘He’s also training to be a primary school teacher and he’s been to visit every day. He says I can stay with him when I get out of hospital. He lives with his grandmother so I’m not sure how that’s going to go, but he says she’s knitting me a scarf for winter so maybe we’ll get along.’
They FaceTime every day, and Logan is used to the way her face looks now, has watched the bruises lose their purple colour and fade to a sickly yellow. She will need dental work and her arm is still in plaster with pins to help it heal. He’s not sure how she survived.
‘He just kept saying, “I won’t be him; you won’t make me him,”’ Maddy said. ‘He hated his mother so much and he was so angry when I read the emails from her and started asking questions. He had one version of reality and he didn’t want another.’
‘He wouldn’t be the first person to view the world that way.’
‘I felt sorry for him,’ Maddy told him.
‘I worry that your good heart leaves you open to men like him, Mads, I really do.’
‘Okay, more time for another lecture tomorrow. Give Debs my love, and hopefully I’ll see you guys soon.’
‘I’ll send you a ticket.’
‘I’m counting on it. I will be the best aunt the kid has ever met.’
Logan had been fearful when the detectives first visited, worried that they had somehow found out about that one desperate night, the night of his last break-in. He didn’t take anything, that’s what he keeps reminding himself – he didn’t take anything. The broken lock was probably easily fixed the next day. Some secrets are okay to keep.
He told the police everything he could remember about the day he knocked on Katherine West’s door, parcel in hand.
‘What made you suspicious?’ the detective asked at least ten different ways.
Logan described Katherine’s voice, the strangeness of the whole experience, and finally he said, ‘Honestly? Instinct. I’ve been on the wrong side of a situation enough times to know when something is not right.’
The detective nodded that he understood. ‘You’re a bit of a hero, mate. Sure you’ve seen the press – enjoy it,’ were his parting words.
Logan doesn’t feel like a hero, despite what they were saying on television. There were kids and a woman who had to be protected, that was it. George is only five years old and his life very nearly ended that day. Logan knows that if he had died saving the child, he would have been okay with that. It seemed a fair trade: his messed-up life for the life of a child who had not yet begun to make mistakes.
He will always marvel at the fact that the universe chose him to turn up at that house that morning. Someone else could easily have been given the package to deliver. Someone else could have shrugged their shoulders and just gone on with their day. Someone who had not been in prison, had not learned to read people and voices and the atmosphere the way he had. And he still doesn’t know why he stopped that last time but the nearest he can get is that he felt a pull to the house – something wanted him there.
Maybe that was Karma. Maybe the bill has been fully paid?
‘What are you thinking, babes?’ asks Debbie now.
‘I’m thinking that I hope the kid looks like you. I’m a bit of an ugly bugger.’
‘Yeah, well,’ she says, planting a soft kiss on his forehead. ‘I hope he or she has your heart. It’s pretty spectacular.’
Logan smiles and closes his eyes as she kisses him, enveloping him in her soap and flower scent.
There’s a light knock at the door and Debbie goes to open it, smiling when she sees who it is.
‘Oh, I’m not interrupting, am I?’ asks Gladys. She peers into the room, clutching her large striped bag that she always has with her. Today she is dressed in black pants and a top with a sequined cockatoo embroidered on the front. Logan smiles and bites down on his lip.
‘I have to get back to work anyway. You keep him amused for a bit.’
‘How are you feeling, Debbie?’ Gladys asks, concern in her voice.
‘Excellent. Lou okay?’
‘He… well, you know.’ She shrugs her shoulders.
‘I do. I’ll pop by this weekend again.’ Debbie doesn’t ask if she can visit, but then she never does. She never says to those in her family, ‘Can I do anything?’ She just does it and she knows that her visits to Lou are appreciated, if only because she plays a good game of chess. ‘He’s weaker on some days and I can see how Gladys watches him, wanting to do things for him. It’s heartbreaking but you can see how much she loves him,’ Debbie has explained to Logan.
‘That would be lovely,’ smiles Gladys and she touches Debbie on the arm, giving her a quick pat.
Debbie leaves and Gladys sits down. ‘I thought we could play a game of rummy,’ she says, extracting her cards from her bag. Logan nods. Gladys has already signed herself up for babysitting duty. She’s got her niece’s new boyfriend looking for an affordable house for them since he’s in real estate. A few days ago, she showed him and Debbie a picture of a clapboard house with some scraggly rosebushes in the front. It’s quite far from the city but it has a yard big enough for a dog and a kid. And if Logan works every hour possible, they could probably afford it.
‘My dad said he would help,’ said Debbie as she and Logan talked about the house, clicking through pictures on the internet of the large open rooms and the brown kitchen that Debbie called ‘retro’ instead of ‘ugly’. What Logan likes most about the house is the wraparound balcony with wrought-iron railings; it still has two wooden rocking chairs from the previous occupants. He can imagine sitting there with Debbie after a day at work, watching the sun go down as a little boy or girl chases after a Labrador that looks a lot like Betty.
Logan’s not sure about borrowing money from Paul, but he knows that he will work the rest of his life to pay the man back.
Lou has a lot of old contacts who are mechanics, having been in the car game for so long. ‘I’ll get you a job, don’t you worry,’ he said when he called Logan to speak to him. ‘You may have to start off with a small salary but trust me when I tell you I’ll get you one.’
‘You don’t have to do that,’ Logan said.
‘I don’t have to do anything, but I want to. If not for you, my old girl might have gone into that house herself and she would have been no match for that boy, no match at all.’
Logan likes Lou. He’s someone who should have gotten the chance to be a father and it feels as though he’s lavishing some of that missed fatherly attention on him.
‘I’m grateful, Lou, but if you can’t find anyone willing to give me a go, that’s okay. I understand.’
‘Just you wait,’ said Lou. ‘I can’t get around but I can make a call, with Peter’s help. And I’ve seen a lot of men start their lives over and become the people they want to be, believe me.’
Logan already has three interviews set up for when he is ready to work again. ‘I’ve been to prison,’ he has said each time he’s got the call from a garage. None of them seemed fazed. ‘I reckon we all have a past,’ one man said. ‘You should look into some TAFE courses so you can brush up on your skills. We’re not exactly a bunch of accountants here, we can deal with a man with a past.’ Logan thanked the man, whose name was Bill, keeping his voice strong so he wouldn’t betray the emotion he felt.
Gladys is knitting and sewing. She’s kind of adopted him as well and he doesn’t mind. He never had much of a family to speak of, just him and Maddy. His mother has yet to visit Maddy down in Melbourne or him, but she has called them both to let them know that she’s thinking of them. He supposes it’s the best they’re going to get from her.
He’s less bothered now that he has other people to bring into a baby’s life, other people who feel like family. Gladys and the Wests. He has something more to offer a child than just himself and a murky past. And, of course, the kid will have a very attentive Auntie Maddy.
He hates card games, remembering long hours in prison when they were the only thing to do, but he sits up a little and gets ready to play. Gladys talks and talks, about Lou and about the Wests and about how John is coping. She hardly stops to even draw breath and there are brief moments when Logan wishes he was alone, but he never lets that thought stick around for too long. He used to be alone, completely alone, except for the responsibility of a little sister he felt he couldn’t help enough… So, he smiles and nods and listens, because that’s what you do with family.