Logan Chapter 151: Epilogue

-Landon-

I sigh as Logan and Emory finally walk away. For supposedly being the smarter brother, it takes a long-ass time to get him to pick up a hint. I’m glad that I haven’t already been fishing today. I didn’t bring as much food as I would eat in two weeks to the cabin because it seemed easy enough to hunt and fish for my dinner. It isn’t hard, but it’s boring as shit. I spend most of my time fishing actually thinking through different ways to finally get through to Cora.

I’m confident in my mechanism for fooling Logan’s nose. I set up a shower just outside of the new room I dug out so that my scent would be the only one around that wall. Of course, that meant I had to make that particular wall interesting enough that it would make sense to have my scent all over it. I’ve always loved the idea of a hidden door behind a bookcase, but I’m more of a doer than a reader. Logan would never have believed a bookcase for me as anything other than carving practice.

I’m pulled out of my self-congratulation by a bite on the end of the line. Looks like dinner is taken care of, then. Cora will have a lot to say about fish for dinner yet again, but she’s not the one cooking. I’m cooking, and she can just deal with it.

I have to waste another half an hour on this stupid wooden bucket while Logan and Emory presumably search the cabin to make sure I’ve been a good boy. I haven’t, but they won’t know that. I can’t tell if I would love to witness that car ride home or if I would feel bad for Logan. Emory is sure to give him a hard time. He’ll find a way back in her good graces, though. They’re fated. It’s not like they can get a divorce.

One more fish later, I hear Logan’s car pull back down the drive at last. It doesn’t take long to row back to the dock- there’s a reason we call it a cabin and not a lake house. I’m not sure who stocked the fish, but this is more a pond than a lake. For all I know, we could be eating Koi. Cora would have a lot more to say about that, I’d bet. I should try to buy some, just to see if she notices. Maybe she’ll finally tell the truth, just to give me a piece of her mind.

Cora is hot- it’s undeniable. It’s just that her personality and lie-stench are so caustic that most would struggle to even see her through it all. I’ve always had the dubious blessing of noticing a woman’s best attributes before anything else, so I didn’t miss her face or body for a second. I let that lure me into thinking that her lies must all be about benign things like her age or weight. Women that look like her get asked out enough that they claim imaginary boyfriends all the time. Surely all of those would work together to make her smell like that.

Little did I know that her lies were far more pervasive. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the truth come out of her mouth. She doesn’t even think of Emory as her friend, after a solid decade of ingratiating herself for some unfathomable reason. It took me a couple of days before I realized that we would have to go full silence for a long time to let the bitter notes dissipate from the air around her. I haven’t figured out yet how to feed her without letting her open her mouth and tell more lies. I might need more than my two weeks’ vacation that I asked for.

I take the two medium-sized fish inside to clean and cut for dinner. We’ve had fish filets a couple of days in a row, and I’m tired of hearing complaints about it. Maybe there’s some kind of stir fry I can do. There’s no signal out here, so I can’t just search for a recipe for whatever fish this is. I spent so much time and effort prepping a space for Cora that I might have slacked off a little in the nutrition department. I finally decide on my closest approximation of fish and chips and get started on that for this evening. Another thing I’ve learned is that cooking takes way longer than I thought it did.

This little pocket of quiet and focus has been good for me, I think. I have no reason to turn the charm on all the time. I have nobody to trail after, unruffling feathers for. I have no one to be but my truest self. Maybe I was just as much of a liar as Cora, in a way. Now that neither of us has any illusion of the other liking them in the foreseeable future, we can be refreshingly real with each other. No saving feelings, no pulling verbal punches. Just the truth as we think it.

I balance both plates of fish and chips in my left hand long enough to yank on the handhold that unlocks the secret door behind my shiny-new rock wall. I have a sealed bottle of water in each pocket because Cora refuses to drink anything out of an open container. I have only myself to blame for that one. I’m slowly learning it’s best to just bring her meals with no frills or jokes. If we’re ever going to speak civilly to each other, she has to run out of reasons to spit lies and venom at me every time she sees my face. Less interaction is better.

Once Cora and I manage to have an honest conversation, we can move forward. I’m not sure what I’ll do with her yet- how we’ll clean up the mess I accidentally helped her make- but she’ll help me figure it out. She won’t have a choice, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Cora, it’s that she has a damned opinion about everything.