Chapter 3: Repairing the Foundation

Late August - about a week before senior year begins

Logan lay on a bench in his home gym lifting the weight bar up and down in a punishing routine. Each push up of the weight was accompanied by a grunt. He would continue with this routine until his arms were shaking in exhaustion. After a brief rest, he would move onto the next machine and repeat the routine. He first began working out as a way to rehab his body but it almost immediately became a way to heal his mind too. It was a punishing routine but he quickly came to love it. In the beginning, he would lose himself in the routine and forget about the rest of the world. As the weeks passed, he began to use the time to muse on everything happening in his life.

If anyone had told him a few months ago, that his father being arrested for murder and his own arrest for drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest would be his lucky break he'd have thought the person was insane. How was something like that supposed to help his life advance? When looking back on it, he saw so many things that had fallen in line and like a row of dominoes, one just led to the next. The final domino in this particular chain of his life had been the plea agreement. The plea agreement had led him to the people that would change his life the most.

His first meetings with the probation officer and counselor had not gone well. He resented being sober, he resented being forced to talk to them, heck he resented the world and wasn't shy about letting them know it. The probation officer wasn't nearly as bad as the counselor though. The probation officer just made him piss in a cup once a week and swear he was clean and not getting into trouble. No matter how snarky Logan got, the guy just ignored him and continued on like nothing had been said. He told Logan once he dealt with real badasses in his job and Logan couldn't hold a candle to them so he shouldn't even try. He had been the first person to suggest that Logan should try weight lifting as a tension release. He'd even gone as far as to take Logan to the gym and set up a routine. It was the first time Logan could remember a guy patiently explaining something to him.

Aaron had rarely shown Logan how to do anything. That's what nannies and tutors were for after all. The few times he'd tried to show Logan anything had usually ended in him belittling Logan. He would call Logan, a wimp, stupid, a pussy mama's boy. And of course Logan's personal favorite would be when Aaron told him he was nothing and would always be nothing. Yeah, dear old dad had been a real motivator.

As relieved as Logan was to be out from under his father's eye, being stuck under the therapist's watch was almost worse. When he'd first shown up at counseling, he figured that he could smirk, snark, or charm his way into the counselor's good grace and waltz out of there without having to reveal a thing. It wasn't the first time he'd been badly mistaken.

Billy Maxwell didn't let him get away with a thing. She saw right through his bullshit and called him on it. After the first few resentful meetings, she told him flat out if he didn't change his attitude she would have to tell the judge he wasn't cooperating and he could find himself sharing a cell with Aaron in no time. Not much seemed to get through to him at that point but the thought of ending up like his father had hit a nerve.

Week after week, Logan found himself opening up more and more to Billy. He still wouldn't say that he looked forward to the weekly sessions but he didn't hate going there either. At first he'd talked mostly about his childhood, the constant beatings, the broken bones, the burns, bloody noses, etc. Eventually, they moved onto Lilly's murder and his mother's suicide.

Until three weeks ago, he had been unable to talk about Lilly and Aaron together and Aaron's role as Lilly's lover and murderer. After that session, Logan came home and entered the pool house for the first time since his disastrous surprise party. The police had come in after Aaron's arrest and ripped the joint apart. Cabinets were left open, mattress tossed, sheets strewn about, even the ceiling fan had been taken down to retrieve the camera. Logan had just stood there in the doorway and looked around the room picturing Lilly and Aaron in there. He wasn't even aware he moved but soon he began tearing the place apart in a rage. He ripped the curtains with Aaron's face off the rod, he broke the television screens and sliding glass doors with a lamp; he used his pocket knife to shred the sheets and the mattress. Exhausted, he had finally collapsed sobbing amid the mess.

It was hard to believe one event inside of that room had been the start of a spiral of events that would engulf an entire town and destroy countless lives. Lilly would have loved knowing she'd caused major chaos. He wasn't sure how long it was before he got up and headed in the house where he asked Mrs. Navarro to hire someone to come in and clear everything out of the pool house. He wanted everything…carpets, cabinets, fixtures…every last little item removed. He had gone back in there only once after it had been emptied. He would have like to just have the entire building flattened, but as he wasn't the owner of the property, he couldn't make structural changes.

When he'd confessed what he'd done to Billy, he had braced himself for the lecture about controlling his temper that he was sure to ensue. He could still hear her reaction in his head. "Good for you Logan. I'd be a lot more worried about you if you'd been able to go in that room and not have an extreme emotional reaction. The fact that you are aware that violent outbursts are not the normal, appropriate way to react to most situations gives me hope that you can learn to control your temper."

Continuing to lift the weights, Logan's mind sifted through these last three sessions. The first of those weeks had been about confronting the reality of Lilly and Aaron and the resultant fallout of their affair. The second week, they had dealt with the emotional outcome of his final acceptance and the subsequent breakdown. As tough as those two weeks had been, today's session had made those pale in comparison. Today they had confronted the one topic he'd adamantly refused to discuss all summer, the name he could hardly utter without choking…today they discussed Veronica Mars.

He should have known Billy was going for to drop a bomb on him when he walked into today's session. It had started out innocuous enough but Billy was a master at luring him into a conversation he didn't want to have. "I want to congratulate you on the progress we've made these last few weeks. I think we've made more progress these last few weeks than we have the rest of the summer. That being the case, I think we need to touch on the final topic you seem unable to confront. I'd like to discuss your relationship with Veronica today."

"What," he practically screamed? He leaped up from his relaxed position in the chair like someone had poked him in the ass. "Are you nuts? Mars is the last person on earth I want to discuss. She's got nothing to do with my life."

"On the contrary, I think she has everything to do with your life. She's one of the main characters in almost all of your stories. Whether you like to admit it or not, Veronica is a major player in your life. Or are you going to try to tell me seeing her with Duncan at Aaron's arraignment had nothing to do with you going out that night and getting arrested," she asked him?

Glaring at Billy, Logan walked back to his chair and sank heavily into his seat. Staring down at this hands he'd quietly muttered, "It might have had something to do with it."

"If you really don't want to talk about her, we don't have to but until you can deal with her you are going to have a tough time getting past anything else. She's a major hurdle that you need to get over before we can really move on. And you are bound to have run-ins with her starting next week when school is back in session. We'll start out easy. Tell me why you call her Mars instead of Veronica?"

"I'm sure you already know."

"I probably can guess but I'd like you to tell me anyway."

"Much the same reason I refer to Aaron as Aaron and not…dad. Mars is the annoying bitch that accuses me of every crime imaginable. Mars is the one I feel nothing for, the one that turned me into the cops seemingly without a care. V…Veronica…she was my friend, the person who helped me when I needed someone the most, the girl I lo—the girl I was falling for."

For the next hour, Logan talked about the early years. He told Billy about his crush on the pretty little girl in pigtails and a soccer uniform. He talked about birthday parties, dances, and everything else the foursome had done. He'd gotten as far as his stupid kiss with Yvonne when Billy finally called a halt to their session.

As he was leaving Billy made a final plea to Logan, "Next week when you go back to school, you're going to have a tough time. You are probably going to have to deal with Veronica. I want you to promise me that no matter how anyone tries to provoke you, you'll try to ignore them. If that means getting up and walking out in the middle of class, so be it. Just keep telling yourself that after this school year, you will never have to see any of those people again if you don't want. And if you see Veronica, try to at least say hi, maybe ask how she's doing. I imagine she's had a summer that's rivaled yours."

Logan had silently nodded and exited her office to drive straight home. As soon as he walked in the door, he headed straight for the gym, stripped off his shirt and went to work. It had been the roughest session yet, but he felt startlingly better. There was still a vise grip around his heart but somehow it didn't seem quite as tight. With a last grunt, Logan lowered the weights a final time. He supposed it was time to shower and give serious thought to how he was going to deal with next week.