She has driven the jeep once before, when Logan was wasted and couldn't, but somehow driving it alone and without numerous thwarted attempts from the passenger seat to get a hand up her skirt doesn't feel quite so secure. It's a big car, and she's used to a small one, and coupled with the fact she's incredibly scared about her father and furious with Logan in tandem, this serves to make the journey quite difficult.
Plus she's going to the hospital alone. Plus Logan is an asshole and she should have known better than to think otherwise. As the car skids through empty streets, she calls Wallace instead. He is almost insufferably sympathetic.
The doctor she sees is efficient and clearly over-stretched.
"It could have been considerably worse. Luckily for you dad, the woman who was with him knew what it was. You wouldn't believe the number of people who don't realise they've had a mild heart attack."
The word 'mild' sends shudders of relief through Veronica.
"So, he's okay?"
"Well, I wouldn't say we're quite on the home stretch yet. We've given a clot-bursting injection, and that's likely to remove the blockage, although the ECG is being constantly monitored for complications. It looks positive, though. He had very prompt attention."
Veronica walks in to see her father looking rather grey framed against the stark white sheets and the machine he's hooked up to.
"Hey," she says gently. "Hey Dad."
He slowly opens his eyes: apparently he was just resting. "Hi Veronica."
"How you doing?"
"I feel like I've had a heart attack."
She doesn't even quirk a smile at that.
"Who was with you when it happened?"
"Mrs. Patterson. You've met her?"
Veronica has indeed met their client Rosamond Patterson. Possibly the only woman who makes Celeste Kane appear to have a warm heart.
"God, I bet she was great."
Keith makes a weird sort of gesture with his mouth. "Actually, she was. If it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't necessarily have realised it was a heart attack. She called the ambulance straight away."
"Must have been one of her husbands who gave her the experience," Veronica says dryly.
He laughs slightly. "I think she was in medical school before she made marriage her full-time occupation."
Veronica both wants and does not want to know why her father should know anything about Rosamond Patterson's history outside that relevant to her case.
After this, Keith drifts off to sleep. One of the nurses tells her to expect him to be a little dozy for the rest of the day on account of the medication they've pumped him full of. They also give her endless reams of information about heart attacks, and what to expect for the future. That ten percent of victims will have a second attack within a year which could prove fatal.
The evening comes by, and it is impossible for her to stay at the hospital any longer.
Until she is actually looking at the Xterra, it has not occurred to her that she has to drive it to the Neptune Grand and deal with Logan. Wallace offers to go with her to the hotel, but she declines. He looks exhausted, and she doesn't really blame him. Most of the day has been spent hanging out in the waiting room for the results of scans for kidney damage and anaemia or looking at incomprehensible, frightening X-rays.
Before she puts the jeep into ignition, she does check the glove compartments for guns. It seems unlikely, but with Logan you never quite know.
They prove, mercifully, to be lacking in the gun department, but bountiful if she needed any minibar-size alcohol units, magazines, mints, mouldering water bottles, tissues or - her hand pulls out a photograph and it sends a horrible lurch of guilt through her stomach. It's her. A cheesy boardwalk shot of her doubled over with laugher, undeniably directed at Logan, who must have been wielding the camera. She doesn't even remember it being taken. It was from the last summer, self-evidently, but what surprises her is the unguarded, uncalculated happiness of her expression. Veronica cannot ever remember finding dating Logan that much of a blast.
Why he's kept it for almost a year doesn't bear thinking about. Hastily, she shoves it back in there and covers it with a packet of mints. If Logan wants to hoard photographs of his ex-girlfriends in his glove compartment, it's really not her business anymore.
Veronica is, when the moment approaches, somewhat hesitant to go up to the Presidential Suite having not been there since Duncan's departure, but ultimately she has his car keys and he wants them back. It occurs to her in the elevator that she could have just left them at reception. Somehow she's got past the idea that Logan - and Duncan - were ever paying guests of the hotel.
Her knock on the door is soft. Veronica is silently praying that he will have gone to bed, although she knows how unlikely this really is considering it's only half past ten. It is also possible he might have gone out, she guesses, but it's a Wednesday and Logan tends to stick to traditional nights for getting trashed with Dick.
Sure enough, he opens the door, sees it is her, and gives a huge and discernibly fake grin. Gesturing as if to say 'what can you do', Logan laughingly tells her:
"Duncan's not home."
"Oh for God's sake," she says sharply, genuinely stung. Duncan remains something of sore ache, and standing at his doorway being reminded that she will never see him again does not particularly represent a joy. Her hand thrusts the keys at him. "Here are your keys, Logan. Thanks for the car."
"Won't you come in though?" he says, affecting upset and surprise. "I'm sorry for mentioning Duncan. You see, I just miss him so much I can't talk bout nothing else."
"Stop," Veronica says. Logan looks disinclined to do so, crossing his arms smugly as if he is glad to have found a weak point in her defence system. Her last nerve snaps. It is not until she is midway through shouting that she realises how hurt she is about his leaving her at the house and how much that is showing through.
"Just stop, Logan. God, you win, okay? I don't want to talk about Duncan. You are proved right. Congratulations. Aren't you smart. Who knew that I didn't want to have to listen to your stupid offensive jokes and wonder what the hell went wrong with this and why you can be such a bastard, and least of all I want to be stood here having to tell you what should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. So, congratulations. Seriously, Logan, what a prince you are - and - "
And she is shouting.
And he is snarling, pushing her inside the room, slamming the door behind her.
And she pushes against him with her hands, yelling something about what a waste of time he is, and how she just does not want to have to deal with this sort of shit today, and all through this he just stands there listening to her, and then the anger's just dissipating like someone pulled the plug on it because what's the point of shouting at him anyway if all he's going to do is let her.
"Can't you just stop?" she says, finally, desperately, running her hands through her hair. Her whole body feels collapsed and drained, as if the day's events have swung at her at once like a hammer blow. "Please. Just for a few hours, don't."
He doesn't say anything, just looks at her quietly, even sympathetically. "Okay."
She puts her arms around him then and buries her face in his neck. She knows she's crying, and he probably knows that as well, but he has his arms fastened tightly around her, so maybe he's not as angry as he has right to be. He still smells the same as he did when they were dating, and Veronica wonders how it is that she didn't realise she'd missed it until now.
"God, Logan," she says into him, and he shudders at the feel of her breath on his skin. Her arms pull him in tighter to her. "I'm sorry."
"No, you know," he says, "it kind of beat those fantasies where hot women come over late at night and make endless love to me. What with the shouting and proclamations of my general uselessness to the world and all."
She pulls away from him, sees his face is deadly serious in that way that only Logan can be after he's just made an apparent joke, and tries to find something clever to say in response. All that comes out is an I'm sorry.
"I didn't mean - I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be."
"Veronica," he says firmly. He takes her face in his hands, and almost involuntarily her eyelids flicker shut. She feels one of his hands lift up to her hair and tuck a strand behind her ear. His mouth meets her cheek in a dainty, light kiss that's not like Logan kisses. She's not sure he's ever kissed her on the cheek without it being a precursor to something else before. Her mouth pouts forward, expectant but instead:
"It's not important," he says, and she opens her eyes on him looking down at her with infinite, soft-woven tenderness that might break at any moment into shards of glass.
"It is important," she says. Her hand runs a line down his cheek. "How can you just let it go?"
"Pretty easily," he replies, detaching her hand from him. "I'm good with it where you're concerned. In fact, I consider 'letting things Veronica Mars does pass without comment into the ether' within the top ten of my marketable skills." He pauses. "You want something to eat?"
"No, I have to get home." She tries to smile at him. "Honestly, I'm exhausted. And Backup will need feeding."
"Stay," he says.