Chapter 96

July 5th, 2021

Logan had pushed his touristy Panama hat, one he'd bought at a random kiosk a couple of days ago, further onto his face as he laid there in a hammock between two palm trees, a pleasant breeze cooling him sweaty skin. He'd just been to a late lunch with Sara, the gorgeous leggy blonde he'd met a little less than a week ago, and his stomach was still pleasantly full of Pla Kapung Neung Manao. There were few cuisines that tingled one's taste buds quite like Thai food, especially if served at an ocean front cookery where they made all that flavor right in front of one's eyes.

The little detour to his beach hut after lunch with her, even more on her incentive than his, had left him weary, the non air-conditioned room being a little too hot for strenuous activities. But Sara was easy company - easy-going, unclingly and could actually hold a conversation that went beyond partying and fashion. Neither was under any impression this was anything more than a holiday fling, a distraction. Neither knew a lot about what the other did in real life nor even what their last names were. Here it held no significance.

Logan was just about to doze off, not having anywhere he needed to be any time soon, when a pair of delicate fingers gently touched his shoulder, doing a walking movement.

"Logan?" Sara chimed, waking him.

"Uh?" he responded, moving his hat off his nose. As he squinted in her direction she noticed Sara's hair was still wet, the woman having showered in his shower, while he'd just headed outside to cool off.

"Your phone kept ringing," Sara said, handing him his cell-phone.

This holiday had been an interesting one - not only was it his first holiday where he'd actually learned to rest, it was also the first time he wasn't constantly attached to his phone. Besides, there were not a lot of people that had this number, hence he knew that once it did ring, it generally wasn't something he was supposed to avoid.

"Thanks," Logan replied, accepting the phone from her.

Sara walked away with a flirtatious wave, heading off towards the hut that she was sharing with two of her girlfriends no more than 400 ft away. The view of her walking away was definitely enjoyable, her sage-colored bikini bottom's emphasizing her curves just right.

This was a big step onwards for Logan, from holidaying alone in luxury to holidaying with loads of people whose company he enjoyed at a more budget conscious beach resort. Whenever he felt alone - here there were plenty of those wanting to simply hang out, have a beer or simply enjoy the beach. He was experimenting - what was it exactly that he needed to do to rebuild himself, he didn't yet know.

The phone was no longer ringing, but there were five missed calls. One from Colin and four from an unknown number. It took him a minute, having not had to think about phone numbers in ages. But this one he definitely recognized - it was his sister's. Honor had kept the same number since she'd gotten her first phone ages ago, back when he'd actually had to call her a number of times from payphones and landlines. The brain was a strange thing, and so was muscle memory as the memory of him punching that number into a landline to a worn-out payphone which barely had any actual numbers left on its dial at a harbor in Surabaya after sinking his father's yacht, came back to him.

He hadn't been in touch with Honor any more than the occasional one-way e-mails in which he'd written that he was fine and Colin was taking care of everything. And that was also how he assumed she'd gotten this number. Honor knew how to be persuasive when she needed to. She'd written back, of course - but to those he hadn't replied.

Logan didn't particularly want to talk to her. This was mostly because it meant having her yell at him, her forcing him to analyze what went wrong and how he'd handled everything - his escape, his divorce - all of it. But if she had called, and with enough determination to be calling now as he stared at the phone for the fifth time, Logan took a deep breath and was just a fraction of an inch away from pushing his thumb onto the screen. But he just couldn't. He didn't have the strength in him, and the realization made him feel even more frail. It felt so much easier just to call back Colin and have him check if it was really anything urgent.

This time however, as the ringing ended Honor had at least left a message. He was almost scared to hear it, in part because of the guilt of not answering her, in part for what it might be about if she was this desperate to get in touch with him. And if he were to be honest with himself - he missed her too, but he didn't really know what to do with that emotion, feeling he was unable to return to that life. He wasn't ready to face his ghosts.

He moved to sit, placing his bare feet in the sand.

"Logan..," Honor sighed in the voicemail. She didn't even sound mad, but sad and tired… and this made Logan worry. "I hope you're okay. Please let me know you're okay," she begged calmly, making his heart wrench. There had indeed been almost two weeks since he'd last e-mailed her.

"Not hearing from you is like… like you're gone, like you're really gone and I don't like the world without you in it," she continued in a gently reprimanding manner, almost as if talking to someone who was really deceased, after taking an audible breath. "Dad's treating your absence just like that. Like you're gone and that's it. So he's basically ordering me to do the civic duty here and stepping in to help him out. I just thought you should know. And I think I have to do it too," she explained and went on to explain in more detail what their father's plan was for her. She didn't sound too happy. But Logan couldn't really tell whether it was about his absence or the work itself.

To Logan it didn't sound that bad, truthfully, assuming his father wouldn't force Honor to quit doing what she loved or make her move for the job. To Logan it had always seemed so unfair how he was this destined heir and Honor had been just treated as something less, and Honor hadn't really complained much, having seen under how much pressure he'd been. But once or twice they had, in fact, talked about it. Honor had had feministic ramblings about one day proving herself to all those elderly white men on the board - that was sometime in the early 2000s. She'd been offended by the way Logan had always been treated as the heir, and she as something less. It wasn't that when Logan left he didn't know this could've been a possible scenario, he just hadn't really expected his father to give in this soon. He'd been gone, what a little more than a month, and already his father had looked for his replacement. He was conflicted with dissapointment and relief. He wasn't even sure what he'd expected - maybe some attempts to lure him back, surely he must've known Colin had his contact information, just like Honor had gotten it out of him. Was he disappointed, he hadn't? He felt like he was swept under the carpet like a stain on the family name. Maybe it really was for the better? Did his father at least feel in part his own blame? The way his father had treated Logan's time as his own was, after all, part of the problem. So had been the way he'd treated Rory and Odette.

It truly had sounded like Honor wasn't calling to complain, but because she'd wanted to talk to him. Maybe she just missed him, missed talking to him. And this truly made him feel guilty. But along with it he felt other things - this feeling he'd experienced time and time again in the past year. Like if he took one step further he'd just crumble. Like one more step and he'd fall down that cliff in Dover. Like it was the distance that was holding him together. The distance was allowing him feel that there were still things in life to enjoy, things that were carefree, things that didn't come with baggage and guilt. But now there was that guilt anyways - worrying how Honor was doing, whether she blamed him for having to step up to handle the company. He desperately needed her in his court - he needed her not to hate him for it.

It was for this reason he typed a reply in the form of an email, feeling unable to speak to her just yet.

"It was good to hear your voice. I'm sorry for the silence, but I just… I'm not ready to talk yet, I just can't yet…" he admitted with a sigh. "Please don't hate me for putting this on you. But for what it's worth - I'll think you'll blow them away. Show them what you're made of, prove to them how wrong they were about you!" he added.

This was all he could offer her right now.


December 29th, 2021

After a lengthy line-up of hugs at the Rothchild household, Honor, Josh, Logan and Rory settled around the living room. Conrad and Linus were running around, trying to assemble a pillow fort in the playroom, and Honor was letting them take whatever they wanted except for the couches that they were sitting on. After all, she wasn't the one that had to clean up afterwards.

"So Logan tells me you went house shopping? Find anything you like?" Honor inquired, excitedly. Her disappointment about selling the place in Martha's had come and gone, her attachment to places being superficial, simply making her want to consider getting something more sensible for herself sometime.

"We saw this one place yesterday and another one this morning," Logan replied.

"And?" Honor inquired.

"One resembled aunt Lydia's place," Logan rolled his eyes, causing Honor to chuckle.

"The other… it was more in the direction that we liked I think, but it was just so…I don't even know how to describe it, " Rory began.

"I think they defined it as a contemporary ranch? Sort of big and wide and a very bare lot surrounding it. It would've been fine had they gone with an interior to match but…," Logan continued.

"But the inside was weird, mixing local antiques with Mexican… like it had a split personality or something," Rory added, finishing his sentence.

"But it did have that man cave with a pool and poker tables," Logan chuckled, not really believing it to be a serious selling argument in his age.

"It did have an outdoor pool too," Rory pointed out.

"Yeah, and that'd mean I'd have to put a fence around the pool when we get the dog," Logan added.

"So you're really doing this, the dog I mean?" Honor inquired, it having become clear to her that the house they'd been describing was not what they were actually going to get.

"Yeah, unless I've come off as irresponsible to them. It feels weird being evaluated like this. But they should give us a call any day now," Logan added and showed Honor a picture of Loki he'd snapped the day before.

"Aw… he's cute. Look," Honor responded, handing Logan's phone to Josh to see too.

"He's adorable," Rory commented, having enjoyed the presence of a puppy more than she'd expected. It was the interaction after it she still wasn't quite over, unsure what she was supposed to do with the information she'd gotten about Jess.

Josh continued to explain how their family had had hunting dogs growing up, and how one of them kept running away, liking the chase a little too much. He also recommended Logan to put a tracking device into the dog's collar just for those purposes.

"Oh, and I nearly forgot. We set a date," Rory shared, having sat down and decided on the date and a large chunk of their wedding details already yesterday. She wasn't sure why she'd suddenly been in such a hurry, but she couldn't think of a reason to delay it either. It distracted her from the encounter with Lisa, focusing on things she wanted to be thinking about instead.

"Well?" Honor asked, taking her phone out already. "I bet you're trying to do this whole thing as some kind of a reverse thing compared to you know…," she insinuated to his brother, referring to his last wedding, assuming neither was offended by the past anymore.

"Not deliberately," Logan chuckled. But he had to admit, there weren't going to be many similarities. She was certainly right about that.

"July 23rd, and in Nantucket," Rory said with pride. "I went ahead and booked two holiday rentals nearby the Sandcastle for that weekend already, while there are still vacancies," she added. It went without saying that also ferry or plane tickets would need to be booked in advance. Now she just needed to find someone to actual wed them, the catering, a decorator, a photographer, a band, a host for the evening and of course the dress. Other than that she couldn't think of needing much else to be happy, and many of these things could probably be solved by simply getting her friends and family involved. She could already imagine Em being the cutest little flower girl.

"Wow, that's such a clever idea," Honor exclaimed. "An island wedding. Logan, you're gonna wear that Nantucket red and all?" she inquired, not too seriously.

"We'll see," Logan replied, more humbly. Wardrobe hadn't been at the top of his mind. And he wasn't a huge fan of the weak red tone, truth be told.

"So you really must've loved your little Christmas break over there, eh?" Honor continued.

"Can't complain," Logan replied.

"That place has a very distinct aura… I don't know if you believe in such things. Everything just feels so liberating there, you know…" Rory began to explain and went on for several minutes on what she loved about the place.

"How was Christmas dinner with mom?" Logan finally got his courage together to ask. He'd send a brief text, but beyond that he'd felt a familiar block on his end to interact with Shira. He would interact if Honor said he should, trusting generally her judgement, but voluntarily he just felt powerless to do it head first.

His feelings of powerlessness against certain areas in his life wasn't something he'd talked a lot to Rory about, almost feeling like every time he approached something about his less than perfect mental state throughout the past year, year and a half, Rory would just break down in tears. He knew it was just that she cared, but that was not the response he wanted to get. As that did the exact opposite to what he felt he needed. He needed to be able to be vulnerable himself, and to have someone who could be strong for him, not having to sooth her by telling her how everything was okay. He was better, everything he felt was under control - his life was better, so much better. But he wasn't miraculously fixed.

This was one of the few reasons he wasn't sure if rushing things with having a child of their own was such a good idea. He desperately wanted to have a child of their own, there was no doubt about that. He wanted to see himself and her in a child, their joint child. But he wasn't 100% sure he was strong enough to handle that pressure. He knew this topic needed to be addressed at therapy at some point, he just wasn't sure how to do it without hurting Rory.

"Oh, you know… dull," Honor replied. "It's like she's run out of things to say, and I swear she was most definitely on something again, sort of fluctuating in and out of her haze. She was okayish with the boys, thank god. But you know her - rehab is not on her list of priorities," Honor continued, sounding worried but not terribly so. It was that's why she'd kept a full staff at the house, to make sure Shira wasn't a danger to herself.

Rory felt a bit silly that she hadn't even thought about inviting Shira to their wedding. Surely they should - she was Logan's mother after all. But she couldn't pretend she was looking forward to that part of her big day.

They talked for a while about Christmas at both families, the gifts the kids had gotten and how Logan had made that deal with Jess to give Em a gift that was way below his normal gift standards, making everyone laugh.

Later Rory got a call from her mother - nothing urgent, just Lorelai needing to vent about the talk she'd had with Luke, which seemed to be taking the right course more or less. Luke had at least admitted that he wasn't behaving like himself, but he wasn't quite sure what and why he was feeling - this at least gave Rory some hope on that part. While Rory spoke to her mother, Logan and Honor headed to Honor's study.

Honor was up front about not particularily liking this little part of their gatherings. She didn't like asking for Logan's help with company matters, knowing it wasn't something he did eagerly. But she truly felt like she was on occasion at a loss on her own. There was something different about discussing business with family, with someone that she 100% trusted compared to people she didn't fully know yet.

"So…," Honor began, taking a seat behind her desk that was looking more and more like Logan's desk in London - messy but with a system. "Mark is out of the picture, we bought him out so he'd leave earlier but overall he seemed pretty content, claiming he already had another offer. Whether he actually had or not, I don't even care…," Honor blabbered, trailing off.

"Good," Logan sighed, tucking his hands into his pockets as he stood behind her desk chair.

"George gave me a list of names, and I also looked from the outside, and I am in the middle of this choosing process here. Angie said they need a decision by the New Year," Honor explained.

"Angie is not in charge, you decide whenever you're ready," Logan reminded her.

"Right, but that woman is frightening," Honor admitted, jokingly.

Honor had the strategic thinking down, she knew how to negotiate, but it were these inner relationships of the company that she struggled with. She came off flaky, her mannerism often making people think she didn't have the brains for her job. But she did, she just didn't like the seriousness of the corporate scene, liking to mix things with a healthy amount of humor.

"Tell me about it," Logan agreed, and he continued to look over the top three candidates for the CFO position together. It had all taken longer than either had hoped, but at least things were moving along.

"Are you sure you're okay doing this? I mean… I am not doubting your abilities, not for a second, and I am happy to help," Logan said after fifteen minutes. He was fibbing a bit, he would've preferred to not think about these things at all, but he felt he owed her this much.

"No you're not, I know you…," Honor didn't believe him, and pointed at him with her index finger as if seeing through him.

Logan shrugged and sighed - "It is what it is."

"I'm okay… I didn't particularly enjoy spending sixteen days away from the kids like that, and I know I'll have to go again in January. It's stressful, I feel alone… at least with dad around I felt like I could do things I knew but he had my back. Now it's just…walking the plank. And I'd be lying if I didn't feel simply obligated to do it," Honor didn't hold back.

"So why not just get rid of it," Logan suggested, feeling surprisingly carefree with that suggestion. They'd talked about this before, and Honor had even promised to think about it.

"I really thought about it, I really did," Honor said. "But I don't know… I know you don't think the same way but I feel dad and grandpa have just worked too hard on it for me to just fail it like that," Honor explained, adding that the companys failure or sale would reflect badly on her. Like she hadn't been able to handle it, proving to everyone how she didn't have what it took.

"Taking out what they've worked for in money is not failing it. It's taking what they achieved and building something you want out of it. You could also do that same thing within the same company, if you'd like. That'd also be an option. Steer the focus towards graphical design, more fiction or take on record labels... whatever you want! It's all up to you…," Logan suggested.

"Yeah, but that's a lengthy process, Logan, you know that. It doesn't just happen at the snap of my fingers," Honor argued.

"It is," he agreed, not planning to argue on this.

"You used to like doing this… I could see that excitement in you. I guess I'm just worried that if I just decide to sell it now, you'll maybe end up resenting me for it in a few years. You know, when you've got your strength and confidence back. That I just gave up. Maybe you'll still want it… some of it…," Honor explained, hesitantly, unsure how Logan would take it.

"Ah…," Logan sighed, running a hand over his face. He'd feared this. "I'm not that person anymore," he added, feeling like a broken record.

"You've been through a lot, Logan. But even before Odette… you have to admit, there were parts of this that you were proud of," Honor tried to persuade him. "I am not rushing to hand this weight back to you, this is not what this is. This is just me being honest with you," she continued.

"It's going to be a long wait in that case, I can tell you that. I don't want you to waste your time on this if this is not what you want," Logan tried to persuade her.

"For you I'll wait, I'll hold up the forth - I'll fight your battles, Logan," Honor continued.

"I refuse to ask you to do that. Doing anything just for the sake of anyone else… that's not worth it," Logan spoke, sounding more sure than he ever had.

"But Logan..," Honor began, but felt at a loss for words.

"I love you, Hon, but please don't… if you don't enjoy this - lets just… let just let it go," Logan said and sat next to his sister, and took her hand, aiming to assure how serious he was. "It feels so much lighter without it," he said, and very nearly would've shared with Honor how he was even considering giving up his last name, wanting to feel even lighter. But he felt like this conversation had been heavy enough.

"I get that the settings from where we're from was far from perfect, but it's still our history… it has shaped us whether we like it or not. We've seen how these things can be handled the wrong way. I just don't see why you don't want to fight... to change all that," Honor exhaled, not being fooled by Logan's carefree front and let-it-go attitude.

Logan didn't want to argue with his sister, preserving what they had was a priority for him. "I can't tell you what to do… I can just tell you what I feel and think," Logan shrugged, sensing his sister's frustration with him. But it did make him think - maybe he wasn't as okay as he'd convinced himself of. For the first time in months, he actually felt like he wanted to talk to a therapist - alone.