Immense thanks as always to Ghostcat, who betaed this super quickly a month and a half ago and continues to allow me to plague her, and to my special "I'm crazed with nervousness for this chapter" beta, Querulousgawks. You're both spectacular.

February

"Can you watch Matthew Friday night? I wanted to go on a date."

Logan looks up at Emily. He is belly down on the floor, nose to nose with six month old Matthew who is staring at him with a wide, gummy smile. "Is it going to be that Lutheran minister again? Because you know that he just ropes you into bingo night at the old Norse church." Emily has been seeking out spiritual advisors less and less over time, but her grand adventure in religion does spring up every so often.

"No, I meant like an actual date," she says. Logan turns onto his back, bringing Matthew into his arms. He suspends the baby above his head, flying him very slowly back and forth.

"Oh, is it replacement daddy discount weekend?" he says as Matthew's giggles squeal out above him. "I didn't have it on my calendar."

"Come on, Logan." She pulls her knees up and tucks a finger into her book. "We talked about this." They have. They've settled into a parenting routine together, but Emily has made it clear that as Matthew gets older, she will be looking for romantic commitment elsewhere. Logan understands that, the way she wants closeness and a relationship and love, and had even agreed as she laid out her explanation, but the thought of Mattie being shared with another person still leaves a coldness in his heart.

"You're right," he says. He swallows. "You deserve to be happy." He lowers his arms so that Matthew's small body lies on his chest. Mattie bobs his head up and down, supporting himself in a half push up and leaving a smiling trail of drool on his father's shirt. Logan sits up carefully, cradling the baby against himself as Emily goes back to her book.

Matthew has been teething, so Friday night finds Logan simultaneously holding the whining baby and trying to wrangle a teething ring out of the freezer. He manages it, but only by also freeing a package of chicken in the process. It falls on the arched bones of his foot and he grits his teeth against a curse as he readjusts Matthew into the cradle of his arm and holds the chilly ring against the baby's gums. He's humming to the baby and trying to figure out how to pick up the chicken and get it back in the freezer when he hears the door.

Emily joins them in the kitchen. She picks up the chicken almost absently and tucks it away, takes a bottle of Snapple from the fridge and hitches herself onto one of the kitchen barstools. The bottle sits unopened in front of her.

"So how was the date?" Logan says, awkward and uncertain, looking down at Mattie in his arms.

She finally looks up. "Disaster, for the most part," she says ruefully. "I kept talking about the baby, and he kept trying to distract me by talking about fly fishing."

"How'd you even meet him?"

"Set up." The words come out in a groan. "A coworker convinced me that it was a good idea."

Logan laughs softly. The baby is quiet now, staring around the room. Logan shifts him to his other arm, careful that he didn't lose his grip on the teething ring. "You really have to learn to just say no."

"I'll start being BFFs with Nancy Reagan another day. For now, I just want to take a shower and go to bed." She holds her arms out for Matthew.

"I can put him back to sleep," Logan says, keeping his hold on the baby.

"Are you looking for extra dad points with the cranky, teething bonus?"

With Matthew making small, smiley sounds around the toy, cranky doesn't seem to apply. "Let's imagine for a minute that I actually enjoy spending time with my kid."

Emily puts up her hands. "Hey, if you've developed cuteness amnesia, I'm not going to argue." She starts for the stairs, kissing Matthew's head as she goes.

"We actually call it 'surrendering to the inevitable,'" Logan remarks to Matthew, who naturally says nothing. Logan continues to walk along the floor with the baby, hearing in the background the sounds of Emily moving upstairs.

He is comfortable with the weird little arrangement they have now, what Emily's glossy rainbow of books refer to as their "nontraditional family," and he is glad that it hadn't changed tonight. But even as he holds Matthew against himself, even as he feels the baby's relaxed body in his arms and meets the unblinking baby stare focused up at him, he knows that eventually it won't just be him and Emily in their son's life.

April

Things are so settled in Logan's life that he mostly doesn't notice how different they are from his life a year ago. It's during breaks that the differences become obvious again. Spring break is a big one. Dick offers the seemingly required invitation to somewhere tropical but barely waits for Logan to turn him down. Logan finds himself hoping for a text from Veronica saying that she's coming home, but instead gets one complaining that grad school doesn't even take spring break.

He can't say that he misses the life he used to have, but he misses the activity of it, the brightness of knowing that there was always a party open to him, that someone would always be running a poker game somewhere.

I need a fucking hobby, he thinks Saturday night as he goes to bed at ten.

But he doesn't take up knitting just yet. Sunday night he goes to what Mac claims will be a party. It turns out to be trivia night, but which he actually excels at. Monday he lies around at the Hearst dorms while Wallace, apparently up for Boy Scout of the Year, tries to get a head start on his post-break work.

"Linear algebra is kicking my ass," he complains, so Logan, who took a version of the course last year, grabs a pencil and tries to help.

Wallace tosses his pencil onto the desk and leans back a little, his chair moving in a short arc. "I must be pretty pathetic if you're playing tutor."

"Impossible. If you're pathetic for needing help, how pathetic would I be for having nothing better to do than provide it?" He keeps the impossibility of his patheticness implied by his arch, bored tone , but Wallace's face loosens a little into a smile. Logan hides the bit of his by leaning over the first problem and trying to remember back a few semesters. Fifty minutes later, he just takes Wallace for nachos and beer instead.

By Wednesday afternoon, though, checking his email seems to have become an activity and he thinks about giving Alexandra the week off. And as much as he loves his kid, he can't believe that he has nothing better to do than change diapers and hide the annoyingly loud toys. But he refreshes the page one last time and finds that he has an email from .

He hasn't heard from Charlie since his brother had responded to Logan's six apologetic voicemails with one asking Logan to give him some time. Some time apparently meant three years, but the part of Logan that had been so eager to believe Norman Phipps- despite all the tiny signs, the almost rehearsed way he spoke about learning that Aaron was his father, and the casual, awkward listing of Logan's stories- opens the email without a thought to the time that has passed.

It's been a while, it read, but I'd like to meet somewhere if you can.

They meet late Friday afternoon at a coffee shop halfway between San Diego and Santa Clarita, where Charlie has moved. Charlie had called to say that he was going to be a few minutes late, but when fifteen minutes have gone by, Logan wonders if he's just been stood up instead. He's looking for a trash can in which to toss his cup in disgust when the door to the place opens.

"Sorry I'm late," Charlie says, sounding a little uncertain about his own apology. "Track practice ran long."

"You run track?" Charlie is taller than Logan, and lankier, so it's not totally out of the question.

"Coach. Both the boys' team, and the girls'."

It's the first thing that Logan has found out about his brother that he can trust, and he wants to ask more- does Charlie like it, did he volunteer or was he forced into the job- but Charlie clearly has an agenda.

"I saw a few months ago that you have a kid. It was-" he clears his throat, looking toward the menu board, running a hand across the back of his neck. Logan realizes, startled, that he does the same thing when he's uncomfortable. "In a tabloid."

"Wow, man. My only blood relative gets his information on me from the tabs. This is a real 'Logan Echolls, this is your life' moment for me." His instinct is to end it with some miniature jazz hands, going for the upper limits of pizzazz, but then he remembers that he's trying not to be a jackass. "Sorry. You're allowed to be mad at me for what I did." He straightens in his seat, hands beginning to twist a straw wrapper into a tight curl. "Yeah, I have a little boy. Matthew." His hand moves to his phone. He has a couple of pictures of Matthew looking out the window in a baby model pose that would have made Lynn Echolls proud, and there's a video he took the other day of Mattie playing peekaboo with a blanket, a ridiculously focused look on his face as he tried to puzzle out object permanence.

"My wife is pregnant," Charlie blurts, his voice thin. "And like you said, you're my only blood relative. Keri- my wife- and I, we thought it might be nice for our baby to have some family from my side." He looks down at the tabletop, pauses, deliberate. "There was a while where you ruined my life. I never wanted to be famous. There was a reason I didn't come forward, and you took that from me."

"I know, man, and I'm sorry. I thought that you'd told-"

"You said in one of your messages. And I guess I understand that. But to tell you the truth, I don't know if I would have contacted you if we weren't having a baby." He shrugs, the defiance sitting awkwardly on him.

Logan can't help feeling like this whole meeting is a test. He thinks about family barbecues, about Mattie having a cousin to visit with on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and swallows his anger. "I understand," he says, voice low. And then remembering himself sitting across from Emily like this last year, he looks up. "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

"It's a girl," Charlie admits, his face relaxing a little into a smile. It seems more natural on him than the hackles and the anger, but they're back after a minute. "With your boy, do you ever...that reporter, he said that…" He takes a breath, a shaking one. "Are you ever afraid?"

It seems absurd to Logan that he keeps having important conversations in coffee shops. He doesn't really want to be talking about the explosiveness in his blood, the disease that could be helixing along his DNA, even with the one person who might understand it, when behind them is a man complaining that there isn't enough extra foam on his latte. He does it anyway. "I'm afraid all the time. I think everyone is. It's so easy for them to get hurt, and the idea that you could be the one hurting them...I don't know, man. It makes you want to run. But I guess that's the difference. My dad- our dad- he didn't think like that. It wasn't about me, it was about him. It was all about him. So I try to remember that I'm not him. I try every day not to be him. And I haven't screwed it up too badly so far." His hands play along the lid of his coffee cup but he's not stupid enough to try to take a sip; whatever is left will be cold and disgusting by now. He shrugs. "Or some other one-liners from Therapy 101."

"I don't think any of that was in the basic psych classes I took in college," Charlie says, his tone jokingly doubtful, however forced. There's something in that, the normalcy and quiet humor, that reminds Logan of the best parts of Duncan, that makes Logan see, as if through squinted eyes, how he could be friends with his brother. "But it helps. Thank you."

"Can I ask you something?" At Charlie's nod, "Do you surf?"

"Not really." Even knowing that Norman Phipps must have based his Charlie on what Logan wanted to hear, it's a disappointment. "But I like to run."

"I know it's a long trip, but maybe sometime after the baby's born, I could come up and we could run together. Stroller races or something." He feels childish as he says it, hopeful and yearning.

"Yeah. Maybe someday," and while Logan wouldn't exactly categorize it as a resounding agreement, Charlie smiles as he says it and Logan knows it's a start.

May

Charlie's little girl is due to be born at the beginning of June, so he emails an apology in response to Logan's graduation invitation. There's a fading, dormant disappointment as Logan reads it, even though he laughs at the picture Charlie attached of Keri smiling gamely despite her swollen feet and enormous belly. Although he and Charlie keep in touch intermittently now, he thinks that maybe Charlie is simply not ready to show up for his milestones.

He is smiling truly, however, by graduation morning as he and Wallace pose in their graduation gowns while Veronica takes a picture of them over Skype.

"Weren't you a photographer for two illustrious academic publications?" Wallace asks. He flicks Logan's tassel away from his face once again. "Don't you know that all you're gonna get is the glare trifecta from your computer, our lights, and the glimmer off this fine polyester apparel?"

"Well, if I can't be there in person, I'm going to bear witness to these first class garments of non-natural origin as best I can." Veronica snaps another picture. She had wanted to come for today, but between finishing her semester and starting her summer job at a camera store up at Stanford hadn't been able to get back.

"Mrs. Fennel and Emily will have you covered. I'm starting a modeling career with the shots they got of me earlier," Logan says, giving a leading man set to his chin and smiling. A horn honks outside. "Speaking of the photographers, it looks like we have to go."

"Look collegiate!" Veronica instructs, and they say goodbye, stripping off their robes for the drive to Hearst. It's sunny and already almost eighty degrees; going commando wouldn't have been a bad idea, except he was not prepared for the power of Alicia Fennel's disapproval if he hadn't put on a respectable button down and dress pants.

Logan knows he made the right choice not attending Emily's graduation last year. He barely wants to be at his own. Hearst gets second rate honorary degree recipients, so they have to listen to some former attorney general give cliché reminiscence of her own graduation. Emily, a better person than Logan, is in the crowd somewhere with Mattie on her lap. He catches a glimpse of her only once, as the camera pans to catch a group of parents wheeling strollers on the section of the football field between the graduates from the onlookers.

You should have just stayed home, he texts her. I would have even reenacted my big walk for you. For a limited time only, Pomp and Circumstance included.

We're doing fine. Mattie and I wanted to see your big day! Make sure to smile when you go up!

He slides down a little in his seat as he reads it, but when he gets up to the stage, when he walks across knowing that one pair of clapping hands is just for him, he is glad that she came.

They go to Wallace and Alicia's for a barbeque afterward. In the car, Logan is slightly horrified to discover that between the time he saw them this morning and now, Emily has changed Matthew into a onesie with the Hearst logo on the front.

"I didn't think I would be that person," Emily says defensively, seeing Logan's face. "But I wanted him to be extra cute for his pictures with Daddy."

In the Fennel's backyard, she makes him put his gown back on to take more pictures with Matthew. He protests, but finally acquiesces despite Wallace's laughter, because his kid is pretty cute, and easily entertained by the tassel on Logan's mortarboard.

It's a good night. Mac comes over with an entire entourage which includes grandparents but not Madison. They end up with far too many tofu hot dogs because both of Mac's mothers and Wallace all remembered to buy, but Mac looks uncomfortably touched and it's not a problem. Keith Mars shows up and that's still okay. A silly smile covers his face as he makes Alicia laugh. He speaks jovially to Wallace and even Logan as they tend the grill.

"Congratulations, Wallace," he says as he comes over. "And you too, Logan." There's a difference in the way he shakes their hands- Wallace's name could easily be interchanged for "son"- but it's not a restraining arm to the chest, so it's definitely a step up.

It's not late, but things have begun winding down as Matthew gets increasingly fussier, letting out small tired whines that seem to draw all the maternal figures toward him. Mac looks on with disturbed fascination, as if she is observing the strange behavior of some kind of bug. Emily offers to let Logan stay, but he thanks Wallace and Alicia and they go home.

It's hard to maneuver Matthew's sleepy, boneless body into his pajamas, and there's no hope for a bath. As Logan rocks him and places him carefully in his crib, Mattie's hair smells like charcoal and the beginning of summer.

June, July, August

Being an unemployed college grad is not, as it turns out, "living the fucking dream."

"But look at it like this," Dick, the author of said claim, explains, boisterous and patient like Logan needs to be walked step by step through the most elementary things. They are straddling their boards in the morning surf, waiting between waves. Logan slicks back his hair with a wet hand. "You have unlimited time again but then you've got the certificate of kiss-assery on your wall. It's the perfect balance. You're slacking," he holds out one hand, palm up, "but you've got no one riding your ass for being a slacker." He holds out the other and moves both hands up and down in the air in a "win-win" gesture. His eyebrows are raised like he's just gifted Logan with great wisdom.

Logan squints out across the water. "Maybe your advice would come across better if you hadn't just failed Intro to Logic."

"Fucking Diller said the thing was flunk-proof." Dick's face collapses into a scowl. He drops his hands, sounding persecuted. "That bitch professor just wants to keep me around so I can play teacher's pet. It'll be slim pickings around the schoolyard once Hearst is in my rearview."

In the distance something swells, California blue. "It's a different world you live in, isn't it?"

"Maybe. But that just gives me the advantage. I'm away from the action. My head's totally clear." It's always impressed Logan that Dick's words can sound coherent while his tone sounds as if he's losing brain cells by the minute. "Let me be your Buddha."

Logan shifts onto his stomach. "Enlightened, or a fatass? Because you can't reach enlightenment by just chugging that one more beer every night."

Dick yells, "Fuck you!" and either splashes some water at him or falls off of his board trying, but Logan is already paddling out.

Buddha or not, Dick is right about the free time. (Also about the diploma on his wall, framed and hung in the space off the living room that would have been an office if Logan had anything official to do there.) Although it's relaxing for a few weeks, there's only so much time he can fill with video games and surfing and ice cream with Heather, especially since she is vaguely, adolescently irritating to be around these days.

"I could stay out all night and she wouldn't notice," she says, poking sullenly at her brownie sundae. He closes his eyes against a headache and half wishes she would go back to in-depth descriptions of her latest crush rather than endless complaining about her mother's dating habits. It hurts a little to hear her bitterness over this. Just a few years ago she had been a starry-eyed believer in love and he wishes she could have that back.

"I'm sure the guy isn't that bad," he says, wondering when exactly he turned into the always look on the bright side adult.

Heather snorts. "Yeah, five AM hikes and tofu casserole. We're BFF now." She sticks a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, but Logan can see the vulnerability as she swallows and says, "He has kids already. Two little ones who wear whatever my mom picks out and never talk during movies."

Logan puts a hand over hers where she is stirring the melting ice cream around the dish. "And your mom has one awesome kid who never shuts up during movies and could pull off a Veronica Mars wardrobe at age eleven."

Heather's face lights up. Somehow she's still starry-eyed when it comes to this. "How is Veronica?"

He tells her the last story he heard from Veronica, about the thief who she referred to as the Freedom of Information Bandit, a guy who was taking books from Stanford's rare book collection and placing them in the open stacks. He likes the way it makes Heather laugh again, and it means that he doesn't have to think about the way Heather's story parallels his own.

Emily has been going out more frequently now that he has unlimited Matthew-watching time. Logan can tell from the way she talks about it- saying that she's "having some fun" and "trying things out"- that she isn't serious yet. But Emily wants to get married, and one day she will be serious. Someday, when Mattie is a year old, or two, or five, she is going to bring another guy into their kid's life.

He does like that her dating means he gets to spend more time with Mattie, though. He had assumed that he would want a carefree post-college summer, so Alexandra is still around most days. But the two weeks she takes off for vacation, when he fills his day with his son, are a kind of carefree he didn't expect. Matthew is oddly good company, still a baby, sometimes cranky and crying, but mostly staring around, big-eyed and curious, excited by funny faces and different plays of light. He's easy to talk to, and Logan finds himself falling into offhanded monologues about everything: what they're going to do that day, the supersonic pitch of Mattie's squeals, and whether Love You Forever is cute or creepy.

He refrains from telling Charlie about any of this because his brother (half- brother? Charlie never says anything, but he seems to prefer the specificity) is still going through the "why won't she sleep?!" phase with his daughter Zoe.

She's two months now. This ends soon, right? Logan smiles at that and doesn't tell him that Matthew still doesn't always sleep through the night.

He also refrains, at Emily's advice, from asking Charlie if he wants Logan to come visit to help out. They haven't seen each other in person since that first meeting. Although they do correspond now, however tentatively, Logan is still surprised when Charlie emails him the last week of July and mentions that he'll be in town for a conference in mid-August.

I'm staying with a friend from grad school, he writes, But we could meet for drinks while I'm there.

Logan is checking his email on his phone, Matthew dozing in his arms, when he receives it. He's already managed to type out a yes before he realizes that to Charlie it's possible he's still the semi-alcoholic version of himself portrayed in magazines. But, he reasons with himself, maybe anything more than drinks would be too much commitment for Charlie.

Matthew stirs a little in his arms and he realizes that he's gone tense thinking about it. Man up, Echolls, he tells himself and asks Charlie out to dinner.

A few hours later he's following Emily around the kitchen, trying to convince her to join them.

"He really wants to meet you."

"Liar." She's a little sweaty; she's been taking an exercise class, spin jazz Pilates or something. "No way you said, hey, the mother of my kid is pretty snazzy and he went, well stop the presses, I have to see her in person."

"Well, I would never use the word 'snazzy,' but you have Charlie down and you don't even know him yet."

She rolls her eyes. "We'll have to ask Alexandra to stay late, or get another babysitter if she can't."

"See?" he says, a grin growing on his face as he seizes on her agreement. "You're not snazzy. You're spectacular."

Alexandra can't stay but the work he puts into finding a replacement is worth it as he drives to the restaurant a couple weeks later with Emily sitting calmly beside him.

He doesn't know why he's so nervous. He wasn't this nervous meeting the imposter Charlie, but everything about the real one is different. Maybe it's that he messed up with him before they even met, or that Charlie has a calm control that Logan clearly lacks, but being around his brother makes him feel young and unspooled.

"Will it help if I tell you that he's probably just as scared of you as you are of him?" Emily asks as they approach the restaurant. Logan raises an eyebrow and grips the steering wheel and doesn't say anything.

Charlie brought along the friend he's staying with to round out the group, and Emily goes to introduce herself while Logan and Charlie have an awkward mini reunion.

"Thanks for inviting me," Charlie says. "This place looks great." Logan's surprised to find that he sounds sincere, if a little strained.

Logan had discovered this place, close as it was to the beach, as a way to get some quick carbs into a hungover Dick, but the hipster comfort food vibe worked for him. Everyone else seems to like it, and even though it's a little loud, dinner goes smoothly. Charlie's friend is named Eric. He teaches history at a boy's school in the area, and looks the part in jeans and a vest. He's a dark-skinned guy, confident even though he's only an inch taller than Emily. The two of them were good buffer choices. Eric's calm good humor, Emily's warm clarity, smooth the conversation along, and by the end of the night, Logan has one elbow resting on the back of his chair as he gestures with the opposite hand, illustrating a story about Matthew's newfound favorite gesture.

"He just ends up flipping people off. I don't know how he does it, but his fingers just do it automatically." Even Emily is laughing. "And like I didn't have enough problems, it's always around old ladies."

"Would it be too obvious to say that it gives a whole new meaning to 'flipping the bird?'" Charlie asks.

"Yeah," Emily says, "But it's already too late, so we'll have to forgive you."

As they walk back to their cars, Charlie looks over at Logan. "You're a good dad, you know."

"The tone of surprise really," Logan makes an okay sign with his fingers, "sells it."

Charlie laughs, shuffling and embarrassed. "I can't tell you that I looked at the stuff I'd read and said 'wow, this guy's going to be a great father,' but you are." Logan knows that there's a difference between anecdotes and the everyday relationships of fathers and son, and something of that must show in his eyes. Charlie looks at him straight on. "You light up when you talk about him. You love Matthew, and I'm impressed with how you're handling things."

Charlie is six years older than Logan, but getting a compliment from him is like getting one from Keith Mars: a stand-up affirmation that warms him even though he tries to tell himself that he doesn't need their approval. He wants to hug Charlie, but sticks out a hand instead.

Emily stands talking to Eric under the streetlight for a few minutes after Logan gets in the car, so Logan has the time to himself to find a song he likes on the radio, to lean his arm out the window, to look up at the ceiling and smile to himself in the dark.

August

Logan holds the party for Matthew's first birthday.

"Why do we need to do something big?" Emily asks. "We'll get him a couple of presents, and I know my parents are sending something. We'll give him those, have some cake, and call it a day."

"Ah, the Party Witch. I think I read about you in my Mother Buzzkill fairy tale anthology," Logan says, already thinking of who should make the guest list.

He eliminates most of the people he knows because although they're up for a party, they're not looking for one with a Sesame Street theme. He's left with the same old people- Mac, the Fennels- to have over for cake on a Sunday afternoon. He lets Charlie know, even though it's too far for him to drive just for the day. After a little hesitation, he invites Dick too, although he doesn't expect him to show up.

There aren't a lot of activities you can do with a one year old, which means the party mostly involves mingling interspersed with cooing over the baby, something Matthew appears to tolerate but not relish.

"I guess we're lucky on that front," Emily says from the corner where they are watching as Mac, having completed her obligatory minute with the baby, hands him gingerly to Mrs. Fennel. "My dad says until I was two I cried if anyone but him, my mom or my sister tried to hold me." Logan has a sudden, sharp jealousy at the statement. He has no idea what he was like as a baby, and there's no one around to tell him.

Emily added a few friends of her own to the invite list- some mothers she has met at the park and the library, colleagues from work, and, Logan notices, Charlie's friend Eric- and Matthew's patience at meeting them all is clearly running out. Pushing his thoughts from their morose wanderings, he goes to rescue Mattie from a particularly affectionate scientist coworker of Emily's. He is pulling his son into his arms as, over the noise, he hears the doorbell.

"Should we wait a minute?" he asks as he settles Matthew on his hip. "Because I hear that if it's the postman he always rings twice." He holds up two fingers in demonstration; Mattie seems more interested in grabbing and pulling them. He manages to get his hand away to answer the door, and it feels like the right move because Dick is standing there looking like he's uncomfortable just with the presence of a child, much less one who's doing anything.

Logan swallows. "Hey, man, I'm glad you came." It feels thick in his throat.

"Just came by to give this to the kid." Dick shoves a parcel into his hands. Through the plastic wrapping, Logan can see a blue onesie, "Boob Man" written across it in black letters. A laugh huffs out of him.

"Thanks," he says, looking up, only to find that Dick is already down the steps. Logan steps after him, closing the door on the party. "Hey. Dick." He knows it isn't logical, knows that he should go back inside to people who don't hate his kid and look at him like he's a disappointment for growing up. But he also knows that as twisted as Dick is, he has stuck around. "Dick," Logan calls again. "We're having cake in a minute. If you wanted to stay."

Dick doesn't stop until Logan is right over his shoulder. Then he turns, heavy and reluctant compared to his usual loping sloppiness.

"You totally brotrayed me, you know, knocking up some chick and then going off to play house. It sucks that you did that." Usually Dick's emotional moments are facilitated by more than a couple of cold ones, characterized by tears or false casualness. The way he speaks now is simple, honest. Logan straightens. "I could maybe deal with that, but you're all about the kid now and the only kid I was ever around, I f-" He looks at Matthew, who is wriggling to get down from Logan's arms, and amends, "Screwed up."

Logan shifts Mattie a little, but knows that he only has another few minutes before it's going to be impossible to hold him. "Look," he says, trying not to sound helpless. He wants to tell Dick that when he had hurt Cassidy he was just a kid too, that their father shouldn't have sanctioned the torment of his younger son, but that isn't what they say to each other. "You don't have to take care of my kid. You don't even have to be around him if that's...not your thing. But the cake's chocolate, if you want to hang around."

Dick takes a step back just as the guy from down the street walks around the corner with his dog. Matthew's eyes go wide and he pushes forward from Logan's arms. Dick's hands come up with a jolt, automatic, to catch him, even though the little boy only managed to flop the front of his body forward.

"Doc," Matthew says firmly. He apparently has other things to worry about than being held awkwardly between his father and a stranger.

Dick looks at Logan. "No, man, Dick." He looks down and notices that he is still holding the baby. He pulls his hands away.

"Doc." Matthew points to the retriever across the street.

Logan readjusts Matthew once more. "He says it all the time. That and Elmo are a few of his favorite things." He gestures toward the balloon tied to the porch railing, the Muppet faces slightly warped from the rounded shape. Even as Logan's body turns toward the house, Mattie is still trying to reach over his shoulder for the dog. "Let's have cake instead," Logan says, but his son ignores him. Logan takes a step away from Dick. "I should take him inside before he kamikazes trying for an early career in dognapping."

As he reaches the top of the porch, he finds Dick beside him. "Guy wants one thing in life, and you're too cheap ass to get him a dog?"

Logan bumps him with a shoulder. "You spend all your time taking care of your board, you even know what it's like to take care of a dog?"

"Hey, caretaking, that's your job now." Dick says, raising an eyebrow and pointing a finger at Logan. He opens the door to the house and they go to have cake.

That night, Logan is the one to put Matthew to bed. The activity of the day has made him exhausted, so he falls asleep quietly, halfway through the board book Logan starts reading to him.

Taking a deep breath, Logan places Matthew in the crib. Usually he sneaks out at this point, but something about the baby's breathing keeps him there. He stands looking down at his son, his year old boy, for so long that Emily slips into the room, standing shadowed at his side.

"If my dad were still alive," he starts, and then pauses, watching as Matthew brushes a hand across his face, seeming almost aggravated even in his sleep. He could tell Veronica this because she knows how he feels about Aaron. He can tell Emily because she's the only one in the world who feels this way about this boy. "If my dad were still alive, I would kill him." He stares down at Matthew, watching him through the dark. "If there was a chance that he could be a danger to Mattie, I would make sure he wouldn't be around to hurt him."

After a minute Emily says, "That was weirdly sweet for someone talking homicide."

He ducks his head a little deeper and laughs, all hushed breath. "Hey, theoretical patricide is a step up for me." He wants to stroke along the slightly thicker section in the middle of Matthew's hair which almost resembles a mohawk but resists, knowing that it will probably wake him. Instead he looks down at the baby for another minute before he gives Emily a quick side hug and goes home.

September

Wallace gets a job in the fall, an entry level gig at a company that designs drink machines. It sounds boring as hell to Logan, but Wallace shrugs and says that it's putting money in the bank. On the side, he starts volunteering at a youth center, coaching basketball.

"You don't have to try so hard to make the rest of us look bad," Logan complains.

Wallace laughs. "Gotta keep the good guy game competitive."

A couple weeks into the job, Wallace's car breaks down, and it's Logan's turn to step up his own game while it's getting repaired. Without much to do anyway, Logan starts driving him home in the afternoons.

He is regretting the offer on the fourth day as he sits in the car for fifteen minutes waiting for Wallace to finish talking with a pair of boys. Matthew is in the backseat, his hands clenching fussily. He needs a nap.

"Snookums," Logan finally calls out the window, batting his eyes and tapping his fingers against the side of the car. "I've got a roast waiting in the oven and I know how you like your meat tender."

Wallace glares over his shoulder, bumps fists with the two, and jogs back to the car. "Sorry, man. They're just having some problems, needed someone to talk to." He reaches back before he puts his seatbelt on, holds a hand out to Mattie. "High five, little man?" Mattie, usually eager for them, just flaps his hand vaguely toward Wallace's and crinkles his face. Best case, he'll hold out until Logan can get him to bed, or maybe cry a little bit and then fall asleep in his carseat. Worst case, screaming all the way home, tortured animal style. Logan floors it.

They pass the boys Wallace was talking to standing by the bus stop on the corner. Glancing at them in the mirror, Logan opens his mouth to ask if their downcast faces are because their mom told them that they're moving with their auntie and uncle in Bel Air, but decides better of it. "What did they need to talk about?" he says instead.

Wallace breathes out softly. "They weren't really interested in talking specifics, but they both ran away and the shelter they're staying at is emergencies only, so they have to be out after two weeks. Wanted to know if I knew a place they could stay."

"Do you?"

"I thought maybe the apartment at my mom's, but she's got a new tenant coming in soon. They can go to an adult shelter but those places can be rough, you know?"

"What do you think will happen to them?" Logan never considered running away. He didn't know what might have happened to his mom if he wasn't there. And anyway, Aaron was a part of his life, something he had to deal with. He had resigned himself to that when he was young.

Wallace shrugs, still looking burdened. Logan understands why they asked him for help. "They'll probably be on the streets for a while. Not like they'll be alone. There are only a couple of youth shelters in the city and like a thousand homeless kids."

Logan almost reminds Wallace that hyperbole isn't his style, but then it sinks in that hyperbole isn't Wallace's style. "A thousand? Jesus."

"Yeah." Wallace shakes his head, voice bitter in a way that makes it unfamiliar. "But I don't think he's listening."

Even after he drops Wallace off and goes upstairs to rock Mattie, who cries exhaustedly for twenty minutes before the tiredness overtakes him, Logan is thinking of those numbers. Two shelters. A thousand kids. Even if they were giant warehouses they couldn't house that many, much less keep them fed and clothed and happy. After finally placing a tear-stained Matthew in his crib, Logan finds himself googling how-to guides. How to start a homeless shelter. How to start a 501(c)(3). Then to find large plots of land or buildings for sale in the area.

"Hey, sorry I'm so late," Emily says, hanging her bag on a hook by the door. She shakes her hair out as she comes over to stand beside him at the kitchen island. "What nefarious things are you up to?"

Logan looks up at her, feeling a little cloudy. "Nothing nefarious, but Judy, I think I'm going to start a homeless shelter in the barn."

October, November, December

Emily doesn't understand it at first, how ideas of maybe someday getting a job transformed into a multimillion dollar project in something with which he has no experience. It's the inexperience that gets him weird looks when he starts trying to interview managers.

There are a few websites that give step by step instructions, but no one seems to agree on the order. He figures he can start with a business plan, staff, and a space. All those business classes seem less useless as he does the former, and the husband and wife team he hires to oversee everything helps with the last.

They're named Eddie and Maria, and they've been working in shelters for longer than he's been alive. It quickly becomes clear that he's going to be better off leaving the daily operations to them, but that doesn't mean he sits back and just sticks his name on the building. The three of them work with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, find a building to convert, hire psychologists and social workers to round out the staff.

In December, knowing that even his ill-gotten inheritance won't support the place indefinitely, he hosts a fundraiser, the bow tie of his tux feeling both alien and better than ever.

"How do you do that?" Emily asks incredulously as he walks over to her, leaving a real estate mogul grinning behind him. "No one should be able to get people to sign over their checkbooks with just a little small talk."

"I have vast talent," he says, twitching his cuffs with a little 007 flourish.

"Just make sure you use it only for good." She looks past him toward the bar where Eric is getting her a drink. They've been seeing each other for a few months now, starting seriously a couple of weeks after Mattie's birthday party.

"How's that going?" Logan says, his mouth curling upwards, delicate and coy even as the thought tenses in his chest.

There's a strange tentativeness in the way she watches Eric making his way back to her. She stands with her head tilted, seeming almost weighted as the two of them watch Eric balance the drinks carefully as he waits patiently for the older lady walking in front of him. "It's going really well," she says anyway.

Logan looks over at her. "You sure?" he says, intent but trying to keep his voice from dropping to seriousness.

"Yeah, of course. Total sweetheart of a guy who's good with Mattie, bakes me muffins, and likes Discovery Channel almost as much as I do? I think it's basically the dictionary definition of going well." Maria comes over to Logan then, reminding him that he's supposed to introduce the slideshow prospectus in a few minutes. He follows her, but glances back over his shoulder at Emily as he walks to the edge of the room. She's lit like the full moon, clear and startlingly bright, arm hooked through Eric's as he finally reaches her. Logan's gut still tells him that they'll be talking about something later.

January

It's not until a month later, but he's proved right.

Alexandra still watches Matthew during the day, and Logan likes to come see them when he's working from home. He cuts back when Alexandra reminds him that routine and boundaries are good for kids, instead letting her bring Mattie over to his place for lunch or for a brief visit. He needs those times, really, after mornings spent talking permits and grants on the phone, or hours of looking at the numbers and leaning back in his chair realizing that no matter how many kids he helps, he's never going to be able to help all of them. Thinking about holding Mattie at the end of the day helps him through that.

He usually hangs out with Matthew at Emily's in the late afternoon and early evening, but when Emily is going to a work thing, or out with friends, or on a date with Eric, Mattie sometimes sleeps in the room Logan had set up for him months ago. It's strange, at first, doing all the dad things, knowing that his home is Mattie's home too, but he's been doing it all for months in pieces and after a while it's just automatic.

One night mid-January, he's gone through the usual dinner-bath-bed routine and is reading downstairs when he hears Emily's car in the driveway and her steps up onto the porch. She usually comes to check in with him when she gets back, but she doesn't come to his door and he doesn't hear hers open either. After a few moments, he looks outside.

She is sitting, hunched and loose-limbed, on the porch steps, despite the rocking chair placed neatly next to her door. He listens for Mattie and then goes out, closing the front door quietly and sitting beside Emily on the cold porch.

"How's Mattie?" she says, hushed and automatic.

"He's fine. Asleep upstairs." When she barely nods, "You're back early," he says. "Inspiration point too crowded?" She's quiet next to him, a distracted kind of silence. He pulls back to look at her. "Hey. Em." He rests a hand on his knee, close to her uncovered, goosebumped one. "Did Eric do something? Did something happen?" He likes Eric, he wants to trust Eric, but his instincts have been wrong too many times for that to be a deciding factor.

"Yeah." Her voice is stratified. "You could say that." She puts a hand over his as he jerks, finally looking at him. "Not like that. You can keep it cool, boy."

"So why are we being flash frozen out here?"

"He asked me if eventually I would want to get married," and everything goes silent inside him.

After a minute, Logan shifts. "He tried to put a ring on it? Seriously?" The night suddenly seems enveloping, putting ice in his chest, in his stomach.

"He started an exploratory pre-ring conversation. Thinking rationally about the future. Because he's older and looking for commitment and thinks that could possibly be with me."

"What did you say?"

"Oh, we're taking the shuttle to Vegas tonight. I'm just here to pack a bag," she snaps, and then swallows. "I told him that I wasn't sure." She leans away from Logan a little, sliding her arms around her knees. "It's all just happening really fucking fast, you know? I went through a breakup, I got pregnant, I graduated college, I had a baby, I got a job. I live next door to my...you. And now there's this guy, and he's- and it wasn't supposed to happen now." She reminds him of Veronica just then, struggling between self and surroundings, cornered and lashingly desperate. "I was supposed to start dating, and then in a few years when I'd gotten used to my life I was supposed to find the right guy, the guy who was good with Mattie and who was good for me."

"Yeah, and when have plans ever worked out?" He puts his palms flat on the porch behind him, resting his weight back on them. He looks out past her. "Do you love him?" he asks, because while she won't be cracking his heart with the answer, she might be cracking the family that they have built, the comfort he has gained.

He can see her parents at war in her face: Jim's calm surrender to optimism, Teresa's locked realism. "Yes," she admits, resting the word carefully between them. "But does that matter?"

Logan fell in love with Lilly laughing and unburdened. But he woke in love with Veronica, sudden, accidental, and, despite everything, true. He knows what it's like to be insensibly filled with love like that. "It matters," he tells her, and there must be something in the way he says it because she turns to look at him. He tilts his head. "Look, he didn't get down on one knee after five months. He knew you better than that."

"So you think he deserves a chance?"

"Hey," he gets up and, offering her a hand, pulls her to her feet. "It's your life. But I think you're betraying Rick James if you give up on love because you didn't have it penciled into your day planner."

Emily laughs slightly, still a little in her own mind. "Yeah. Okay." She brushes his arm quickly and steps toward her door. "I'll be on the lookout for your sex and relationship column from now on," she tosses back at him as she goes inside.

Mattie is still asleep when Logan gets back inside, just one small sound from his room disrupting the silence of the house as Logan gets ready for bed. Eric and Emily are on his mind, but more than that it's Veronica.

It's not that he hasn't thought of her in the months since she left for Stanford. They text and call each other occasionally, and she comes up in conversation with Wallace and Mac often. More than that, she comes to his mind at random because she's wound into him, because she's his oldest friend, because they live separate lives and still he loves her.

But the specter of her hangs around him more potently all week, through meetings with Eddie and Maria and the construction foreman for the building renovations that they're doing, as Alexandra tells him that she thinks Mattie is getting a cold, and when Emily tells him with a casual smile that she and Eric are going out again next Saturday. He wonders what she would say.

He is focused on Matthew that Saturday afternoon with Emily out. They are playing with Mattie's Fisher-Price farm set, which means that Matthew is cantering animals around until he gets bored and throws them across the floor one by one. Logan's role is to retrieve the plastic figures when Mattie runs out of them. He's grateful when there's a knock on the door. He picks up Matthew, because his little boy's joyful curiosity can easily turn to disaster if he's left unsupervised, and goes to answer it. As the door swings open, his mind goes blank.

"Think of the devil and she appears," is what comes out after a moment, because Veronica Mars is standing on his doorstep.

Author's note: I know, I know. Don't give me that look. Times two. Once for the cliffhanger, once for the absurd amount of time it's taken to post this.

To be honest, this probably could have been posted a month ago, but a. I had a lot of work and didn't have a huge amount of editing time to spare, and b. the editing for this chapter seemed really astronomical. I'm still nervous about it for a few reasons, but at this point it is what it is.

Next chapter is going to be the last. Listen to The Lion King soundtrack and be prepared.