It made him angry and sometimes he corrected them with his fists.
He got sent to the principal’s office a lot when they first got here. His dad and Samara thought putting him in the choir would help him settle down.
Samara kept saying that she thought he had a nice voice.
She never bothered Logan much. She made sure he did his homework and she took care of most of the house stuff. She made him what he liked to eat, like chili.
It was never as good as his mom’s.
Besides, she was always busy taking these nursing courses and studying all the time. Always typing on her laptop and talking to friends on her cell phone at all hours. She had a strict rule that Logan was never to touch her phone or laptop, something about patient confiden tiality.
He didn’t want to touch her stuff. He didn’t really like her.
Sometimes, late at night, he heard her talking on the phone in a strange language. From the action movies he’d watched, he guessed it was Arabic, or something. She was from Iraq. He told his dad who explained to him that Samara had friends around the world who worked with relief groups, like the Red Cross. These people did good things and she was just talking to her friends.
Whatever.
Why couldn’t Logan talk to his friends in California?
He didn’t understand it.
Once he secretly tried to e-mail his mother from a friend’s computer but he didn’t know her e-mail. Then they tried to reach her through the bookstore’s Web site but a thing popped up about credit-card security and Logan backed off.
What if what his dad said was true about there being some stupid mean law that he was not supposed to talk to his mom.
He yearned for her today as he got off the bus and walked down the long lane that cut across the flatland to their house, an ugly yellow square thing in the middle of nowhere.
Might as well be on Mars.
Logan saw his dad’s red rig parked under the tree where he was working on it.
“How was school?”
Logan shrugged.
“All the kids must be getting excited with the count down to the big day.”
“I think I’m going to be kicked off the choir.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The teacher says I’m not concentrating and gave me some extra work to do to prove that she should keep me on.”
“Then you’d better do it and focus, son. This is a big deal. Like meeting the president. You don’t want to blow it now. Samara worked hard to get you on the choir and you’ve put in the time.”
Logan looked out at the horizon and blinked at his problems.
“Want to tell me what’s on your mind, son?”
“Are you going to marry Samara?”
His father wiped his hands on a rag.
“I don’t know. We take things day by day, you know that.”
“Are you and Mom ever going to get back together?”
“We’ve been over that a thousand times, Logan.”
“How come if this pope thing’s such a big deal, I can’t call Mom and invite her? She would like to see this. Please.”
His dad sat on the truck’s step and pulled Logan closer.
“We’ve been through this. We can’t call her, ever, we can’t see each other. It’s over. It’s finished. We might not like it, but that’s the way it happened with the court stuff. We just moved on with our lives.”
“I tried to call her and e-mail her, Dad.”
“What? Dammit, Logan! When?”
“When we first moved here and a few times after.”
“I specifically told you never, ever try to call or contact her. Logan-” his dad looked away to soften another lie “-the court ordered us to do everything that we did. We are to have no contact with her, ever.”
“But I was really sad and you were gone. I tried to call but I couldn’t get through. It’s like our phone here won’t let me call our old number in California. Same with e-mails.”
His dad nodded and told him he had a block arranged with the phone and Internet companies. All part of the court’s rules, he said.
“Dad. I don’t understand. What happened?” Tears filled Logan’s eyes.
“We’ve talked about this, son. We’re just not part of her life anymore. That’s why we moved here. You’ve had friends whose parents got divorced. Well, it’s like that. People change. Mom changed. So we had to start over. Start a new life with new names in a new place.”
“But how can she just stop loving us? I don’t believe she did. I mean, that last day I saw her, she was hugging me. I told her I was worried that you might be getting a divorce. She said it wasn’t true, that she loved you and that she loved me.”
“Stop it, Logan.”
“How can she just not love me anymore? She’s my mom. She has to love me. I know she wouldn’t just stop loving me. I want to call her, Dad.”
His dad put his hands on Logan’s shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“I know this has been hard. But you’ve got to try not to think about the past. It’s not easy, I know. But we’ve got Samara, and believe me, son, after all we’ve both been through, she’s the right person in the world for both of us right now.”
A motor hummed as Samara’s van pulled up to the house.
“Hi, guys,” she called, smiling. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Logan said. “Can you make tacos?”
“Sure.” Samara looked at Jake then back at Logan. “Think you might give me a hand with some groceries in the van?”
That night, they ate a quiet dinner together.
Logan’s dad turned in early because he had to leave early in the morning for a job that would take him to Spokane, Salt Lake City, then Great Falls before he got back.
That evening after the dishes, Samara and Logan went outside to the chairs under the big tree. Under the brilliant stars, and to the sound of crickets, she helped him with his music. In the light that spilled from the kitchen window Logan saw concern on her face, as if something major was heavy on her mind.
“Logan,” she said. “I want you to know that no matter what you think about me, and no matter what anyone says, you and your dad are the two most impor tant people in the world to me.”
Logan said nothing as she gazed up at the Milky Way.
She seemed sad.
“Soon,” she said, “you’re going to be part of history. Soon, everything will be as it should be.”
The tear tracks running down her cheeks glistened in the starlight.
“The joy we crave will return for all of us, I promise you.”
20
Missoula, Montana
Jake drove west, hauling scrap metal and a load of grief about Logan.
The sudden move to Montana had been hard on his son. Seeing him struggling after all these months tore Jake up and he started asking himself if leaving every thing behind in California had been the right thing to do.
His hands tensed on the wheel.
