Melody (Logan 1)

True to his word, Cary was waiting after school, his hands in his pockets, his hair over his forehead, his face drawn in a scowl, right at the entrance to the school when the bell rang ending the day.

"Everything's fine," I told him immediately.

"It's over, forgotten."

"Sure."

"It is. Here." I thrust the pages of assignments in his hands. "This is your schoolwork, Cary Logan, and I expect you will do it even though you're not attending classes."

He gazed at the papers and then looked up at me and smiled. "You'll make me an A student yet, eh?"

"You'll do it yourself."

We started away and at the end of the street, we paused because I was going to walk to Grandma Olivia's.

"It's not a short walk," he warned. "If I hadn't gotten suspended, my father would have let me use the pickup and I could have taken you, but--"

"I know how far it is. I'll be all right. I want to do it. I have to do it," I said. He nodded and kicked a stone across the macadam.

"You sure you don't want me along?"

"Cary, you have to see to May," I told him.

"She can make her way home alone if she must."

"I once said that and you nearly bit my head off." He smiled.

"I did. I remember. All right, go on, but don't get upset and--"

"Mr. Worry Wart, stop it!" I ordered.

"All right."

I started away.

"Her bark's worse than her bite!" he shouted after me. "So's mine," I shouted back. He watched me walk off for a while and then he went to fetch May.

It was a long walk, and when I broke out to the main highway, it was harder, because the cars were whizzing by, some so close I felt the breeze in their wake lift my hair. Suddenly, an elderly man driving a rather beaten up light orange pickup truck stopped.

"You shouldn't be walking on this highway," he chastised.

"I have no other way to go," I said.

"Well, get in and I'll drop you off. Come on. My wife would give me hell if she heard I let a young girl walk along here."

I smiled and got into the truck. The seat was torn and there was a basket of what looked like seashells on the floor of the cab, along with all sorts of tools.

"Don't worry about any of that stuff. My granddaughter likes to make things with seashells," he explained.

He had gray stubble over his chin and the sides of his jaw, and his thin gray hair ran untrimmed down the sides of his temples and the back of his head, but he had kind blue eyes and a gentle smile. He reminded me of Papa George. Papa George, I thought, how I missed him.

"So where are you heading with your sails up like that?" he asked.

"My grandparents' house, the Logans," l told him and his eyes widened.

"Olivia and Samuel Logan?"

"Yes," I said.