Apples Never Fall

No. No. No.

All the way back to Tracey, when Troy was also dating a Tracey. Troy’s Tracey might have done something like that, but not Logan’s Tracey.

Logan picked good girlfriends. He always got invited to their weddings. (Would he one day get a cheerful invitation to Indira’s wedding? The thought of watching Indira marry someone else was like imagining the death of a loved one.)

It must have been a “random crazy” as Don had suggested. But still, it was unsettling. This whole day was feeling very unsettling.

He picked up his beer and the remote, unmuted the television, and flicked through channels: an episode of Friends, an episode of Seinfeld, an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Everything at this time of day was a rerun.

He stopped on a pretty woman with brown curly hair talking to an interviewer.

The camera was close on her face as she said, pleadingly, “I don’t know why they put those shows on television, they don’t help. It makes it worse!”

He must have seen it before. He didn’t recognize her, but there was something so familiar about the way her voice skidded up on the word worse.

She continued on. “Those stories always put him in a filthy mood! I think they made him feel guilty. He’d be like, ‘It’s always the man’s fault, never the chick’s fault.’”

Logan was standing in his parents’ backyard and Savannah was telling the story of her boyfriend hitting her. He was almost positive that some of the words were identical to the words Savannah had used: It’s always the man’s fault, never the chick’s fault.

He put down his beer, turned up the volume.

The girl said, “So I changed the channel super-fast, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to watch The Bachelor!’”

Not exactly the same story. Didn’t Savannah say she changed the channel to some other show? Was it Survivor?

It must be a weird coincidence.

“I started to relax,” said the curly haired girl. The camera zoomed in on eyes swimming with tears. “And then I thought, Oh it’s fine, and then, like a stupid idiot, I asked if he’d paid the car registration.”

She’d asked if he’d paid the car registration. That’s what Savannah had said too. He was absolutely certain that’s what she’d said. It had to be more than a coincidence. Surely? That two domestic violence incidents could be precipitated by a question about car registration?

“I wasn’t trying to make a point. Apparently I was being passive aggressive. And then it all just spiraled from there. He broke my jaw. Three ribs. I was in hospital for longer than he was in jail.”

An old photo of the woman filled the screen. It made Logan wince and look away. The girl’s face was unrecognizable: like swollen black-bruised fruit.

Had Savannah helped herself to someone else’s painful story?

Something had happened to Savannah. Her injury was real, even if it was minor, and hardly compared to the atrocious injuries this poor woman had suffered.

He looked back at the television. Another woman in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck sat behind a desk, talking with despairing expertise about the scourge of domestic violence she had personally witnessed.

Logan remembered Savannah’s ex-boyfriend sitting up in bed, grabbing for his glasses. Something had felt off. The guy had just seemed so confused. But Logan had sternly chastised himself. His instincts were wrong and evil. How dare he question a woman’s story of being abused, just because the man didn’t look like “the type”?

Logan picked up his phone, scrolled through his contacts, and considered who to call. He didn’t want to disturb Brooke at work, and she had enough to worry about at the moment with her separation. He could call Troy, but Troy’s first instinct would be to throw money at the problem. Would he offer money to Savannah to make her go away? Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea. Except that she seemingly made their parents so happy.

He would call Amy. He realized he’d always been going to call Amy, because in spite of everything, she was still in charge. She was their mad queen, to whom they still all swore their lifelong allegiance.

“What’s on your mind?” answered Amy, in her big-sister voice.

“Savannah,” said Logan.

“Oh, me too,” said Amy happily. “I don’t like her at all.”

Chapter 27

NOW

“Apparently the husband had a habit of walking out the door and disappearing when family life got too much for him,” said Christina to her boss.