Apples Never Fall

Logan didn’t seem at all like his mother, but in this they were alike: he was good at keeping in touch with people too. He was the friend who went around to people’s houses and helped build their back deck or fix their drainage problem. He was the friend people called when they’d locked themselves out of their house, or when an appliance exploded. She should never have called him passive. Passive people didn’t spend entire weekends helping their friends build back decks.

He was a good person.

She experienced the truth of this like a physical injury. A literal twist of the heart.

“Are you okay?” asked Logan.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Indira. “I’m worried about you.”

She put her hand on top of his. He looked terrible. He was always scruffy—scruffiness was part of his identity, it was how he differentiated himself from his brother (that was her theory, of which he did not approve), but this was a new level of scruffiness. His eyes were red, his skin blotchy, his jeans sagged around his waist like an old man’s trousers. He must have lost weight.

Seven months ago, she’d broken up with Logan because she’d felt trapped, pleasantly trapped, but trapped nonetheless, in a perfectly nice life, living in this perfectly adequate town house, going to the same perfectly adequate Mexican restaurant every Friday night. It wasn’t that she loved change. The thing she most disliked in Logan was the thing she most disliked in herself. She too loved the seductiveness of a daily routine.

Logan didn’t chase her to the airport like a scene in a movie. Naturally he didn’t.

But then: nothing happened. Her life didn’t magically become different. She was still Indira. Just alone and lonely. She missed him. She missed sex. She had assumed sex was like chocolate—if it wasn’t in the house she wouldn’t think about it.

It had begun to occur to her that she wasn’t trapped because of Logan; she’d been trapped in her own Indira self, like everyone was trapped in their own selves.

“What about Troy and Brooke? How are they?” She could feel the question everyone was surely asking unpleasant and sour in her mouth: Do you think your dad did it?

“Troy and Brooke aren’t speaking,” said Logan. “It’s like Troy thinks he’s proving his loyalty to Mum, and Brooke thinks she’s proving her loyalty to Dad.”

“And you?” said Indira. “What about you? Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” He suddenly flipped his hand over and held on to hers. She watched his face. A muscle in his jaw shuddered. He squeezed her hand once, tightly, and then he returned it to her, carefully and gently across the table.

She held the released, rejected hand with her other hand as if to comfort it.

Logan tugged hard on his earlobe. “Are you happy?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “You don’t need to talk about me right now, not when you’re going through this terrible thing.”

“Are you painting?”

“Am I painting?” She gave a half laugh. “I’m all talk and no action when it comes to painting, you know that.”

“That’s because you need a studio,” said Logan urgently.

“Sure, Logan,” said Indira. “That’s what I need.”

“You need somewhere like this,” said Logan. “Just for example.”

He opened his laptop and clicked on a real estate website.

“What’s this?” Indira pulled the laptop toward her, and her elbow knocked against the cup of tea she’d been drinking. L

ogan caught it before it spilled, with practiced ease, as if he’d known that was going to happen.

“It’s a three-bedroom house,” said Logan. “It has a granny flat out the back. The light is beautiful.”

Indira stared without comprehension at the screen.

“Sorry, Logan, I don’t quite get—”

“I looked at it just before Mum went missing.” Logan tapped his finger on the screen. “It’s further out from the city but it would be worth it for more space.”

Had his anxiety about his mother made him lose his mind?