Shadow in Serenity

twenty-four


Logan checked his watch and decided it was too late for UPS to do a pickup, but he still had time to get his boxed equipment to the FedEx Store before they closed at eight. Setting his bag on the bed, he dialed the closest airport, which was an hour away in Odessa, to get departure times. There was a flight to Los Angeles around midnight, so he booked it.

The insistent knock at his door was unexpected, and for a moment, he sat still, unwilling to answer it.

But the knock continued, and finally, he cracked the door open just enough to see Carny. He stood in the opening so that she couldn’t see into the room.

Her face was alive with fury, and her eyes were red. “Where’s Jason?” she demanded.

“Jason? Didn’t he come home?”

“Of course he came home!” she said through clenched teeth. “And then he left again. Where is he, Brisco?”

“Carny, I don’t know!”

With more force than he would have expected from her, she shoved him back from the door and pushed her way inside. “Jason!” she called.

“He’s not here!” He tried to stand between her and the bags on the bed, but it was too late.

She stopped, stunned, and looked from the bed to Logan and back again. “Going somewhere?” she asked, fresh tears filling her eyes.

“Yes … no! Carny, why are you looking for Jason? What’s wrong?”

“You!” Grabbing his bag with both hands, she flung it off the bed. Jack jumped up from the floor, startled. “You’re what’s wrong! You took money from my baby, turned him against me after you promised you’d never hurt him, and now he’s gone … and you … you’re getting ready to leave, aren’t you? Just like I said! Only I didn’t want it to be true!”

Logan took her by the shoulders and turned her around. “What do you mean, he’s gone? Where did he go?”

“He ran away, you scumbag!” She shook his hands off. “Who knows where he’ll go! And it’s dark, and he’s so little!” Her voice broke, and she lost herself to sobs, a sight that Logan was quite sure few people had ever witnessed.

“I didn’t ask for the kids’ money, Carny, and I wasn’t going to keep it,” he said softly. He went to his coat and fished the fat envelope with Jason’s name on it out of his pocket. “It’s all there. Every cent the kids gave me.”

Wiping away her angry tears, she looked up at him. “And what about the adults, Brisco? Are you giving theirs back too? Before you flee into the night?”

He turned away. She saw right through him, to all the dark, ugly places that had never seemed dark or ugly until he’d come to Serenity.

“No, I didn’t think so,” she said. “I’d hoped I was wrong about you. You had so much potential.” She headed back to the door.

“Carny, wait!”

“I can’t. I have to find my son!” she cried.

The door slammed, and Logan stood for a moment, reeling from the impact of her words. She had wanted to trust him, that woman who’d had so many reasons not to trust. And he had just given her one more.

He turned to Jack, who sat on the floor, whimpering. And as he looked at the bed, where his whole life was packed neatly away in one bag, a briefcase, and a couple of boxes, he realized that he couldn’t leave town.

Not yet.

Grabbing the keys to his car, he said, “Stay here, Jack. There’s something I have to do.”


Logan found Jason in the first place he looked. He was in his secret spot at the lake, a place Logan knew the boy had never been to at night, a place that seemed more ominous than peaceful with the moonlight playing through the trees and the shadows dancing beneath them.

At first, Logan saw only the soft mound on the fallen log, but when he got closer, he realized it was a sleeping bag, opened up and draped over the boy, not to keep the warmth in, for it was May and not very cold, but probably to keep out those things he feared the most. The things he hadn’t thought about when he’d resolved to run away. But little boys never thought anything would hurt them, least of all the grown men they counted as their friends.

Logan stepped closer, and in a quiet voice said, “Jason?”

Startled, the boy looked out from under the sleeping bag. “Oh, Logan,” he said, catching his breath. “You scared me. I thought you were a mean animal.”

“Sorry,” he said, sitting down on the log next to him. “But you shouldn’t be out here at night by yourself.”

“I’m not going back.”

Logan looked at the boy staring off into the lake, his features stubborn and angry, but still so innocent. “Why not?”

“Because my mother treats me like a kid.”

“Your mother happens to be worried sick about you. She came to me crying, Jason. Do you want to make your mother cry?”

Jason didn’t answer for a moment, and finally, he asked, “What did she say?”

“She was looking for you. Everybody’s looking for you. Jason, running away is no answer. Why don’t we go back, and let her —”

“No!” he said. “If you came out here to talk me into that, then you can leave. I’m not scared to stay here by myself.”

Logan sighed. “I know you’re not. Look, what do you plan to do? Spend the night on this log? What about tomorrow? What will you eat?”

“I’ll fish,” he said. “I’ll start a campfire and cook it myself, and live like Huck Finn, without anybody telling me what I can do with my money.”

“Jason, your mother was right about the money. I never should have taken it from you. I gave it back. Your mother has it.”

“See?” the boy said, throwing off the sleeping bag and standing up to face him. “I knew she would do that! She’s ruining everything!”

“She’s trying to protect you, Jason.”

“Well, I don’t need protecting. I can make my own decisions.”

For a moment, Logan stared quietly at the boy, knowing that nothing he said right now was going to make any difference. “All right,” he said finally. “I won’t try to talk you into going back. But I hope that sleeping bag will fit two, because I’m staying here with you.”

Jason gaped at him. “What?”

“You heard me. I’m not making you go back, but I won’t leave you here, either.”

“What about Jack? You gonna leave him alone all night?”

“He’ll be all right.”

Jason looked confused. “Yeah, well, you can stay tonight, but tomorrow, I’m taking off, and you can’t come. I don’t need anybody slowing me down.”

Logan would have found Jason’s words amusing, except that he remembered making the same decision himself when he was fourteen. “It’s lonely out there, Jason.”

“I don’t care.”

He patted the log, urging the boy to sit down, and finally, Jason did. Logan put his arm around him and pulled him against him. Weary from the battle, Jason laid his head against Logan’s chest. “Jason, I know how you feel, buddy. I really do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Listen to me, Jase. Listen real close, because I’m gonna tell you a story, and I’m only gonna tell it once. It’s not easy to tell, and I’ve never told it before. Are you man enough to keep it to yourself?”

Jason pulled back and looked up at him. “Sure I am.”

Logan hoped the boy couldn’t see the mist in his eyes as he cleared his throat. “Once there was a little boy who lived with his mother, and she was the most wonderful person alive. He didn’t know his father, but it didn’t really matter, because his mother gave him so much love that nothing seemed to be missing.”

Jason pulled back slightly and looked down, and Logan knew that he thought he was talking about him. “Did she keep him from giving his own money for really important things?”

Logan set a finger on the boy’s lips, shushing him. “This little boy was only five, and money was the furthest thing from his mind. He liked to be read to and he liked singing songs with her and he loved bedtime, because that was when she tucked him in, and they cuddled while they said their prayers.”

He hadn’t expected the memories to be so painful, and he found his mouth going dry as he got the words out. Jason was quiet now, listening.

“The little boy stayed with a babysitter while his mother went to work, and every day she came just before supper-time and picked him up. But one day, she didn’t come.”

“Why not?” Jason whispered.

“The little boy didn’t know. He waited and waited, and finally the baby-sitter fed him, and then she told him that he would be staying with her that night.”

Logan’s voice wavered, and he stopped and waited for a moment, trying to rein in the emotions he had never voiced before. But the words had to come out. “He kept thinking that she’d be there soon, but the next day, she didn’t come. He waited and waited, sitting by the door most of the day, watching out the window, but his mother never came.

“Finally, a social worker came to the babysitter’s house, and she took the little boy. She told him they were going to find him a new home.”

“Why?” Jason asked.

“He didn’t know. All he knew was that, when his mother came back for him, she wouldn’t be able to find him. They put him in a home with people he didn’t know, people who didn’t have much patience with him, and he sat by the window most of the time, staring out, waiting for his mother to come. But she never came.”

Jason’s eyes were moist as he considered that for a moment. “Because she didn’t know where he was?”

“That’s what the little boy thought,” Logan said, taking a deep breath. “That little boy got real angry, and he threw a lot of fits, so the family he was with didn’t want him anymore. They wound up moving him from one foster home to another. For a long time, he kept waiting for his mother to come get him. But then he couldn’t remember how she looked … what she smelled like … When he was ten years old, he was sitting in the social worker’s office one day, waiting for her to assign him to a new home, when he saw his file. He opened it and learned that his mother was dead.”

“Dead? When did she die?”

“That first day she didn’t come home, when he was five.” He cleared his tight throat. “That was the worst day of his life, when he found out the truth.”

Jason stared up at him, horrified. “Did anybody ever adopt him?”

“No one ever did,” Logan said. “The file described him as ‘a precocious, angry child, prone to trouble.’ All his life, all he wanted was to have a real family, where someone loved him, where he could count on people, where he was important. He didn’t care if he got to make his own decisions or if he got to spend his own money, and he didn’t even care if it was a poor family. He just wanted to belong somewhere. But that never happened, so one day, when he was about fourteen, he decided he was old enough to be on his own, and he ran away.”

“Just like me.”

“Not exactly like you,” Logan said. “He was older than you, and he was running to something. He was looking for a place to belong. You already have a place to belong.”

Jason considered that for a moment. “What happened to him? He was all right, wasn’t he? On his own, I mean?”

“No, Jason, he wasn’t. He was very lonely, and he did dishonest things to make a living. He lost whatever childhood he had left, and he never really found what he was looking for.”

Captivated, Jason gazed up at Logan with sad eyes.

“Jason, do you know what that little boy’s name was?”

He shook his head.

“It was Logan Brisco. That little boy was me.”

Jason caught his breath, and stared at Logan with a new reverence. “Really?”

Logan swallowed the emotion in his voice. “Yeah, really. And you know what? If I’d had one person who loved me like your mom loves you, my whole life would have turned out differently.”

As he held the little boy’s gaze, he saw the tears forming in Jason’s eyes. They dropped over his lashes, and Logan pulled him against himself and held him while he cried.

After a moment, Jason looked up at him. “Logan, I want to go home.”