Beautiful Dreamer

Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

It was Juliette who broke the silence.

“You have a sister?” she demanded, striding over to look at the record book for herself.

“She had a sister,” Logan corrected, shaking his head. “According to this, Rosemary Elway died when you were two years old.”

I stared at my hands, pressed flat against the surface of the table. The coolness of the metal was seeping into the flesh of my palms, but that was about all I could feel. The rest of my body was a numb shell, and even my heart seemed to have stopped beating.

“This can't be right,” I murmured, my voice hollow. “If I had a sister, my mother would have told me.”

I could feel Logan's hesitation even before he answered.

“I don't know if she really would have, not necessarily,” he said. “I mean, you were a baby; you wouldn't remember. Undoubtedly, the death was hard on her, and she wouldn't have wanted to talk about it. And once you were old enough to understand, how would she approach you with it? 'Oh, and by the way, you had a sister named Rosemary who drowned in a lake ten years ago'? It would be hard, and she probably figured that you didn't need to know.”

As Logan's words sunk in, I was not consoled but rather angered, and a feeling of fury kindled a flame in the pit of my stomach.

I snorted. “Didn't need to know?” I spat. “Please. This my family we're talking about, Logan. My sister. I deserve to know about it, no matter what happened.”

“I know, I know that.” Logan held up his hands, looking tired. “You're right. All I was trying to do was give you a logical reason why she might have kept that from you.”

I gritted my teeth. Logical. Of course it was logical, because Logan was always logical. And maybe he was right—in fact, he probably was. But I didn't want him to be, not about this. I didn't want to deal with all the possible implications that Rosemary's existence would have.

Hissing out a hot whoosh of air, I let my hands slip into clenched fists in my lap. I took another breath, then another, thinking that it would help release some anger.

It didn't.

Looking back, I don't know why I got so mad. What had he done, really? He was just being himself, being Logan, but I was a fuse burned far too low. Every word he said only served to further ignite my anger, until I swear my skin sparked like hot coals.

“You can't rationalize everything, Logan,” I said. “Don't you understand that sometimes, things just don't work that way? I don't want your goddamn logic; I want to talk to my mother and make her tell me what the hell is going on!”

My voice grew consistently louder as I spoke, until I was on my feet and practically shouting into Logan's face. He drew back, freckles popping against blanched skin.

“So why don't you?” he demanded. “Why don't you go ask her and find out that I'm right?”

“Because she's not here!” I shrieked. “Because she left on a random business trip and wouldn't tell me where she's going, and now I won't see her tomorrow night, that's why!”

Logan fell silent immediately.

“An overnight business trip?” he asked slowly. “As in, she's going out of town and leaving you by yourself for an entire night?”

I shook my head. “Aubrey is staying over. But it was totally random—just out of nowhere, she came in and told me that she was leaving. And when I asked her where, she didn't answer. She didn't answer, Logan. She even looked nervous when she was talking to me.”