Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
I’ve tried asking Logan about what happened, but when I push, he shuts down, so I’ve been trying to give him chances to talk about it, and then letting him lead when he opens up. He knew leaving pre-school with Georgia was against our rules, so it took a while before he told me she said it was a surprise for me.
Which ended up being true, but not quite the way he thought.
The candles stay unlit, but I do curl up on the couch with Georgia’s phone and Logan’s treasures. Her phone turns on, but the screen is wrecked and it’s almost out of power. I can see there are missed calls in the notification bar, but even if I knew her unlock code, the display is a spider web of distorted colors and doesn’t react to my finger. I can charge the battery, but to find anything out, I’m going to need to take it to someone with more know-how.
I put it down on the table and keep going through all the odds and ends my baby thinks are important. There’s a scratch off lottery card from Easter that almost won a hundred dollars. Lots of colorful junk we pick up on our walks. Arcade tokens from the mini-golf place we go to during the summer. And his photo album. One of those cheap ones from the dollar store with single pockets you can flip through.
Most are things I’ve let him use my phone to take pictures of. The two of us, the reading tree at the library, and a bunch of wallet sized photos from his pre-school friends that they traded after picture day. My finger traces gently over a grainy printout of him with Georgia at the beach. A row of motorcycles we saw one weekend.
I pause. A photo of Georgia with a man I don’t recognize, standing in a bar that I do. She looks younger, probably pre-Logan, and he’s got his arm around her waist, grinning. He’s wearing a leather biker jacket, but the way they’re standing I can’t make out the patches. I slip it out and take a picture.
It could be nothing, but it could be a clue about why she told Logan to find the bikers. Did she mean the club? Or did she mean The Burnout which isn’t that far away?
I send the picture to Stiff. “Is this someone you know?”
10
DAKOTA
I was expecting him to text back, and when I don’t hear anything, I forget about it long enough to get sucked into a YouTube video about Japanese paper making. So I have to admit I wasn’t quite ready for the knock at my door.
I pull myself off the couch and go look out the peep hole. Stiff is standing there, holding… is that Mr. Larson? My brain short circuits at the sight of probably the toughest looking of the three bikers standing on my landing holding a stuffed dog in a train conductor outfit. I suppose when you look like you can kill a person with your bare hands, you don’t have to care what people think.
Unlike me, in my unicorn pajamas. Oh well, at least they saw me dressed up halfway decent last night. With a little resigned sigh, I throw back the deadbolt and open the door a little. “Is the intercom broken?”
“Don’t know.” He shrugs. “The downstairs door was open.”
“How do you even know where I live?”
His snort tells me exactly what he thinks about my super-secret life. “Sorry, I was going to call, but we found this guy in the garage and I thought Logan might want him back. Two birds with one stone and all that shit. Can I come in?”
I step back, pulling the door open for him. Our apartment’s nothing fancy, just a cheap two bedroom in a whole complex of identical buildings built in the nineties. It’s a standard apartment, and usually feels like plenty of room for just me and Logan, but Stiff looks oversized standing here. It’s not just his physical size, though he is a tall guy, but everything about him. All the bikers feel like they’re too much to squeeze into normal lives.
“Um, I wasn’t really expecting company, so I don’t have a lot to offer, but I can make a pot of coffee if you want to stay.” I reach out and he lets me take the stuffed animal out of his hands. “Thank you so much for finding Mr. Larson. I haven’t gotten around to packing Logan’s bag for tomorrow so I didn’t notice he wasn't in the backpack. Mr. Larson is Logan’s pre-school buddy, and Lo’s best friend Trevor has a stuffed bear that’s Mr. Larson’s best friend. I think they’d have a meltdown if he went missing.”
“Hey, it’s never too early to learn to watch each other’s backs,” Stiff says with a lopsided grin. He looks around, taking stock of everything. “The dog’s name is really Mr. Larson? Not like Spot or Teddy?”