Page 122 of Here We Go Again
Rosemary asked her what she was doing, but Logan simply said she needed to take care of some things. And Rosemary has been too preoccupied with Joe to press beyond that cagey response.
“You know what she’s doing, don’t you?” Rosemary asks a barely conscious Joe. And she swears the man smirks at her.
Joe is awake and alert for most of the day, so Rosemary takes Odie for an extra-long walk that evening, two miles down the beach, then up the access stairs and two miles back through town. They both need the exercise and fresh air.
When they return to the cottage, she finds Joe asleep with Guillermo next to him watching baseball. There’s a stack of empty cardboard boxes by the front door, and there’s a toolbox on the kitchen table. “What’s going on?”
Before Guillermo can answer her, she hears Logan shout from upstairs, “Rosie? Are you home? Get up here!”
Something thumps upstairs, like Logan is dragging something heavy across the floor. Maybe a dead body. Or the baggage containing all her abandonment issues.
“Rosie!” Logan calls out again before Rosemary can speculate any further. She unhooks Odie’s leash and he bounds up the stairs after the sound of Logan’s voice. Rosemary follows.
Logan’s wails aren’t coming from her own bedroom, but from Rosemary’s, the one she hasn’t entered in over a week. Odie whimpers at the closed door. Rosemary pushes inside her bedroom, except… it’s not her room. Not the version of this room she’s slept in for the last few weeks. Nothing is where she left it.
“What…?” she starts, but she can’t fully form the question, her eyes fluttering around the room, unable to focus on any one thing.
The maroon carpet is gone, and in its place are light oak floors,rubbed smooth with age. The vomit-colored walls are somehow a calming blue. The rickety bed is now a thick-looking mattress with a minimalist white headboard. The quilt is still there over crisp white sheets. The ancient dresser has been cleaned, and the top is lined with plants. She spots a pot of mint, an aloe plant, birds of paradise, camellias. A philodendron like the one she has back home. A cactus with yellow flowers. Prickly pear.
“Where…?”
She is paralyzed in the doorway. A cream rug on the floor, framed photos and prints of the places they’ve been this summer on the walls, drawers with label-maker stickers on the front and the label maker itself sitting on top next to her laminating machine.
“When…?”
Under the window—herwindow—is a white desk, and on that white desk is her typewriter next to a stack of new paper. In front of the desk is—“Shit, is that a Herman Miller desk chair?How?”
Rosemary tries to take in the transformation as a whole, but it feels like she’s stepped through a wardrobe into her version of Narnia, which includes office supplies and house plants, clean lines and cool tones, Odie already curled up on the bed, and Logan in the middle of it all, a burst of chaos in a room of precision and order.
Logan has paint in her hair and on her overalls and a little bit on her cheek, too. Her knees are red and ruddy, and she’s sweaty and exhausted-looking and smiling.
“Surprise!” Logan says.
“How?” Rosemary asks again. And, “Why?”
“I can answer some of those questions!” Logan balances excitedly on the balls of her feet. Rosemary notices the weathered toolbelt secured around her waist and the wild glint in her hazel eyes.
“What.” Logan sweeps her arms widely. “I revamped your room into a Rosemary-approved writing space. Because you said you want to stay.”
Stay. Rosemary looks at the desk, the typewriter, the plants…
“As for where I got everything,” Logan continues, “well, believe it or not, these floors were under the heinous carpet when I started peeling it up. The paint I got from Lowe’s, along with most of the furniture.”
“Is there a Lowe’s in Bar Harbor?”
“No clue.” Logan hops in place. “I got all this stuff at the Lowe’s in Burlington, Vermont.”
“You drove toVermont?”
“Yes, but not for the Lowe’s. I went to see my mom. And it turns out, my mom is kind of a dickhead.”
“Of course she is,” Rosemary replies, half in shock. Sothatis where Logan went during her day away. “You didn’t need to go toVermontto learn that.”
Logan stares at her for a heartbeat, then bursts out laughing. “I thought you might say something like that. But I did need to go to Vermont. I-I needed to confront my bullshit mommy issues.” Logan brushes the unwashed hair out of her eyes. “And wouldn’t you know it? Sophie leaving was never about me at all. It was about her being a selfish twat.”
“I did know that. No decent person would ever leaveyou.”
Logan looks at Rosemary the way she looks at shrimp po’boys, and Rosemary feels a tug in her chest.Oh, she loves her. She loves her so, so much. It had been easy to push those feelings aside for the last few days and focus on Joe, but now it all comes back to life inside her. She told Logan she loved her on that porch, and Logan told her she needed to think about it.
