heart sank, even though Logan sounded almost cheerful.
“I remember one time when I was little,” he added, his voice wistful. “It was Christmas Day, and this was at the end so Christmas was a joke. My mom usually passed out by the afternoon. My dad was always at the office, or with some woman. And Mason was usually pissed off. I always knew he was mad at Mom and Dad, but he was mad at what they were doing to me, too. That’s the part that always gets me: He was mad because of me. He worried about me. I might not have grown up with a happy or loving mom and dad, but I grew up with him. He loved me. He was like my mom and dad all together, and he never treated me the way a regular brother might. Some older siblings don’t want shit to do with the little brother. Mason was never like that.”
He shook his head. “In some ways, I think I had it better than him. If Mom and Dad did love each other once, he experienced that. But he lost it. I never had it. I’m only a year younger, but I guess that year makes a different. I don’t know if I’m making sense. I just—I had him to raise me, and he had no one to raise him. Mason raised himself. It’s why he hates adults so much. He’s gotten less angry since Sam came into his life. She’s helped ground him, and she loves him back. They’re good for each other like that.”
He trailed off again, lost in thought. I slid my hand into his and prompted, “You started to say something about a Christmas morning?”
“Oh, yeah.” He squeezed my hand, resting his head on top of mine. “It was weird, now that I’m thinking about it, because it wasn’t normal. I was up early. My mom was sober. Mason was sleeping in. Our dad must have been already gone. But there was this peaceful feeling in the house. It was like we got a break, just for that morning. No one was mad. No one was hurting. No one was lying. There was no anger. I mean, it came in a few hours, but not that morning. I remember going to look at the presents. I sat down in front of the tree, just looking. I thought it was so pretty. I liked looking at them because it made me feel normal—like I had a normal family, a normal holiday. I knew it wasn’t real, but I liked to escape there. My mom came into the living room with me that morning. She brought hot chocolate and cookies, and she sat down with me and looked at the tree.”
I moved so I could look up at him. A smile played over his face as he spoke.
“She asked what I was doing, and I lied. I said I was planning which present to steal. Usually she’d get mad, send me to my room or something. I never cared. It was better to be alone than hear the anger take your mom away, you know? But that morning, she didn’t believe me, or she chose to ignore me, and she nudged me and pointed at one of the ornaments. ‘What do you see there?’ she asked me.”
He shook his head, as if he were back in that room talking to his mother. “’It’s a baseball ornament,’ I said. And she replied, ‘No, it’s one piece.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she pointed to another ornament and said the same thing. That one was a picture of Mason in a frame, but she said it was the second piece. She kept going until she’d pointed out all of them. When she was done, she turned to me and asked, ‘When you put all those pieces together, what do you see?’”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I thought I was so smart. I answered, ‘A bunch of stupid-looking ornaments?’ But she said, ‘A life. Each of these ornaments signifies a memory. Look at them individually and you only see a small section. It’s like a puzzle. But when you put them all together…’” He raised his hands. “And she lifted her hands up like this, showing me the entire tree, and said, ‘This tree is our life story. All together it’s a masterpiece. And some day, you’ll go off and start your own tree. You’ll start making a whole