But Brandon had said nothing.
Even now, gliding along flat roads to nowhere, Brandon said nothing. Mired in humid, uncomfortable silence, he said nothing. Maybe he kept her at arm’s length on purpose, just waiting until she was eighteen so he could get rid of her for good. Maybe he wanted it to be just him and Alejo again. Maybe he’d regretted adopting her the whole time. Before Tulsa, their relationship had already been awkward and distant. But after, Logan had stopped trying to fix it. If Brandon didn’t care, Logan wouldn’t, either. She would live her life, and he could be a part of it if he wanted to.
They parked outside Snakebite Gifts and Antiques and Logan went to work. She’d visualized how to improve her room, and had it down to a few well-placed art prints, some string lights, a new comforter, and a couple of potted plants. Gracia had a policy against candles in the motel rooms, but herbal incense and a stick lighter would do the trick. The store wasn’t exactly what she’d pictured—mostly old shelves littered with dust-coated antiques that hadn’t been touched in years—but she could make this work.
Brandon wordlessly followed, quiet as a ghost. He perused the shelves they passed, badly pretending that he was looking for something.
“Do you have something else to shop for?” Logan asked.
Brandon laughed, quiet and dismissive. “Nope. I’m committed to the hunt.”
Logan groaned.
They made their way to a small section of art prints. Logan paused at a canvas photo of a rural road. It was a bit country for her taste, but it tugged at her. She pulled the canvas from the shelf and brushed her thumbs over the stitching. It was the kind of picture she would’ve made fun of someone for having back in LA—generic and impersonal—but its loneliness spoke to her now.
“I like this one.”
Brandon stepped to her side and admired the photo. “Not what I would’ve picked. How much?”
“Twenty-five,” Logan said. She tilted the photo and narrowed her eyes at it. “I don’t know—is it ugly?”
“No.” Brandon took the photo delicately and looked it over. In his sweater and glasses he looked like an art critic appraising a masterpiece, not a manufactured print from some random store. “What do you like about it?”
“Um, I don’t know, I just feel like I get it,” Logan tried. Brandon was so casual now, like shopping together was a normal thing that they did. Logan pursed her lips. “It reminds me of when we lived on the road. I mean, it sucked. But there were moments. I remember Dad took me down to this river for an afternoon. I used to think…”
Logan clenched her jaw. She used to think that home wasn’t a place, it was family. But the family she had then—their strange, broken trio of misfits—hadn’t felt like home in a long time. They were still three lost things, but they were infinitely far apart. Home wasn’t family now. Home was nowhere.
Brandon looked at her, but his gaze was distant. He looked beyond her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Logan said. “I want it.”
She took the canvas print from Brandon’s grasp and tucked it under her arm. They carried on through the store, methodically working through Logan’s list of aesthetic improvements. In a few months, she would be loading this same haul of decorations into boxes before she left Snakebite behind.
Brandon paused next to a shelf of tattered dolls.
“Do you feel … safe in Snakebite?” he asked.
“I don’t love it,” Logan mused, “but I haven’t seen any pitchforks yet.”
“I mean more like…” Brandon stared into the cart wistfully. “I think about memory sometimes. How our mind rewrites our memories from scratch every time we think something up. If we wanted, we could forget a piece of our lives completely. Just … write over it.”