Chapter 13 - Logan Remembered the Family-Legacy Assignment
Victoria tried not to bring the corporate case home.
She failed.
Logan found the blue Thomas folder on the kitchen counter.
“Grandpa?”
Victoria looked up.
“You remember him?”
“A little.”
Thomas died when Logan was four.
Memories were fragments.
A red sweater.
Christmas lights.
A deep voice reading badly.
Logan touched the folder.
“Ms. Prescott asked about him.”
Victoria froze.
“When?”
“In the family-legacy assignment.”
“What assignment?”
Logan went upstairs and returned with a binder.
Three months earlier, Ms. Prescott assigned students to write about an older relative and one object connected to family history.
Logan chose Thomas.
He wrote:
My grandfather started the company my mom runs. We still have his old lake house. My mom says nobody throws anything away there because Grandpa kept every paper he ever touched.
Victoria stared.
“What did Ms. Prescott say when she read this?”
“She asked if Grandpa kept company papers.”
“And?”
“I said probably.”
“Anything else?”
“She asked if Mom ever goes there.”
Victoria’s pulse accelerated.
Ms. Prescott had been searching too.
Not just punishing Logan.
“Did she ask about a box?”
Logan thought.
“No.”
Then:
“She asked if Uncle Malcolm goes.”
Victoria looked up.
“What did you say?”
“That he hates the lake because there’s no good internet.”
True.
Malcolm rarely visited.
Maybe he assumed Thomas’s box had been moved.
Maybe he never knew exactly where.
Victoria felt another layer of discomfort.
Ms. Prescott had been using Logan for information before the haircut.
She called Lydia.
“Did your sister know about Thomas’s storage box?”
Silence.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I told her Thomas said he kept records.”
“Did she tell you she was asking Logan about family property?”
“No.”
Lydia sounded angry.
“I’m sorry.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
“How many times are we going to say that?”
“I don’t know.”
At Hawthorne, investigators recovered Ms. Prescott’s private notes.
Not illegal surveillance.
Just teacher notes.
LOGAN — GRANDFATHER / LAKE HOUSE.
MALCOLM DOES NOT VISIT?
ASK ABOUT OLD RECORDS WITHOUT BEING OBVIOUS.
Victoria stared.
Ms. Prescott had crossed another line.
When confronted, she admitted it.
“I thought Thomas might have evidence clearing Lydia.”
“So you questioned my son.”
“It was a school assignment.”
“You designed the assignment for him?”
Ms. Prescott looked down.
“Yes.”
The investigator asked:
“Was the entire class assignment created to gather information from one student?”
“No.”
“Would you have assigned it if Logan were not in your class?”
Long pause.
“Probably not.”
Victoria felt physically tired.
At every stage, adults had turned ordinary structures into traps.
Homework.
Discipline.
School administration.
Corporate governance.
Family loyalty.
Everything could be made to look normal from far enough away.
Logan asked later:
“Was the project fake?”
“No.”
Victoria sat beside him.
“The project was real.”
“But she made it because of me.”
“Partly.”
“So fake.”
“Manipulated.”
“That’s just adult fake.”
Victoria smiled despite herself.
“Maybe.”
He looked angry.
“She made me write about Grandpa because she wanted something.”
“Yes.”
“Then she cut my hair because she still didn’t get it.”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate her?”
Victoria thought.
“I hate what she did.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
Victoria did not want to teach him that every person who harmed them had to become a monster.
But she also would not soften.
“I’m very angry with her.”
Logan nodded.
“I hate her.”
“You’re allowed.”
“Will I always?”
“I don’t know.”
He touched the side of his head.
It had begun growing.
Still obviously uneven.
“I want it to grow faster.”
“I know.”
Then:
“Did Grandpa do bad stuff too?”
Victoria looked toward Thomas’s memo.
“He made a bad decision.”
“Like Uncle Malcolm?”
“Not the same size.”
“But bad.”
“Yes.”
Logan nodded.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I signed a paper that hurt Lydia Prescott.”
He stared.
“Ms. Prescott’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
“Not enough.”
“That sounds like no.”
“It is.”
“Then why did you sign?”
Victoria looked at her son.
“Because I trusted family instead of checking.”
Logan considered.
“That’s what you told me not to do with homework sources.”
She laughed.
“Apparently twelve-year-old you has stronger research standards than twenty-nine-year-old me.”
He smiled.
Then became serious.
“Are you going to lose your company?”
Victoria thought of Monday’s board meeting.
“Maybe my job.”
Logan’s face changed.
“Because of me?”
“No.”
“Because you left the meeting.”
“No.”
She took his hand.
“Listen carefully.”
He did.
“You did not make Ms. Prescott cut your hair.”
“You did not make me leave the boardroom.”
“You did not make Malcolm steal money.”
“You did not make me sign Lydia’s termination.”
“None of this started with you.”
Logan’s eyes filled.
Victoria continued.
“You were just the person who made adults stop hiding it.”
He looked away.
Then:
“I don’t want to be that person.”
Victoria’s heart broke.
“Then you don’t have to be.”
That night she made a decision.
Whatever happened at Crownwell—
she would not turn Logan into the heroic child who exposed a corporate scandal.
May you like
He was a boy who deserved his life back.
The adults could carry the rest.
