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Night has long since settled when Fikret"s car reaches Kendall"s apartment. The moon is too bright, too full. If he can"t forgive his father, then why is the night sky willing to put on such a show for the man? The other side to it, the side he can"t quite admit, is that he"s baffled the world has kept on turning when his father - his father - is dead. He walks up to his place like he can"t quite remember the steps. It"s like he isn"t exactly sure how to do anything without his father. He spent years trying to rid himself of those unyielding hands on his shoulders, but now that they"re gone, he"s a puppet without a master. He sits on the bed. He sits on the floor. He pours a glass of vodka. He pours it down the sink. He stands on his balcony. He smokes a cigarette. He wonders what he was made for if not the space under his father"s thumb. He lets out a sob of relief. He feels a guilt unlike anything he"s ever known. He picks up his phone.
"Hey, Rava."
"Kendall? What"s wrong?"
She doesn"t turn on the news when the kids are home anymore, lest they see their father derailing. She has no idea about Logan yet - she just knows it"s something.
"What? How could you-?"
"Ken, we were married for a decade. I know your voice. What"s wrong?"
She hears him take a breath and holds her own.
"Dad died."
He doesn"t say "my Dad". It"s just "Dad". Bigger than the universe Dad. His world of a father. God and the Devil, and everything in between.
Rava has to sit down. "What?"
When Kendall speaks, his voice is shaking just slightly in that way that always makes Rava ache. "Uh...we were at Con"s wedding, and Dad was on the plane. Tom called, said he wasn"t...well. They confirmed his death upon landing. We met the plane at the airstrip."
"Oh my god, Ken, I"m- I"m so sorry. Fuck."
"Yeah. It"s...yeah."
"Are you okay?"
"I don"t know...I think so? I think I am."
"And Shiv and Roman?"
"I don"t know...they took it hard. I kind of just went into overdrive trying to sort shit out, you know, for them."
"Yeah. Do you need me to come over? I can come over. Do you have anyone with you? Are you alone?"
She can"t help herself. She"s overwhelmed with a barrage of memories - rehab, and disappearances, and the desolate sound of his voicemail at 3am. Her fear is palpable down the line.
"It"s okay, Rav. I"m okay. But hey look - can I come and see the kids? I know it"s not- I know I"ve not but...I just really...I really want to see them today."
"Of course. They"re home with me right now. We"ll wait up for you. Do you want me to tell them about your Dad?"
"They"ll probably find out from social media soon enough. We should probably tell them. I can do it."
"Don"t worry about it, Ken. You"ve spent all day having to share the news. Let me handle this one, yeah?"
The gratitude in Ken"s voice makes Rava want to cry. "Thank you. I"ll be over in twenty."
"See you soon, Ken." And then, even though it"s only a handful of minutes until she"ll see him: "Take care of yourself."
When Kendall arrives at Rava"s, she encases him in a hug so tight and genuine it"s as though the last five years of turmoil didn"t even happen. Sophie and Iverson appear around the corner, and immediately join, wrapping themselves around their parents. Kendall just holds his family. He hasn"t held them all together like this since Shiv"s wedding, since the last time his entire life changed, and the memory sends a shiver down his spine.
"I"m so sorry." Rava whispers in his ear and he feels tears pool in the corners of his eyes.
"Yeah, we"re sorry about Grandpa, Dad." Sophie says quietly, her voice far too mature for her age, and Ken clasps the back of her head with this free hand.
When did she become a young woman? How did he let so much time slip between his fingers? Will she be able to forgive him when he dies? The kids let go and head through to the living room, and Rava takes her hands away, before looking at his face and immediately pulling him back into the tenderest hug she"s given him in years. Eventually they head through to the living room, hand in hand, joining Sophie and Iverson on the couch. Kendall knows the steps here. He doesn"t need his Dad to guide him through this corridor. Sophie turns on an old, reliable movie that none of them are watching too closely, and they just exist amongst each other in a way none of them can remember doing before. Sentimentality hangs heavily in the air, but it"s tinged just slightly with remorse. Eventually, Iverson falls asleep on Ken"s shoulder, and in minutes, Kendall is asleep too. It"s been a long day. Rava carefully drapes a blanket over them and wishes she could still read Kendall"s mind. She used to be fluent. Now she"s not even sure they speak the same language.
"Is Dad okay?" she hears Sophie ask beside her. She swallows hard. Is he?
"He"ll be okay, honey. He"s just sad."
"Is he sleeping here tonight?"
"They both look too comfy to wake up, don"t you think?"
Sophie giggles at that, before her face sobers well beyond her years. She looks at her mother, at her father, then back at her mother. She doesn"t quite know how to ask it, isn"t quite sure if she"s even allowed to.
"Mom...was Grandpa a bad person?"
Rava is taken aback by that, glancing at Kendall to make sure he"s asleep. She beckons Sophie to her room, not before giving Iverson and Kendall each a kiss to the forehead. They sit, Sophie on her bed, Rava on the hanging chair, mother and daughter, partners in the relentless Roy hellscape.
"Your Grandpa was a very...complicated man, Soph. Very complicated. You know that. But sometimes..."
She despairs of the relatability that Sophie will find in her next sentence, but she has to say it.
"Your Grandpa didn"t treat Dad right, but in some...complicated way, he still loved Dad. When a parent like that is gone, it"s disconcerting. It"s really, really hard. It"s a bit like...you remember when you were little and we took you to Whole Foods with us, and you got lost looking for the eggs? And you had to go to that woman at the tills and ask her to give a tannoy, and wait for me and Dad by the entrance?"
Sophie nods.
"It"s a bit like that, I think. Like you"re a kid again, looking for your parents in the grocery store. Your Dad knows that Logan - that your Grandpa - wasn"t a perfect person. They fought a lot. Your Grandpa hurt your Dad. That doesn"t mean that Dad hasn"t spent a lot of his life waiting by the store doors for Grandpa to come and find him. And now that Grandpa"s gone, it"s kind of like..." Rava is surprised to suddenly feel tears falling down her own face. "It"s like, he isn"t coming to find Dad now. But Dad, and your aunty and your uncles still love him and are still waiting by the doors for him because they can"t leave the store without him. Does that make any sense at all, Soph?"
"Yeah. It actually does. It"s scary as hell losing your parents in the grocery store. Poor Dad. Poor Aunty Shiv and Uncle Roman. God, and poor Uncle Con."
"Yeah. Yeah. They could"ve been better to us but they"re still our family."
"Remember when I was little and Aunty Shivy painted my nails that bright purple colour and Dad got so mad at her?"
"Oh, I do. I also distinctly remember your Dad claiming he loved them as soon as Grandpa said he didn"t."
The story is supposed to be funny but it makes them both a little wistful. Logan was the sun, the awful, all-powerful, Icarus burning sun. What was Kendall to orbit anymore? What do you do without the centre of the universe?
"Is Dad okay?" Sophie asks again, softer this time.
Rava looks in her daughter"s eyes and despairs of the burdens this young girl already has to carry.
"Not just about Grandpa, but like...is he okay? I don"t really see Dad anymore. When I see him on the news, he looks...sad. I don"t know."
She sees her father more often in headlines than in person. The realisation knocks Rava of breath.
"Honestly honey...I"m not sure. I hope so." "I hope so too."
Sophie drifts off not long after, and Rava pads quietly back into the living room to see her ex-husband very gently scooping their son into his arms, and carrying him to his room. She watches as Kendall strokes Iverson"s head, and she"s overwhelmed with heartache as she remembers the years before the drugs and the fights, and the looming job. Ken had been present. He had been fun. He had been a Dad. One day, it was like he just...stopped being one. Rava wishes she could remember the moment, the exact millisecond that he disappeared below surface. He never came back to land. She sent out SOS calls, she sailed their boat through choppy seas without getting her children wet, but she never caught a real glimpse of him again. Sometimes she would see a hand breaking out of the choppy sea, and she would throw out a life raft. He never took it. She never really saw her children"s father again. Now though, Kendall looks 29 and besotted, son in arms, like they"re young again, watching shitty reality TV, glass of pinot noir each to sip before they climbed into the same bed. The days before the coke benders, and the endless phonecalls and the casual lies. She would give anything to get it back. She would give anything to go back and warn her past self, tell her to look at how fast he downs the first glass of any liquor, at how often his nose seems to bleed. She wants to shake her past self and tell her "It"s happening! It"s right there! Do something! Stop him! It"s not too late!" Instead, her love for him had obscured her vision. That was until he involved the children, of course. She never could protect herself the same way she could protect them. Looking at him now though, she forgives her past self a little. He"s not a hard man to fall in love with.
She follows slowly to Iverson"s room and presses her ear to the thin wooden door. She can hear Ken murmuring something to him, and her heart skips a beat when she hears him say "I"m sorry, Ive. I"m sorry I"ve not been here."
And then: "I love you. I love and your sister so much. I"m glad you have each other. Siblings are good to have."
Rava thinks of Kendall being big brother today, holding Shiv and Rome together in that very trained way. Fuck. When Kendall leaves Iverson"s room, Rava takes his face in her hands, letting it all out in a way she has trained herself not to. She just can"t stop saying sorry. Sorry you lost him. Sorry he broke your heart. Sorry you loved him despite it all. Sorry you still love me. Sorry he didn"t love you right. Sorry he took away the softest parts of you and turned you into a personification of that wretched company. I"m sorry, I"m sorry, I"m sorry, and I"m angry, so angry. At you, with you, for you. How could you leave them? How could you leave us? How did I ever fall in love with you? How could I ever not?
When she"s wrung herself dry, he holds her like he has never loved her more, and she thinks that, in the past year, she has never loved him less. Right now though, she just wants to make this all okay somehow. She just wants to make him okay somehow. Once upon a time she thought it was actually possible. She leads him gently to her bedroom, throws him an old shirt of his that she still keeps in the back of the wardrobe like a momentum. They climb into bed and wrap their arms around each other, the familiarity of the motion making them both ache inexplicably. Despite lying only partially clothed under the same sheets, there is precisely nothing sexual about this moment, just glaring love and glaring, glaring heartache. She lies, staring at the back of his head, her slim fingers running gently through his short dark hair. The roots are a little grey now. He still smells the same, like expensive cologne, and eucalyptus shower gel, and the last cigarette he smoked. Rava turns him around wordlessly, taking his shoulders, and then taking his face in her hands, thumbs drawing gentle patterns against his pale skin. She used to know the exact number of freckles on his neck. Now, she couldn"t even guess. He tries to give her a shaky smile, but she knows his face like she knows the back of her own hand.
"Hey. Hey." she says softly into the darkness, running the side of her thumb down his gaunt cheek.
"It"s fine." he whispers back, his voice sort of breaking down the middle.
"You don"t have to do that here, Ken. You don"t."
He lets his eyes flutter closed in exhausted defeat, and lets out a shaky exhale.
"I told him I couldn"t forgive him. On the phone, at the end, I told him...I said I loved him but I couldn"t forgive him. It was true but I...I don"t know. I hope that wasn"t the last thing he heard."
He looks at her again and the sadness in his tired eyes almost suffocates her. He opens his mouth to say something. Looks away. Tries again. Tears spring into his eyes.
"I hope he wasn"t scared." he confesses in barely more than a quivering whisper. "What if he was scared, Rav?"
He moves slowly onto his back and tries to stop any tears from falling but they come despite it, despite everything. If Logan was scared at the end, then none of it made any sense anymore. If Goliath was scared of David, if God was scared of death, then how can the world ever keep on spinning?
He knows his Dad is in the morgue now and the thought of him cold and alone is enough for Kendall to want to grab Logan"s old wool cardigan and take it to him, wrap it around him, tell him not to be afraid. He didn"t understand why Rome wanted that cardigan the first time his father was in the hospital. He understands now.
Honestly, he thought that when his father was gone, he"d finally be able to breathe. He thought it would just feel like he was a grown man who had simply lost another grown man. He thought it would kill him a little, but the spite would stay, resilient and indomitable. Instead he just feels like a little boy sitting on the porch, wondering when his Dad is ever going to come home. Kendall will never know the Logan of tomorrow. Logan will never know the Kendall of tomorrow, of next year, of next decade. They"re two grown men saying goodbye, and it"s fucking excruciating. The last moment of connection he shared with his father was talking into the ear of a man who still wasn"t listening, and it"s really, really fucking excruciating.
Is this how violent dogs feel when they"re finally put down? He didn"t mean to bite that hard. He still loves his owner - his father - more than almost anything else. He feels on the crux of relief, but there"s a small, shaking part of him that wants to go back, take it all back, be good, be obedient, be better right from his first breath. Maybe if he had never called a vote of no confidence, if he had never placed those relapse stories into his father"s hands, if he had never gone to Austerlitz, if he had never ordered that double vodka. Maybe then he wouldn"t have blood on his hands. Or maybe if he had never given that press conference, had never stormed into his father"s room in Italy, had never confronted him at Connor"s rehearsal dinner, maybe, just maybe, his father would still be alive. Maybe if Ken had just let Logan stay in charge, had never tried to step in, had never done that first line of coke, then maybe, maybe maybe. There"s a million variables but only one truth lies amongst it all - his father is still dead. The world is still turning.
He lets himself fall apart in Rava"s arms. She silently curses the man who left him in such ruins. She curses herself for thinking that it"s still her job to stitch him back together.