Her father would kill her for the charges, but even her relief that he was still alive wasn't enough to make her regret using the airphone. She had waited until the last possible second to board the plane and he wasn't there. He wasn't there. Logan wasn't there and Duncan wasn't there and Lilly wasn't there and she was on her way to what was supposed to be the best graduation present ever, alone.

"How long you been waiting?"

Wallace gestured at the news program playing on the overhead screens in the terminal. "Long enough to find out you've been a busy little bee while I've been out of town. And not making snickerdoodles, either."

Veronica smiled and wrapped her arms around him. "Yeah, well," she said. "Had to do something to keep myself occupied while you were on a wild goose chase to Paris."

"Howã" Wallace shook his head. "How do you know? Because you're Veronica Mars."

She tilted her face up, beaming, her eyes closed. "Finally, finally you get it. Did Jackie catch up with you?"

"Yeah," Wallace admitted, linking his arm through hers as they made their way to the baggage carousel. "We had a nice long talk and I found out that, you'll never believe this, I'm not the first love of her life."

"Better than finding out you lost your virginity to Beaver Casablancas." She hauled her suitcase off the belt before turning around, momentarily gratified at his dropped jaw. "I have a cheap hotel room within walking distance of all the sights waiting for us, Mister... Mars. As you will be called for the remainder of this mission. Should you choose to accept it."

Wallace shrugged. "No calling me Daddy. It was weird enough when we were almost stepsiblings."

Veronica gestured widely. "Who knows," she said. "Maybe your mom finally put the seduction scenario she had in her back pocket our entire senior year into action, and she's even now wining and dining my dad into herã" She stopped. "No, on second thought, let's just leave that right there."

"That's the best thing I've heard all day," Wallace replied. "Between finding out that my girlãthat Jackie has a two-year-old, and that your dad would actually pass up a trip with you to the Big Apple... maybe my dad'll pop up with some little fake goatee like it's some bad episode of Star Trek. That would make as much sense."

"Yeah, well, he'd better have a good excuse," Veronica replied, nudging the suitcase in his direction. "Otherwise his ass is grass and I am... so, so not the mower. Not today."

"Yeah." Wallace looked down. "You staying up here all summer?"

Veronica shook her head as she hailed a taxi. "Just a week," she said. "Why? Got some big plans?"

Wallace shrugged. "I really do care about Jackie," he said. "And she'll be here all summer, and even if we can't be together, we can at least spend some time, before."

"Before we're shipped off to our first years of underage drinking and general debauchery," Veronica finished, helping heft her suitcase into the trunk. "Really sucks when your significant other manages to make a child without you, doesn't it."

Wallace shook his head slowly. "It's not like I can even say anything. Finding out my own dad..."

She slipped into the cab beside Wallace and patted him on the shoulder. "How come doing the right thing just feels so empty?"

--

Two missed calls, neither of them from her father. Veronica sighed and listened to her voicemails.

"Hey. I was just on my way to the beach, and... I hope you got to New York okay. You and your dad, have a good trip. I'll see you when you get back."

"Oh, and also... love you."

She had known, since January, since the day he'd left, that if she ever saw Duncan again, he would be in handcuffs. Paternity testing would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, for all his good intentions, Duncan was not Lilly's father. No statute of limitations on kidnapping. Even seventeen and a half years from now, when Lilly was of age...

She didn't want Logan out of her life. She didn't know if they were epic, spanning continents and encompassing bloodshed and the perpetual unspoken presence of their other halves. Logan and Lilly, Duncan and Veronica. It had been that way for too long to forget like this. She would go back to Neptune, she and Logan would have the summer, and then...

Veronica sighed and turned onto her side, in time to see the door click back as Wallace walked in, clutching a fistful of bright slick brochures. "We're going all out, baby. Until my woman calls, at least."

"I ain't gonna be at the beck and call of no woman," she returned. "Thought you knew me better than that."

Wallace sat down on her bed and shoved her over, and she shoved him back, laughing. Then he sobered. "We have this summer, and that's all," he said seriously. "Don't tell me that if you could be with Duncan right now, you wouldn't want to spend every second you could with him."

Veronica heaved an overblown sigh. "All right, all right," she said. "So we're a threesome. And when I said get a hotel room, I totally didn't mean this one. Keep the frisky business out of the third wheel's sight, or else I'll be calling Logan to use his dead daddy's money and hop on a plane."

"'Nuff said," Wallace said, palms-out. "He's not a bad guy, but..."