Chapter 1 #3
There were several reasons Frankie’s mom gained and retained that title.
One, she was the only daughter-in-law that didn’t move her son out of state—all the rest moved to be close to their families.
Which meant, Frankie and her brothers lived in San Francisco, a few hours’ drive away.
They came to stay with Yaya and Papou in Hope Falls every summer, they spent every Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas with them even after their dad died.
Two, Cora gave Yaya her only granddaughter.
Yaya only had sons, and all of them only had sons except for Cora, who had Frankie.
And the last reason was, Yaya had a soft spot for her because she got a glimpse of how bad Frankie’s mom’s life was growing up.
Yaya didn’t like to talk about it, but she’d told Frankie once that Papou had to go pick her mom up at two o’clock in the morning when her dad showed up drunk in the middle of the night threatening to burn the trailer down that Cora and her mom lived in.
She didn’t tell her the whole story, just that the police were called and Papou ended up down at the police station with a broken knuckle.
Frankie never met either of her mom’s parents, who both passed away before she was three, she didn’t think she was missing much.
“Yaya’s doing better,” she assured her mom. “I’ve just missed it here, so that’s why I extended my trip.” Frankie gave her mom two truths and a lie.
Yaya was doing better than she’d been before Frankie arrived.
Frankie fixed a ton of things around the house that were in disrepair over the past year since Papou passed.
She’d also put Garfield, Yaya’s cat who was classified as morbidly obese by his vet, on a diet and had been company for Yaya.
She hadn’t known just how lonely Yaya had been.
Frankie had missed being in Hope Falls. It had always been her favorite place on the planet.
Growing up, her plan was to get an art degree, make a name for herself in the art world, then come back to Hope Falls and support herself by painting, selling her work, and teaching art classes.
That plan got derailed when Tristan opened his law firm in Manhattan right after they got together.
He asked her if she would “help out” for three months, just until he could hire someone. That was seven years ago.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even picked up a paintbrush. And she hadn’t visited Hope Falls since she moved to New York. Before he passed, Papou and Yaya flew to New York to visit her once a year. And Papou’s funeral was in Greece, so she didn’t come back for that.
The lie was that she’d extended her trip. This wasn’t a trip. She had no plans on going back to New York. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but she did know that wasn’t going to happen.
“Okay, Mouse, if you’re sure you’re okay.”
“I promise, I am.”
“Give Yaya my love.”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you!”
The call disconnected with an exclamation of love, just like always. Frankie resisted the familiar urge of immediately spiraling into dissecting every interaction with her mom to take the temperature of where her mental health was at.
Was her voice a little too bright?
Did she sound tired?
Was she masking?
No. Frankie took a deep breath. She had to stop picking apart and overanalyzing every conversation. It was a habit that was hard to break.
Her mom was happy. For now. She had to trust that.
Instead, Frankie decided to enjoy the tiny dopamine hit of having successfully navigated another round of Defcon 3 emotional subterfuge.
Cora Costas was still none the wiser that her only daughter had broken off a six-year engagement.
She deserved a medal, or at least a glass of wine for the call and the breakup.
Speaking of, a quick check of missed messages revealed one from her ex-fiancé. He’d sent it while she was talking to her mom.
Tristan: I love you. We need to talk. Can you believe my dad and your mom? Crazy?! Don’t you think this is a sign? We can fix this. Call me back.
“Wow,” she exhaled.
The saddest thing about his text was that he probably thought he’d nailed it, whereas Frankie saw it for what it was. A desperate digital attempt at reconciliation trying to use their parents getting together as a ploy to sneak past her emotional firewall. It was low, even for him.
She stared at the message, thumb hovering, then pressed down on the trash can icon. Delete. She imagined the data vanishing into the ether and felt a small surge of satisfaction.
Even though she knew it was a long shot, she scrolled her phone to her bestie, her ride-or-die, the other half of her brain’s name, Zee, and pressed it.
Zee was short for Zion Ash, portrait photographer extraordinaire whose work had been compared to Annie Leibovitz, David LaChapelle and Herb Ritts.
He regularly shot for Vogue, ELLE, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s BAZAAR.
He was the kind of person who lit up a room the instant he entered—the sort of human being who left an imprint on your mind, a brushstroke of wild color you could never quite scrub away.
Frankie and Zion’s friendship was an endless loop of inside jokes, reality TV binges, and a kind of emotional support that defied categorization.
It didn’t ring, just went straight to voicemail.
“This is Zee. If this isn’t my mama or Frankie, hang up and text me, because I guarantee I do not want to talk to you.”
She couldn’t help but smile even though his phone was still either out of service range or in airplane mode.
It always gave her a little serotonin boost that she got a shoutout in his voicemail, being one of only two people he wanted to speak to on the phone.
She was, however, disappointed that she still couldn’t get ahold of him.
He left for Tibet four weeks ago to visit a Buddhist monastery.
That was all the information she had. No specifics.
No names of hotels. No return date. It wasn’t unusual for Zee.
A few years ago, he disappeared on a trek in Peru, and she didn’t hear from him for eight weeks.
And once he was MIA in Switzerland and radio silent for five weeks.
He liked to go off-grid to reset every once in a while.
Typically, her life didn’t fall apart during those stretches, this time, it did.
Grabbing her mug from the table, she walked to the kitchen counter and pondered whether something stronger than another cup of coffee was the next right step in her day after the news she’d just learned.
Before she could decide, a scream—raw, primal, the type that detaches your soul from your body—ripped through the house.
“Noooo!”
Frankie spun towards the front room so fast her hip caught the edge of the counter.
She hissed through her teeth as pain shot through her body.
Her face grimaced and she raced into the next room, heart drumming in her chest as possible disasters flipped through her mind: Yaya fell and hurt herself, Garfield was injured or worse…
the house was on fire, there was an intruder.
She vaulted over the ottoman into the living room, where Yaya was hunched forward in her recliner, both fists clutching the edges of her phone.
“Yaya!” Frankie’s voice was desperate. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Yaya didn’t answer, just shoved the phone at Frankie with trembling hands. “Look! Look!” she insisted, as if the phone were an explosive device only her granddaughter could properly disarm.
It was a message from Cindy, the receptionist at Golden Years Retirement Home.
Cindy: Arthur’s been shot. He’s at Pine Ridge Hospital.
Frankie felt the room tilt. Arthur Santino was Yaya’s “gentleman friend.” He’d been the reason she’d begun wearing lipstick again.
Now that was a man who definitely fell into the strong-silent category.
Frankie had met him three times, one of those being his ninetieth birthday, and had maybe heard him say three words, luckily Yaya talked enough for both of them.
“It’s okay.” She knelt beside the recliner, her hand instinctively wrapping around Yaya’s bony wrist. Her grandma’s entire body was shivering, her lips working soundlessly as if she were trying to pray but couldn’t conjure the words. “I’m going to call the hospital.”
“No, no, no,” Yaya repeated, shaking her head so hard that her bun started to unravel. “He’s alone. No family. He has nobody. I have to go. I have to go to him right now!”
Yaya tried to stand from the recliner when her legs gave out, and she nearly toppled forward.
Frankie caught her, the same way she’d done when she was a kid and Yaya used to “faint” for dramatic effect during family holidays.
But this was real, and Yaya felt so frail in Frankie’s arms it scared her.
“Sit for one second.” Frankie lowered her back down in the recliner. “I’ll get your shoes and your purse.”
“No! He needs me now!” Yaya’s voice was brittle but determined as she stood once again. “I’m going to drive!”
Frankie sighed in exasperation. Yaya last drove during the Reagan administration, and even then, it was a family-wide ordeal that ended in a flat tire and a citation for running a stop sign while yelling at a squirrel.
“I’ll drive. Let me grab your shawl. And your medicine.
And water.” Frankie moved in fast-forward, filling up a Stanley mug with water, snatching Yaya’s shawl from the hook on the wall, and stuffing her ancient purse with tissues, her Monday-through-Sunday pill organizer, granola bars, and trail mix.
She filled Garfield’s slow feeder bowl with diet kibble, snagged her own wallet and phone, and did a last-second scan to make sure that the house wasn’t going to burn down.
When she stepped outside, Yaya was waiting at the car, arms tightly crossed, exuding the patience of an irate DMV customer.
She’d managed to put on a pair of orthopedic sandals, one navy and one black.
Her lips were set in a hard line, the kind of expression that made grown men in the family fake their own deaths to avoid confrontation.
Frankie opened the passenger door and guided her in, buckling the seat belt herself as Yaya grumbled that she wasn’t an invalid. She then circled to the driver’s side, slid in, and started her Papou’s Jeep Grand Cherokee with trembling hands.
They pulled out of the driveway as Yaya’s phone rang, and Frankie wondered what other surprises the day had in store for them. So far, it had been a doozy.