Chapter 5 #2
He abandoned the quarter-finished meal, wiped his hands on a dishtowel, and went to his study—the only room in the house with any sense of personality.
Built-in bookshelves the previous owners put in gave it character, and his old medical journals and books were still in boxes in the corner.
The desk, a mid-century relic scavenged from a Reno thrift store, held a single object of sentimental value, a cigar box decorated with Sharpie.
Inside were dozens of photos, actual real photographs that had been developed in a one-hour timeframe, most curling at the edges, some with a yellowing tint, and some stuck together by years of humidity and neglect.
He hadn’t allowed himself to look at these in years.
Not since he heard the news that Tristan and Frankie were engaged.
He’d scanned them digitally, to preserve them, then put them away in hopes they would be out of sight out of mind.
Liam dumped the contents onto the desk. The memories spilled out with a swoosh.
There were birthdays, graduations, proms, first and last days of school, Fourth of July celebrations, vacations, Christmas dinners, New Year’s Eve parties, and Tristan and the twins’ ill-advised "haunted mansion" sleepover in eighth grade. All celebrated with the Costas.
Frankie was in almost every shot, usually in the middle of the action.
Sometimes with her arms slung around her brothers’ necks, sometimes mugging for the camera with a crooked, gap-toothed grin, sometimes getting a piggyback ride or on someone’s shoulders, sometimes caught mid-laugh with her freckled nose crinkled and her eyes closed.
Niko and Tristan were in most of the photos.
AJ was more elusive—always hovering at the edge, half in, half out.
He wasn’t a huge fan of being photographed.
Liam appeared in slightly more photos than AJ did.
But Frankie was the nucleus, the gravitational force that held the whole mess of them together.
He sifted through the photos until he found the one he always came back to.
It was her eighteenth birthday and a sunny day in San Francisco, despite it being late fall.
She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a tank top.
Liam had let her draw a “tattoo” on his arm of Mighty Mouse.
Allowing himself to be her canvas, he remembered the feel of her hands as he sat perfectly still, the sun-warmth radiating off of her, and the way she’d look at him as if he was the only person in the world who mattered.
Those weren’t the only memories he had of that day.
He remembered leaving early, only staying for two hours, because he had such a huge course load.
He remembered it was the first time he’d been home in years.
His school was only an hour away, but, like an asshole, he hadn’t been home in three years because he was so determined to graduate early.
That, and he didn’t want to see his dad.
He remembered Frankie’s eighteenth birthday was the last day he saw his mom before she was bedridden.
The next time he saw her was three months later, two weeks before she passed away from a glioblastoma stage four tumor in her brain.
His mom died from a brain tumor when his dad was the top brain surgeon in the world.
How in the fuck was he ever supposed to make sense of that? No one even told him she was ill.
Emotion filled his eyes, and he put the photos back in the box and closed it while simultaneously metaphorically doing the same thing with his memories and feelings, locking them up in a box and taping it shut.
He set the cigar box aside and decided its home would be in the sunroom from now on as he reached for his laptop.
In a moment of masochism, he opened a browser and typed “Francesca Costas” into the search bar.
There were dozens of hits, most of them tagged photos from his asshole brother, his firm’s functions, and charity fundraisers she’d attended with him.
Every picture with her on his arm was a woman he didn’t recognize.
Her eyes looked vacant. Her smile forced.
He scrolled through page after page, hungry for any evidence that the Frankie he remembered hadn’t vanished completely.
Apparently a sucker for punishment, he decided to go full internet stalker and pull up her social media accounts. It was something he’d never allowed himself to do, because what was the point? But for some reason tonight, he felt compelled to.
Instead of trying her name, he went to his brother’s account and clicked on a photo of them that she was tagged in.
It took him to her page and he discovered it was set to public.
He began to scroll down her grid, each square a window into a life he knew nothing about.
Each photo he clicked on, making it larger on his screen, made it harder for him to breathe.
Her copper and gold hair was still long and wavy.
He loved seeing the photos where her hair was down and loose.
He saw that she’d run marathons and taken yoga, spin, pole, and what looked like a self-defense class.
There was a lot of posts of her drinking wine, going to the beach, brunches, farmer’s markets, movies, shopping, skiing, Broadway shows, escape rooms, rage rooms, and more with a guy named Zee, who was easily in seventy percent of her photos.
A few things stood out to him about her page.
She barely had any photos of herself and Tristan.
With Zee her smile hadn’t changed, but her eyes had.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something missing.
Speaking of something missing, there was no art anywhere.
Growing up, she’d worked on art every day.
She dreamed of owning an art studio where she taught classes out of her home.
She thought about it, talked about it, and even made sketches of it.
The room had to have floor to ceiling windows that faced north, sealed cement floors, at least one brick wall, and had to be at least five hundred square feet.
He scrolled further, nearly to the bottom, and found a photo that stopped him cold. Frankie in a floral dress at a restaurant, holding hands with a tall man in a crisp navy suit, both beaming at the camera. The caption read, “So lucky to say yes to my best friend. #engaged #yestoforever.”
The man was his brother.
Liam stared at the photo for a long time, so long his vision started to swim as his hands began to shake. He’d known in the abstract that they were engaged. Niko filled him in on the “good news.” But seeing it. Seeing the ring on her finger was a totally different thing.
The ring.
He zoomed in on the photo, and his stomach twisted in knots. It was his mom’s wedding ring. It didn’t bother him that Frankie was wearing it. If anyone deserved to wear it, it was her. His mom loved Frankie. His problem was that Tristan was the one who slipped it on her finger.
“Fuck,” he growled as he slammed the laptop closed and leaned back in the chair, running his hands through his hair.
Why hadn’t he thought about that? Of course Tristan would have asked for his mom’s ring. A deep groan of anger and frustration ripped from deep inside of him as he scrubbed his hands over his face.
It was so loud he barely heard a high-pitched whining sound.
It was severe and insistent. For a split second he thought it was the microwave again.
Obviously, he instantly dismissed that idea.
He would have had to cook something for it to go off.
That thought had just crossed his mind when it stopped.
But then it started just a few seconds later.
He quickly realized that it was coming from outside in the back.
He ignored it, thinking maybe it was a cat, or a coyote, or some other critter on the prowl.
There was a lot of wildlife in the Sierra.
As he stood and flipped off the kitchen light on his way to his room to go to bed, the whine increased in volume and pitch, making it impossible to ignore. If he tried to call it a night, he would just lie in bed awake, staring at the ceiling, worrying that there was an animal suffering.
Despite the fact that he’d rather get impacted wisdom teeth removed without any laughing gas, he went to investigate.
In four strides he crossed the main living space connected to the kitchen and pulled open one of the panels of his glass accordion folding doors that spanned the entire wall of his great room.
He stepped onto the deck, and a shiver ran through him at the sudden drop of temperature.
The mountain air hit him like a slap in the face with its pine-scented chill, making him wish he'd grabbed a jacket.
He glanced up at the night sky, where countless stars glittered across the endless inky black sky above shadowed trees.
Of course, the second his foot touched the wood planks, the whine stopped.
He pulled out his phone and tapped on the flashlight icon.
Tilting the phone up, he scanned the deck with the beam of light.
Once, twice—it was only on the third sweep that he saw the glint of eyes.
In the farthest corner, half-hidden behind a planter box, was a tiny bundle of fur cowering with huge, brown eyes.
As Liam approached, it shrank even smaller.
When he got closer, he saw it was a dog with long, floppy ears tucking its tail between its legs so tight to its body it nearly touched its chin.
The puppy was maybe a spaniel, retriever, doodle, or setter.
It was difficult to say. It had a glossy chestnut coat with a white spot on its chest and white front paws.
“Hey,” he spoke in a low, soft tone he used with skittish patients. “What’s goin’ on?”