Chapter 26
Frankie perched on the window seat in Liam’s great room, knees drawn to her chest, playing with the white satin belt cinched around her waist to keep her robe in place.
All of her theias (aunts) and her mom were gathered at Liam’s to get their hair and makeup done for the wedding.
As the first to get the beauty treatment, she’d been ready for over an hour.
Jenna, who owned The Beauty Spot, kept catching her fidgeting—twisting—her beach waves and demanding she ‘release the strands.’ She couldn’t help it, she was a nervous twister.
Across the room, Theia Joanne, Theia Dee Dee, and Theia Selene debated the merits of gel versus mousse, while Kiki, the town’s makeup wizard who rented space at The Beauty Spot, dabbed expertly at Joanne’s eyelids.
The air in Liam’s great room swirled with the scent of coffee, curling iron, and the frosty snap of the morning mountain dew sneaking in through the barely cracked back slider, which had been opened several times to let Lucy out.
Even though the voices bounced cheerfully from wall to wall, Frankie felt as if she were floating above it all, stuck somewhere between anticipation and dread.
From the kitchen, her mom’s laughter rang like a bell, and then Cora herself appeared, clutching a mimosa.
She looked radiant. Just plain happy, in an effortless way, Frankie was crossing her fingers, toes, eyes, and legs, her mood would continue through the wedding, honeymoon, and her marriage.
She wanted her mom to have her happy ever after.
Cora scanned the room. “Where’s the daughter of the bride?”
Frankie waved half-heartedly. “Present.”
Mentally absent but physically present, she thought to herself.
Theia Joanne, ever the nurturer, set down her coffee. “You all right, Mighty Mouse?”
Frankie pasted on her best smile, determined not to ruin her mom’s day. “I’m great, just tired!” Only one half of that statement was a lie.
She hadn’t slept at all last night. She hadn’t even rested her eyes.
Her sleepless night was spent staring at the ceiling, clutching her phone as she lay in bed, waiting with bated breath for it to vibrate with a call or text that never came.
After she sent Liam the text yesterday morning asking him to call, telling him she had something she needed to talk to him, she expected to hear from him, but he never got back to her.
Apparently, he made an appearance at the welcome dinner last night, but she hadn’t seen him.
Henry Walker, the mayor, mentioned speaking to Liam.
When she’d heard he arrived she’d gone looking for him, but he was nowhere to be found.
When she got back to his house, the door to his bedroom was locked, and the faint trace of aftershave lingered in the hallway.
When she’d knocked, there’d been no answer. When she’d texted, nothing.
She’d called him at least a dozen times from her room.
Each time, straight to voicemail. She’d tried again this morning, but the result was the same.
Voicemail. Unread texts. Total radio silence.
He was gone when she came downstairs at six a.m. His door was open, with no signs of life inside. He hadn’t returned.
Her stomach was all twisty and raw. She hadn’t been able to eat breakfast or even drink coffee.
Her chest hurt, like something was crushing it.
Her heart was a Billy Ray Cyrus song, achy and breaky.
Frankie wasn’t the type to let a man get under her skin.
She wasn’t this upset when she discovered Tristan’s infidelities, which should tell her something.
This was different. Liam was different. A part of her needed him to walk through the door just so she could breathe again, even though every ounce of pride screamed otherwise.
Frankie’s fingers tightened around the soft satin fabric of her robe belt when her mom called across the room, “Mouse, do you know where to find extra towels?”
“What?” She blinked. “No. Why would I?”
She heard the defensiveness in her tone.
She hadn’t meant to snap at her mom. It happened instinctively because her house tour had ended in the most earth-shattering kiss she’d ever experienced, and that information was top secret.
Her fear was that one of her nosy theias would ask if Liam had given her a tour, and the words “tongue” or “wall” or “masterful lips” might slip out.
Her mom’s brows drew together in concern. “You okay, Mouse?”
“I asked her the same thing.” Theia Joanne raised her hand.
“I’m fine, just tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night,” she explained, holding her mom’s eye contact.
The corners of her mom’s eyes narrowed as she inclined her head slightly to the left in the maternal-lie-detector-tilt.
Frankie grinned in silent reassurance, and after a few assessing seconds, her mom’s expression softened before she turned and went off in search of terry cloth, humming a little ABBA under her breath.
With a deep exhale, Frankie returned her watch out the back window, willing Liam to come home.
Theia Joanne, who was of Italian heritage, argued in the background with Theia Selene, who was born in “the Old Country,” about whether Greeks or Italians made the superior wedding cookie, while Kiki kept up an endless stream of “Close your eyes, don’t move, head back” and other instructions she was sure was going in one of Theia Joanne’s ears and out the other.
Frankie lost track of time, letting the voices and the unfamiliar weight of dread settle over her.
She wished she could just talk to Liam, see him, or even just have him text her back, but he’d vanished on her.
Ghosted. He was deliberately not speaking to her.
The man didn’t do anything unintentionally.
She tried to ignore that her heart felt like it was lying on a bed of nails being driven over by a bulldozer at the thought of Liam actively not speaking to her but failed miserably.
This was a new kind of pain and a new kind of love, one that felt like a fight with gravity, which was a fight she knew she’d never win. Frankie was fighting a losing battle against the gravity of love.
From the back of the house, she heard her mom calling her name, but it wasn’t her nickname, which she used nine times out of ten. Well, technically, it was a nickname, but not Mouse. Her mom only called her Frankie if it was something serious.
“Frankie!” she shouted again.
Internal alarm bells went off as she slid off the window seat, hurried past the chattering assembly line of women, through the kitchen, and into uncharted territory.
She hadn’t even realized that this part of the house existed as she walked through a door she’d thought opened to a closet but actually led to a corridor.
She felt like Indiana Jones, following the direction of her mom’s voice down a long, dark hallway.
At the end of the narrow passageway, sunlight spilled through the threshold of another door that was slightly ajar in a weirdly inviting way.
Part of her secretly hoped this was a Narnia situation as she pushed against the wooden surface and found herself in someplace even more magical—a glassed-in sunroom, the kind of space she’d only seen on fairytale Pinterest boards.
Sealed cement floors and a single brick wall combined with two large wooden beams and a black ceiling fan that was the great room’s twin gave urban touches to the mountain aesthetic.
Natural light flooded in from floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned the length of the space, offering a breathtaking view of mile-high pine trees, and a pond with a small waterfall.
What was even more surprising than the room itself was its contents.
There were several easels, actual, professional wooden easels, not the cheap collapsible ones of different sizes with blank canvases on them.
There were also blank canvases of all shapes and sizes leaning up against the wall.
A tall shelf with a rolling library ladder was filled to the brink with art supplies.
Frankie crossed to the shelves, her eyes dancing over the oil paints, brushes, rags, glass palettes, wood palettes, palette knives, mahl sticks, mineral spirits, varnish, and linseed oil.
This was everything she’d dreamed about, fantasized about, and talked about wanting when she grew up.
It was her ultimate dream art studio. Someone had gone into her brain and mined her head for the blueprint of this space.
If she didn’t know any better, she would swear her fairy godmother had waved a magic wand, and poof, this was the result.
Which would make Liam her fairy godmother. It had to be him. This was his house. How could he have possibly remembered what she’d said all those years ago? He went to college when she was fourteen, and since he was doing the accelerated program, he was barely home.
Why would he do this for her?
Why hadn’t he told her?
When did he do this?
She lifted her hand and wiped her index finger across the wooden palette, then looked at the pad. It was dirty. There was at least an inch of dust in this room. These supplies were not newly acquired. He hadn’t procured these since she’d come back into his life.
A box in one of the cubbies caught her eye and a wave of nostalgia washed over her.
It was a cigar box that Liam had kept on his desk as a teenager.
She’d doodled on it one day when they were talking, not even realizing what she was doing.
She thought he’d be upset, but he said he didn’t care, she could draw all over it, so she did.
Her fingers reached out now and traced the peonies, the hearts, the sunflowers, the Mighty Mouse, the cat Rascal, all the tiny little drawings she’d put on it.
She opened the lid and inside she found the physical copies of all the photos that had been in Liam’s phone.
Why had he kept that box?