Chapter 27 Everything to Do with You
Everything to Do with You
There are sporadic, soft murmurings from the earth. If even one of these aftershocks happened yesterday, she’d have flown from her bed, terrified, but already this is a new reality with new thresholds of fear, and so, late at night, she rides out the temblors while keeping her covers in place.
Fiona was her mother. Is her mother. Fiona, with her dark-red hair and light eyes and freckles, her Irish freckles, as she called them.
Did they look alike? Their coloring was almost opposite, but in hindsight, Frankie sees it in their eyes.
Different shades of blue—arctic light blue versus Atlantic dark blue—though the same shape.
Your father must have been Italian, Nico said.
His genes would’ve been dominant. She named you Francesca, too. A tribute to his side, I’d say.
The moon brightens half the ceiling, and she notices a crack that spreads from the light fixture.
She told you she adopted you because she must’ve thought it would help.
Frankie feels a slight tremble, and turns over in bed, thinking of Nico’s words.
Does a lie matter if its outcome helps? Or is the truth always better even if it does harm?
If someone’s told they’re taking medicine, and they feel better, does it matter if it’s made of sugar?
A movie. People sit in a theatre and look up at a world that captivates them and lifts them above their own life, that gives them escape and allows them experiences they otherwise would never have, and it’s about the feeling that’s created.
The thrill, the aching, the gratification, the fear or sadness.
And those feelings have nothing to do with truth or fiction, and everything to do with belief.
She lived with a mother whom she deemed a rescuer, a savior.
Years and years of happy belief in someone during which the truth of the situation had no impact on the experience, because she believed the lie.
But if experience trumps reality, then does the truth even matter?
Needing a distraction, Frankie gets out of bed.
From the kitchen, she sees Virginia and Susan, asleep on a mattress they dragged into the living room as if needing to be closer to the exit.
Though they’d asked her to join them, in Frankie’s heart, she was already one step out the door, and so she made up an excuse and retreated to her room, alone.
“She wasn’t even sixteen years old,” Nico said earlier tonight, about Frankie’s mother, as a neighbor splashed water on the nearest bonfire and announced he was going inside. “It’s admirable, really. She must have planned on getting you back the second she could, the second she was on her feet.”
“She was never on her feet. We were always behind and barely hanging on.”
“And yet she never looked back. Like I said, admirable. You know people leave, all the time, because of whatever they’re going through, and it has nothing to do with you. But more often than not, when they come back, it has everything to do with you.”
Loss was threading around her, a touch here and there—a wisp she suddenly identified. “It’s like I just lost the family I might’ve had.”
“I thought that might be the case—despite your protests. But you still have family. They’re just not the kind you’re related to, that’s all.
” A pause, and he added, “She told you she adopted you, because she must’ve thought it would help.
We do that every day, try to angle things in just the right way.
Try to change the way something’s perceived. ”
“No. It’s different. She painted herself as the rescuer. She sold a lie so she’d look good. She spun the story of my birth.”
Suddenly, Nico seemed angry. “No. She fixed it so she’d look good in your eyes, Frankie.
She didn’t want her daughter to think ill of her, to question her love.
What’s wrong with that? Think of what it would’ve done, living with the woman who gave you up.
Always doubting if she was going to come home at night.
Never trusting her. She did you a favor. ”
Did she? A lifetime of mystery. A cascade of doubt.
All the years spent wondering what was wrong with her that would cause her family to give her up.
They kept her siblings but not her, and that first abandonment drove home an important lesson: People come and go, and you’re never enough to make them stay if they really want to leave.
On top of this, her mother left behind a puzzle box of questions.
Was Fiona related to the man or the woman who cared for her?
Could they have been an aunt or an uncle, perhaps?
If that was the case, why would Fiona never see them again?
Behind each inquiry is another, and the only person who could answer them is gone.
We’ll keep looking for them if you want, Nico said. You can decide later.
Now is the chance to appreciate the silence outside, this full and complete darkness and the dusting of stars, now that all her neighbors have gone back to their houses.
Quietly, she tiptoes past her roommates and out the front door.
Pine needles and rocks press into her bare feet, the damp grass cold.
Then the sidewalk, rough. The street has cleared out, faint embers all that’s left of the bonfires.
Everyone’s gone but one older couple who dragged a mattress to their driveway.
They’ve got a fire going in a steel drum, and their shoes are lined up in a row.
Even from here, Frankie can see they’re awake, speaking in whispers and pointing to the stars.
Frankie breathes in the beauty. This, she thinks, is the closest she’ll ever come to understanding eternity.
When she looks down, she spots a familiar car: O’Shea’s Ford Roadster pickup. The one Jack drives when he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself.
Inside, slumped across the tan seat, is one of the country’s biggest stars.
Asleep in an average car on an average street.
Unshaven, his hair slightly bent as if he’s had his head at an angle for a while.
She hasn’t been able to watch him since everything began, or ended, rather, and asleep, he’s a captivating combination of rugged vulnerability.
Strong but gentle. She watches his eyelashes till he twitches as if feeling her gaze, and so, gently, she taps on the window.
Waking up, he seems confused, and then sees her and smiles before catching himself.
Smile gone, he unlocks the door so she can get in the passenger side. All she wants to do is touch him, to lean against him and let him hold her and tell her that not everything is a lie.
Instead, she says, too forcefully, “Why’d you come if you’re still mad?”
“Hello to you too.” He glances at her robe and pajamas, then back down the street, at the couple sleeping in their driveway.
“Just because I’m mad doesn’t mean I want you hurt.
I thought if I saw you leave in the morning, I’d know you were all right.
And for what it’s worth, you still seem mad too.
” With that, he reaches into the back seat. “Which is why I brought this.”
Moving Up, the script by Milton Ewing.
He sets it in her lap. “If you disagree with what I’ve done after you read it, I will personally pay for them to reshoot those scenes with a different set.”
The fact that he’s willing to do this, and confident enough that she will understand once she reads the script, immediately and almost frustratingly takes the edge off her anger.
What’s actually in the script remains to be seen, but the effort he’s going to already runs contrary to what she’d seen as thoughtless behavior. “Then I guess I’ll read it.”
“I guess you will.” He gives her a hesitant smile.
“Are you doing all right?”
He moves his hand, indicating fifty-fifty. “Being back in my house is already nice. Hopefully the nightmares stop.”
“You’re having nightmares?” It kills her that she didn’t know this. But then she thinks of something that will hopefully help him—that the dog wasn’t barking before the gunshot, so it’s unlikely he walked back and past that point again after she dropped him off. She tells him this, and he smiles.
“A dog, Frankie? I like that you’re trying, but you know I need more than that.”
“But now we have more reason to think you just went to sleep, and no reason to think you left and saw June before she was shot. When you got to your bungalow, you stayed there.”
He taps his thumb on the door. “There’s something I found out that I wanted you to know.”
“I don’t know if I can handle finding out more tonight.”
“Why? What’d you find out?”
She can’t look at him. If she does, and if she tells him about her mother, she will cry. What she needs is to be strong. Instead, she tells him about the tunnel.
When she’s finished, Jack is incredulous. “And Nico knew about it? He’s used it?”
“I don’t know when he last—”
“Frankie.”
“I can’t believe I even have to say this, but Nico didn’t kill her, Jack. I know he didn’t.”
“Of course he didn’t.”
Now it’s Frankie’s turn to look surprised. Jack, who’s always critical of Nico, agrees.
“But just because I don’t think he killed her doesn’t mean I like this. Doesn’t mean you should look away when something’s off. Because something is off. You know it is. And you’re making excuses like you did with the telegrams and him knowing where Donna was—”
“I didn’t look away. I got into his safe at his house when he wasn’t there. Everything is as he said it was.”
“You broke into Nico’s safe?”
“I didn’t break in. He gave me the combination a long time ago. There’s emergency money in there, there’s—”
“He gave you the combination? Then of course you didn’t find anything.”
“Maybe I didn’t find anything because there’s nothing to find.
” She thinks of the police report involving Ida and the boy who drowned, as well as the letters Frankie had never read.
Just because she didn’t know about those things doesn’t mean he was hiding them.
On the contrary, if he was, he wouldn’t have put them where he knew she could look.
“He bought June’s sister,” Jack says.
“And me? He bought me too?” She glares at him.
“You know I didn’t really think that.”
She stays silent, stewing.
“Come on,” he finally says. “Neither one of us is perfect right now, but you have to admit, what Nico did is bad.”
“He did something wrong but for the right reason.”
Jack’s mouth opens before he finds his words. “For the right reason? You mean because she was realizing there was more to life than just this?”
“That’s what you wanted her to realize.”
“No. She never cared about acting. She did it because her family wanted her to and because Ida gave up everything for her, and she felt like she had to.”
“She told you that?”
“Frankie, we had time together. Lots of time. I saw her at her best and her worst, and yes, her not liking acting but being famous for it was the problem. Think about it—what if you’re really good at something that makes the people you love happy but isn’t something you enjoy?
How long do you keep at a job just because you’re good at it?
She was a natural, but she never had a love for it.
Me, I have a love for it. Acting, I mean, not the fame. ”
Outside, someone calls for their dog. Frankie slinks down in her seat, cautious.
Quickly, Jack continues. “Here’s what I wanted to tell you: The reporter, that new reporter at my house the day of the conference, the one asking the questions I didn’t like? Jerry. He’s the one who brought up the staffers outside the premiere talking about the necklace.”
Can you confirm or deny that two studio staffers were in the crowd outside Grauman’s talking about the necklace and lack of security? “I remember.”
“Nico paid him to ask that.”
“No, he didn’t.” An immediate denial. Even she hears how quickly she jumped to Nico’s defense.
“Frankie, he did. I met the guy today. He thought I was in on it. He’s an actor.”
“In on it.” She’s trying to understand. “In on what he was asking you? As in—”
“As in Nico told Jerry what to ask. Exactly what to ask. Like a script. In exchange for a part in—”
“But I was the staffer who said there was no security. And I said it to Nico. Why would he want anyone to know that? He was a part of that conversation. That doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know. But Nico doesn’t make mistakes. So there was a reason.”
“Do you hear how sinister that sounds?”
“You didn’t know the truth about Donna. Or the tunnel. What else has he kept from you?”
“Not telling me everything isn’t the same as lying. And for everything you just brought up, he had reasons!”
“And you don’t think that’s suspicious?”
She stares at him, incredulous. “You’ve never liked him. You hate him because he represents the studio and what you have to do for them, and that’s colored your judgment.”
“Of course it has! Don’t be fooled—they want me to be a mess. They want me to need them so I do what they want me to do. So how do I know Nico’s telling the truth?”
“I saw them! I saw the letters; I told you. And yet you’re still doubting him.
You’re still trying to make me choose between him and you.
” Her heart is racing, anger surging. “He came here tonight to check on me. It was his kid, his wife, and then me that he cared about. I’ve never had that.
But he came to make sure I was all right, while you came to be right. ”
With that, she opens her door, letting in the cold.
“Frankie, just because you don’t want to see something—”
“The same goes for you, Jack,” she says, stepping onto the sidewalk. “You don’t want to see your own part in your own life. Much easier to sit back and blame others and do nothing, isn’t it?”
Though he was about to say something, he clamps his mouth shut. Script under her arm, she tightens her robe as she steps onto the curb, and tries not to listen as his car pulls away.