Chapter 9 #2
The guest room held a queen-sized bed, a nightstand, a love seat, a small bookshelf, and an old armoire where they’d kept winter jackets and boots when Frankie was little.
No one had stayed in the room since the early days of them living here when Estelle still had an occasional musician friend from her performing days visit.
But at least twenty years must have passed since then, so it was a credit to Estelle that a freshly cleaned scent clung to the interior of the room.
The armoire was a natural first place to look for a hat, so she twisted the key that kept the ornate double doors locked and opened one of them carefully, half-expecting a slew of bumbling moths to fly at her. When the coast seemed clear, she set the doors fully ajar and examined the contents.
The first thing her eyes landed on was a clear garment bag with a frilly blue dress inside that made Frankie’s breath catch.
Her recital dress. They’d bought it at Loman’s in Charlotte when she was thirteen, and she remembered trying on half the store before choosing this one.
It had been her first big showcase, and she’d played “Clair de lune” to roaring applause at one of the wineries in the area.
Estelle had just opened Starview that year and was pushing hard to get them visibility.
She unzipped the bag and pulled the dress free of the hanger, the familiar scratch of the tulle skirt calling up a memory of her smoothing it over her legs after sitting down on the piano bench.
She held it up, marveling at its diminutive size.
She’d eventually grown to her current five foot eight inches, but back then she’d always been the smallest in her class even though she technically was a year older than her classmates.
Homeschooling and life on the road had left her with some gaps in her early elementary education, so the adults in charge had thought it best to hold her back a year.
How long had she fit into this dress? Two years? Three? Though as much as she’d appreciated her growth spurt once it hit, it had been a sad day when Estelle announced this dress had to be retired. To think she’d kept it all these years.
A cavalcade of other recitals brushed up against Frankie as she returned the dress to its bag.
Chopin paired with a long, pale pink dress with an empire waist. Schumann and a flippy skirt with a bow at the back.
A sophisticated black one for Rachmaninoff.
None of those garments were here, but the memories were so vivid that she couldn’t help but wonder what she might have chosen to wear on stage today if it had been her and not Maddie Forester who’d landed that job with the Chicago Symphony.
The thought made something dark and acidic snake through her, but she pushed the foreign feeling away as she continued searching the armoire. The past was in the past. “What ifs” and “could have beens” were better suited for country music tunes than her current task at hand.
“Aha,” she said, pulling a milliner’s box down from the narrow top shelf and setting it on the love seat.
The box had a metal latch closure that took some fiddling before it snapped open to reveal its contents.
Unfortunately, it was a black pillbox one she’d never seen before, not the bedazzled cowboy hat she needed.
She let out a puff of disappointment and turned her back to the armoire to consider the rest of the room. “Where would I be if I was a hat?”
The bookcase held only books, a couple of porcelain figurines, and some puzzles, but when she looked under the bed, she spotted something that showed promise.
She lay down on her stomach and pulled out a small gray guitar case.
It was weather-worn and dull, but when Frankie opened it, she knew she’d found something that could make a difference.
It was Estelle’s first guitar—the one her grandpa had given her.
Frankie recognized it from a framed photo downstairs.
Two of the strings had snapped, but surely that would only add character and appeal to a collector.
“Kayla?” she called. “I’ve got something.”
“Be right there. I think I found something too!” her friend called back.
Their luck was turning. Frankie could feel it.
While she waited, she looked deeper under the bed, spotting another guitar case and, behind that, a large suitcase, so she pulled those out too.
The clean floral smell that had first greeted her when she entered the room grew stronger, seemingly emanating from the two cases.
Frankie’s nose twitched as she unlatched the larger guitar case, her fingers crossed that it would be the black guitar from the “My Only Child” album.
Now that would really be a find. She did recall Estelle saying that guitar had gone missing somewhere on the road, but you never knew.
Sometimes lost things weren’t truly lost.
She opened the lid just as Kayla entered the room, a notebook in her hand.
“Whew!” her friend exclaimed, wrinkling her nose. “That is potent. What did you find?”
Frankie stared into the guitar case, a frown weighing at her brow. Yes, what the heck was she looking at? It was definitely not a guitar—that much she was sure of.
“I don’t…” She didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she reached in and plucked out one of the many boxes inside and turned it over in her hands. “I think it’s tea,” she said.
“Tea? As in for drinking?” Kayla joined her on the floor, her eyes widening as she took in the contents of the case.
She reached for a different box and read the print before opening it.
“This is a candle,” she said, showing Frankie before dipping her nose to it and inhaling deeply. “Lavender,” she said.
“The tea is lavender too,” Frankie said before she dove on the large suitcase, her instinct telling her things were about to get even weirder.
She unbuckled the straps of the old trunk, and sure enough—stacks and stacks of the same boxes, plus several bigger ones that contained jars of honey. All in all, there were hundreds of boxes of lavender candles, tea, and honey tucked away under the guest-room bed.
“Estelle must have loved lavender,” Kayla said, still smelling each box that she opened.
“I’ve never seen her use any of it,” Frankie said.
“She drank coffee and peach iced tea, and the only candle downstairs is a gardenia one, which I know because I bought it for her.” She surveyed the spread before them, shaking her head.
“Why would she buy all of this only to store it away?” An uncomfortable thought entered her mind.
Was this where the school’s money had gone? To some kind of compulsion?
Kayla sniffed between the two candles in her hands like she was emulating a sommelier.
“Some smell stronger than the others,” she said, setting them down and picking up two boxes of tea instead, one from the guitar case and one from the bottom of the suitcase.
“Ah,” she said as if she’d solved a great mystery.
“This one expired in 2016, and this one is new. That explains it. She must have bought them over several years.”
Frankie set down the box she’d been holding. “It explains exactly nothing,” she said, resisting the temptation to upend the suitcase all over the floor.
All she wanted was to ensure Starview’s future.
To keep her cool and make Estelle proud.
These oddities that kept popping up—the card, the school’s finances, the private account, Orla’s insinuations, and now this horde of floral randomness—were burrowing under her skin at a moment when she didn’t have time for such distractions.
Look at us, they seemed to say. Are you sure things are fine?
“People collect all sorts of weird things,” Kayla said. “My memaw collected playing cards, but only the queens. Had stacks and stacks of them. I honestly don’t think it’s that big a deal.”
She could be right. Estelle’s half of their raised garden beds outside was entirely dedicated to flowers, while Frankie preferred to grow edible things.
Mom’s proclivities might have simply spilled into this stockpiling of lavender products as a different kind of pastime. Except, why do it in secret?
“Did your memaw hide the cards under the guest-room bed too?” Frankie asked, looking to her friend.
“Well, no. She even had some of them framed on the wall.”
Like Frankie had thought. Something wasn’t right about this, and it was beyond frustrating that questions were piling up at the very instant Estelle wasn’t here to provide answers.
She ran her hand over the contents of the guitar case and sighed.
Everyone had quirks, and this could have been one of Mom’s.
An immaterial whim. But in the context of the relationship they’d always had, sharing everything, talking about everything, it felt like this did matter.
Like it said something more about them that Frankie had yet to decipher.
“I don’t get how I didn’t know about it if it was just a hobby,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like Mom. It’s like… someone else put these things here.”
“Maybe it was a phase,” Kayla offered. “Like all those crafting materials she bought and didn’t end up using. I sifted through a ton of that in the other room.” She shrugged.
Frankie’s gaze caught on the notebook Kayla had brought with her that was sitting forgotten on the floor. It reminded her that they were in the middle of something more important than understanding Estelle’s unusual shopping habits.
She closed the lid of the suitcase and pushed it back under the bed.
“You’re right. Either way, we’re not raffling off lavender tea at this event, so let’s leave it for another day.
” She pointed to the small guitar case behind her.
“But I did find Estelle’s first guitar, and that we can use.
” She forced her lips into a smile. “How about you? What’s that? ” She pointed to the book.
Kayla’s eyes glittered to life. “It was at the bottom of one of the sheet-music boxes. I think it’s a songwriting notebook.” She handed it to Frankie.
Frankie instantly recognized Estelle’s handwriting as she started flipping through the pages. Kayla was right. It was page after page of cursive pencil scribbles. Some had full lyrics with chords noted above the words; others contained nothing but lists of rhyming words or scraps of verses.
“Here. This is where it gets interesting.” Kayla reached over and flipped to a page toward the back of the book. The edge of it was wavy and stained with what looked like coffee so it was easy to find. “Look at the chorus.”
Frankie followed Kayla’s finger to the lines in question.
Don’t let me find sleep ’fore we are how we were
Just let it be over, oh please let me hold her
I’m not done counting heartbeats through days and nights
Give me a chance to set things right
Quiet places where laughter should be,
My only child is gone
Gone is she.
But I’ll fight through the dark, and I’ll chase down the light, you will see
Until my only child
Comes home to me.
“Holy shit,” Frankie said. This was where the hit had started—Estelle’s process laid out for everyone to see. It didn’t get much more personal than that.
Some of the lines had been struck through only to be reworded further down on the page, and Frankie spotted at least one whole verse that wasn’t in the finished song. She traced the letters with her finger, imagining the emotional turmoil that had sparked these words.
Estelle hadn’t often talked about Frankie’s abduction other than to say it was the darkest two weeks of her life and that she preferred not to revisit them, and since Frankie had been too little to remember the ordeal herself, she’d had no problem respecting that.
But here was an account at last, no matter how indirect.
Lines of lyrics coated in anguish, fear, and hope that hadn’t made it into the final song.
Words of bargaining and surrender, but also of deepest love.
“I thought you’d like that,” Kayla said. “Both this and the guitar would make great features. ‘Never before seen’… etcetera.” She painted the headline with a strike of her palm through the air.
Frankie was about to agree when her gaze snagged on a scribble at the top of the page that made her assent stick in her throat. She read it again, then one more time, certain she was misunderstanding.
“What does that say?” she finally asked Kayla.
Her friend leaned closer. “Um, June 20, 1987.”
Frankie stared at her, unblinking. That’s what she’d thought it said, but that couldn’t be. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, pretty sure.” Kayla took the notebook and flipped through a few pages. “And see, the song before it is dated June 8, 1987, so it makes sense.”
Frankie gasped. “No, K, it doesn’t. It makes no sense at all.”
Her friend’s brow knitted in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see?” Frankie tapped the page, icy tendrils shooting like glacial lightning through her limbs, freezing them rigid. “I was born in 1989. So how can a song about my abduction be written two years before I was born?”