Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
FRANKIE
Now
Walking into the library with Thora wasn’t unlike going about town with Estelle—waved greetings and smiling faces aimed their way, getting stopped every ten feet by other patrons…
It made Frankie stay as close to Thora as she could, as if to drink in the familiar second-hand connection she’d been so suddenly cut off from.
“Bridge!” Mrs. Villanueva called out as soon as she spotted them.
Thora pointed to the microfiche room and went on by.
“Another time, Ruthie,” she said. “I’ve got a job to do.
” But then she stopped without warning, causing Frankie to bump into her.
“Although I believe Owen could do with a friendly game, couldn’t you, dear?
” She winked at him with such a lack of discretion that Frankie had to smile.
“Really, Grams?” Owen muttered.
“Just one. It’ll let us get started in there.” She patted his check. “That’s a good boy.”
Frankie’s face flushed as he sighed and left them, knowing she was the cause of his discomfort, but to his credit, he sat down and began shuffling the deck of cards he was handed without another word.
“You seem very close,” Frankie said as she and Thora entered the small room with the microfiche machines. “I never knew my grandparents.”
“We weren’t always,” Thora said. “His father, my son-in-law, kept him busy with sports when he was little—baseball, basketball, and then football, which was the one that stuck, as you know. If I wanted to see him, I had to show up at the games. Oh, and holidays of course.” She opened an app on the desktop monitor closest to them.
“After he went off to Boston for college, his parents moved north too, and I didn’t see him for a while.
” Her fingers stilled as a memory took hold, but then she gave Frankie a tight smile.
“The rest is a bit of a sordid tale I’m afraid, and it’s not mine to tell.
Now, let’s see if we can find what you’re looking for. ”
Frankie let herself linger on Thora’s words. She’d been right then—life had thrown Owen a few curveballs, no football puns intended. She strained to hear the conversation outside the half-closed door, but if he was contributing, she couldn’t tell beneath Vilma’s and Irma’s bickering.
“Now, what area are we focusing on? Did you all live around here back then too?” Thora asked.
Frankie blinked at the question. Crud. She should have figured this out first. “No, we didn’t, and I’m actually not sure where we were at the time. Mom was performing wherever she could, so we stayed in a lot of different places.”
“But here in North Carolina?”
Frankie scrunched her face up in an apologetic grimace. “Maybe. I’m sorry, I…” God, she must seem so clueless.
“Is there a way to find out? Someone you could ask?” Thora persisted.
Frankie looked up, the answer instantly appearing before her.
“Uncle Ray.” She stood. “Don’t go anywhere.
I’ll be right back.” She rushed out the door, through the library, and into the parking lot, pulling her phone out as she came to a stop beneath a large sweet gum tree.
Like Uncle Ray had reminded her last time they spoke, he’d helped launch Estelle’s career, and even though the abduction had happened before that, maybe he’d already been around.
She silently scolded herself as she dialed his number.
She should have thought to ask him as soon as they’d found that notebook.
She paced as she waited for him to pick up, and right when she thought the call might go to voicemail, the line connected.
“Frankie?” His low voice was tinted with surprise. “Is everything all right?”
“Hi, Uncle Ray,” Frankie said. “Back in town yet?”
“Tomorrow. Decided to take a few meetings in Raleigh on the way. Is Matt okay?”
A door closed, and she pictured him having excused himself from something important. She’d have to be quick, or he might revive the tired old joke about billing her for his time.
“Yes, yes. He’s good,” she assured him. “I’m just calling with a few questions.”
“Oh?”
No point in beating around the bush. “Did Matt tell you I’m doing a fundraiser?”
“He did. It’s a good idea. Make sure you count me in for tickets.”
“Will do. Anyway, I was wondering if you knew Mom back when that woman took me?”
He was quiet for a beat. “You’re talking about the abduction?”
“Right.”
“Um, I wouldn’t say I knew her, but we had met.
I might have helped her find a few gigs at that point.
Those were busy years for me. Darla and I had just gotten married, and she was pregnant with Matt.
Why are you asking, Frankie dear? I can’t imagine that agonizing incident being something you’d want to bring up at a fundraiser. ”
Frankie opened her mouth to tell him about the song in the notebook, but then she stopped herself.
What if Kayla was right and there was a simple explanation for the date?
She couldn’t go around insinuating that Estelle had told tall tales until she’d verified the facts.
On the other hand, Uncle Ray had been the money behind “My Only Child,” so he might know something.
“Frankie?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
She took a deep breath. How could she ask without jumping the gun?
“I’m trying to track the start of Mom’s career for my speech at the auction,” she lied, “and I’ve realized I don’t know a whole lot.
Like for example where she performed and where we lived during those years and when she started writing ‘My Only Child.’ Do you know, Uncle Ray?
” She kicked at a crevice in the sidewalk while she waited for him to respond.
“So that would have been what? Early nineties. Ninety-one, ninety-two maybe?
“Right.”
“Well, everyone knows she wrote that song once she had you back, and around that time she played mostly smaller venues in northern Mississippi and Tennessee from what I recall.”
Frankie exhaled. That’s what she’d needed to know. It made sense too since her birth certificate said Mississippi. Now they had a general area where they could start looking.
Uncle Ray continued, “Once I started booking her more frequently, we focused on gigs further north—Louisville, St. Louis, Nashville of course. I split my time between Nashville and Memphis at the time. Do you remember the Memphis house?”
“The white one with the pillars?” A memory of her and Matt playing hide-and seek in the big garden flickered inside Frankie’s mind.
“That’s the one.”
The bell tower in the church next to the library chimed two o’clock. Her first piano student of the day would be arriving in less than an hour. Frankie wrapped up the call with a promise to reach out again if any other questions arose, and then she hurried back into the library.
“I don’t know, dear,” Thora said when Frankie relayed the information. “We might have to get creative since we’d need film from out of state. But let’s see—sometimes you get lucky.”
She brought Frankie along to the archive where the film reels were kept, and together they searched for any news sources from the two states Uncle Ray had mentioned. Unfortunately, aside from one local Jackson, Mississippi paper, there was nothing that looked relevant.
Frankie checked her watch. Their search had taken up the better part of an hour, and now she was out of time.
“I need to get to work, but if you show me how to do this, I can come back later and—”
“Nonsense,” Thora said. “You go do your thing, and I’ll take care of this. Owen will be my second set of eyes.”
Frankie released a breath, her insides still strumming with the urgency of needing answers. “Are you sure?”
“Of course,” was Thora’s chipper response.
“And remember we’re looking for any mentions of abductions between 1990 and 1992.”
“You got it. Leave me your number, and I’ll have Owen text you what we find. I’m going to contact a few friends who are local to those areas too. They might have better luck.”
Strangers would know about this search? Frankie wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
As if sensing her apprehension, Thora patted Frankie’s arm. “They’re good people. Bloodhounds for this sort of thing but discreet. Don’t worry.”
“Okay.” Frankie scribbled her number on a scrap of paper next to the microfiche machine, and then she took her leave with ten minutes to spare before her lesson.
Frankie had always prided herself on being a good instructor.
She had patience but knew when to push a student, and she was as detailed in her praise as she was with her expectations.
Rarely did it pass her by if a student had neglected to practice.
But today she couldn’t focus. As soon as melodies started rolling off the keys, whether Chopin or Paganini, she was back at the library, her mind on the past.
Thora could be discovering evidence of her abduction that very moment. The mere possibility had Frankie on edge. Small-town papers ate stories like that up, so it must have been mentioned wherever they’d lived at the time. It could have been the Jackson area. There was a chance.
A dissonant jumble of notes brought her back to the practice room, her student hammering out a problematic measure again and again without getting it right. Frankie rubbed her forehead to erase an image of a press headline printed in all caps from her imagination.
“Okay, slow it down,” she instructed. “Right hand only. One, two, three, four.”
Tiny hands still tripped over the scale. “I can’t do it,” the second grader said. “My fingers don’t move that way.”