Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
FRANKIE
Now
She had to get out of there. Frankie shut off the computer, then grabbed her bag as she fled the school. Once down the stairs, she paused as the world flailed again, but this time she fought back the nausea with a long shaky inhale.
Had Estelle really lied to her about having cancer? It didn’t seem possible because why would anyone do such a thing?
Frankie wanted to scream out the questions, but instead, she spun round, her eyes locking on the door to the school as if she might find the answer there.
She stood there a long moment, the different corners of the town tugging at her with competing possibilities of where to go, what to do.
But there was only one place that might offer clarity, and as soon as that thought had crystallized, she set off toward her car in the parking lot.
“Frankie—hey!”
She stopped with her key aimed at the car door and turned to see Matt come jogging toward her.
“Heading out for an early lunch? I was just stopping by to see if Kayla had a minute for a bite.”
“No,” Frankie said, the word cutting into her raw throat.
Matt didn’t seem to notice. A message popped up on his phone, and he checked it, chuckling at whatever it said before shoving it back into his pocket. Frankie opened her car door, readying herself to get in. Her bag slid off her shoulder and bounced against the door frame.
“Here, let me.” Matt dove forward and caught it before it hit the ground.
Frankie took it without looking at him. “Thanks.”
Matt dipped his head to look at her. “Everything okay?”
Frankie swallowed down a threatening sob. How would she ever be able to explain this to another person? “Mm-hmm,” she said. “Just in a hurry.” Then she slid into her car seat and closed the door, ignoring the confusion on his face as she sped off.
Back at Estelle’s house, she took the stairs two at a time with the single-minded goal to get to the fireproof safe in the walk-in closet.
Any important medical documents would be there if they existed—health insurance, vaccination records, care summaries.
Frankie knew as much because she’d had a folder in that cabinet too with annual health records going back to her first year in Aspen Creek until she’d created her own file box in her tiny home.
Frankie yanked out the bottom drawer the moment she sat down on the floor, and it rolled out so fast it slammed into her knee.
“Ow, mother trucker!” Frankie squeezed her hands into fists as she rocked forward. “Arrgh. Dammit.” She rubbed at the sore spot, then inhaled deeply to try and force her pulse down. Easy now.
She flipped through the folders, scanning the labels as she went. Travel. House and Garden. Frankie College. Official Docs. Health.
Frankie pulled out the right folder and opened it on the floor.
Over the next few minutes, she thumbed through Covid vaccine certificates, a referral for a blood draw and the subsequent results, an information page for a prescription that looked to be blood pressure related, ECG and mammogram results, a blood typing document, a rejected insurance claim due to an out-of-network provider that Estelle had contested, and more.
She kept an eye out for anything cancer related, but even among the older papers, there was nothing from the Charlotte clinic.
Frankie’s shoulders slumped where she sat in the middle of the closet, folders spread out all around her. There had to be something here. Something to prove either the clinic or Mom wrong. She went through the drawer again, but no other folder had to do with healthcare.
“Tell me you didn’t lie to me about this too,” Frankie pleaded into the still air, but there was no response but the steady hum of the HVAC system.
She started stacking the folders again, placing them back in the cabinet one by one, saving the healthcare one for last. She placed it in her lap and flicked through it once more, and this time, something stirred in her mind like a mosquito buzzing near your ear no matter how you wave it off.
She stared unseeingly as the pages flapped between her fingers, that vexing feeling growing until finally she emptied all the papers onto the floor and spread them out around her.
Vaccines, blood typing, prescriptions, test results.
Test results, prescriptions, blood typing, vaccines.
Still, not a single mention of cancer or the clinic.
Frankie straightened, the mosquito’s buzzing coming to a stop.
Not a single mention of cancer. She examined the pile again, riffling through it for the various mammogram results she’d come across until she had a stack in her hands.
With bated breath, she placed them down before her, organizing them by date, and when she was done, she studied the uninterrupted line of annual screens going back to the year after they’d moved here.
None of them showed an abnormal result. There it was. No cancer.
A shuddering sob broke free in Frankie’s chest.
It had been a ruse. Estelle had lied to her and not once but day after day after day. Frankie had brought her tea in this bedroom after her treatments. She’d run errands, worked extra hours at the school, been the chauffeur, and the support. She’d worried.
“Who does that?” Frankie gasped, letting the papers drop. Had it been some form of a joke? A cruel, morbid, pathetic joke? Because the mom she knew would never do something like that.
The air appeared to withdraw from the closet, but Frankie didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her thoughts kept her stuck in one inexplicable, never-ending loop.
Estelle telling the story that inspired “My Only Child,” shuddering as she recounted Frankie being taken.
Estelle tired in the car after radiation, so grateful for Frankie’s help.
Estelle giving new families a tour of Starview, touting excellence and reliability.
Lies, lies, lies.
But why?
Frankie’s phone dinged, startling her out of her reverie.
It was Kayla. Everything okay? Matt said you seemed weird.
Frankie stared at the screen, thumbs perched to respond, but then she dropped her hands to her lap again. She couldn’t tell Kayla and Matt about this. The song and the school’s finances were one thing, but this? Who lies about cancer?
Frankie’s face heated at the thought. She could barely admit to herself what must be the truth—that Estelle had feigned both the hardship of the diagnosis and the joy of recovery beyond suspicion—so how could she possibly admit it to others who had also loved her mom?
Intentional or not, Frankie had been complicit.
If anyone should have known, it was her, but instead she’d accepted gifted casseroles and get-well flowers from people around the community without blinking an eye.
Something built inside Frankie that made her tuck her phone back into her pocket and push herself off the floor.
She’d had a happy childhood. Unconventional until they moved here perhaps, but good all the same.
It had been filled with music, travel, and interesting people.
She and Estelle had made a home of the Winnebago Uncle Ray had bought for them, and it had been as much a home as any other Frankie had been able to imagine.
Estelle had homeschooled her on the road, and between field trips, libraries, and the varied folks they met on the road, it hadn’t been a bad education, despite her being a year behind when they settled in Aspen Creek.
With the ever-changing scenery of their surroundings, the two of them had been each other’s constants, so to now confront the notion that there had been more to Estelle than she’d let Frankie see almost cut deeper than death itself. Because how do you mourn what you don’t understand?
No, nothing was okay and that would remain so unless she got to the bottom of all of this.
Frankie pulled out every single folder from the drawer, stacking them in her arms before leaving the health-related mess on the floor behind her and heading downstairs.
The living room was bigger, and if she intended to go through every scrap of paper Estelle had filed away, she needed space.
Whatever else was hidden within these documents, she would bring it out of the shadows once and for all.
She wouldn’t be able to rest until she did.
That evening, Frankie walked back into Estelle’s living room with a single-minded focus after teaching her classes. She’d managed minimal interaction with anyone who wasn’t her students, and since Grant taught his adult guitar class Tuesday evenings, he’d be locking up.
She flicked on the ceiling light, illuminating the papers strewn across the floor in stark clarity. She’d only had time to spread out the contents of the files earlier before she’d realized the time and hurried back to the school, but now the evening stretched out before her uninterrupted.
After setting her backpack down on the couch, she walked among the documents as if they might call out to her where to start.
Estelle’s passport lay at the top of one row, a drawing of a garden layout in another.
She stepped over a payment schedule for her college loans, which they had finished paying off a few years ago, rounded a yellow envelope labeled “certification,” then paused by an invoice for window washing.
The doorbell rang.
Frankie huffed at the sound. What now? She looked from the door to the papers surrounding her, contemplating pretending she wasn’t here, but then the bell chimed again. It had better not be Kayla demanding entry because the mess would be difficult to explain without the truth.
Frankie peeked through the window next to the door before reaching for the handle. Her eyebrows rose. Not Kayla—it was Owen.
She glanced over her shoulder, an urge to hide the documents coming over her, but then she opened the door just enough to stick her head through. “Hi,” she said, forcing her cheeks to comply with a smile.