Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
FRANKIE
Now
Frankie stared at the tiny plastic band in her hand, unable to draw breath. Estelle had had another baby? Frankie had a sibling?
“Frankie?”
Owen’s voice sounded far away, even though he was right there. She looked at his face, saw the worry in his eyes, the movement of his lips as he said something else she couldn’t decipher. Then her legs gave out.
A rumbling, “Oh, no you don’t,” sounded in her ear, and then strong arms caught her.
The next she knew, she was sitting on the floor, leaning against him. Her hands were splayed limply at her sides, and somewhere inside her skull, a deep pounding pulsed in time with her heart.
“You okay?” he asked.
The mantra she’d repeated daily since the funeral stung on her tongue—I’m fine—but her lips refused to shape the words. Instead, what came out was, “Not really,” which was closer to how she truly felt—that nothing would ever be fine again.
He supported her back as she worked to lean forward. “Reading between the lines here, I’m assuming you didn’t know about this.” He held up the wristband she’d dropped.
Frankie shook her head. They were still in Estelle’s living room, still in a place that she’d have called home if someone had asked yesterday, but the supports around her were coming down.
The wallpaper seemed to be curling toward the floor, the bookcases and all their contents seeping like paint into a murky puddle at their base.
“But I have so much to do,” she mumbled, steadying herself against the wobbling floor. She looked up at Owen. “I don’t have time for this. We’re a cornerstone of the community. Aspen Creek is counting on us. Lavignes are reliable. Lavignes are true to their word.”
She gasped, the collapse of all things familiar cutting through her and causing a rift through the very fabric of her being. She clutched at the front of her shirt and at her throat as pain of a kind she’d never felt before marred her mind. This was too much. One step too far.
How many times had she wished for a sibling when she was little?
How many times had she pretended Matt was her brother?
And all along, Estelle—who was really Stella-Jane—had only ever told her the two of them were enough.
We’re two peas in a pod, and three would make it too crowded.
She’d had plenty of opportunities to tell Frankie about the other child she’d given birth to, but she’d chosen not to.
“Why?” Frankie asked of everyone and no one. The question she returned to again and again. “Why all these secrets? Why all the lies?” She faced Owen, who still had one hand splayed against her back, as if not trusting her to stay upright on her own just yet.
“I don’t know,” he said simply. “Could she have lost the baby?”
A tragic death? Frankie considered the possibility.
“I don’t think so. We talked about stuff like that.
” When he looked skeptical, she continued.
“Matt and Kayla can’t have kids. She had severe endometriosis when she was younger, and they’ve been through a lot.
Several miscarriages among them. Estelle was always very pragmatic about it.
Sympathetic, but not… affected if that makes sense.
But who’s to say? There’s clearly a lot I don’t know. ”
“You could look into it,” Owen said.
Frankie shook her head. “The auction is two and a half weeks away. I still need sponsors. I need to hire a new teacher. I have a full roster of students, and the parents are unhappy that I can’t play.
And on top of all that, the interview I mentioned is only a week away.
How am I supposed to talk about Mom as if nothing is amiss?
” Her head jerked back, a new thought rearing its ugly head.
“What if Orla already knows and asks me about this?”
“Okay, hey.” Owen ran his hand up and down her spine a few times, forcing her attention. “Let’s take a deep breath and think this through.”
She nodded stiffly, her mind too mired in obligations to come up with a protest.
“If you didn’t have the auction and the school to think about—if it was just up to you—what would you do about this?” Owen asked, reaching for the wristband.
“But that’s not how things are,” Frankie protested.
“If they were,” Owen insisted. “Humor me.”
“Fine.” Frankie closed her eyes for an extended beat before opening them again. The walls hadn’t melted; they were still standing tall around her, but there was something foreign about them now. “Then I’d get to the bottom of this. It feels like I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“You mean who Estelle was? You’re still you.” He gave her a crooked smile.
Was she? She reached inside, searching for that solid core that had always allowed her certainty in what she had, her sense of self, but found it gel-like and wobbly, like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
“Let’s go over to Grams’,” Owen said, pushing up to standing and offering her a hand. “I have an idea.”
“Owen…” She looked up at him, staying firmly planted on the floor among the mess she’d made.
“Yes, I know. You don’t have time. But do you really think you’ll be able to tuck this away and pretend everything’s business as usual? Beethoven, remember?” He winked and wiggled his fingers.
This time she took it, allowing him to pull her up to standing.
“My point is, you need answers,” he continued, “and Grams is very good at finding them. You’re not alone, you know. Come on. We can clean this up later.”
She hesitated. He was right—that wasn’t the problem. But if she allowed herself to go down this path, she’d be acknowledging that the course of constancy and stability she’d charted when Estelle died was a dead end.
On the other hand, maybe part of her already knew something had changed.
She’d done fairly well not allowing the first few mysteries to derail her.
She’d tucked away the card, approached the financial situation with action and patience, and shoved the suitcase full of lavender back under the bed.
But the song, the cancer, and now this? These lies and omissions weren’t slip-ups. They were personal.
“Okay,” Frankie said. “Let’s do it.”
Let’s see who you really were, Mom, she thought following Owen out the door.
And for once, there was no voice in her head offering a response.
Frankie let Owen explain to Thora what they’d found. The older woman made wide eyes when she learned about Frankie’s sibling, but she didn’t speak until Owen asked her if she thought she could help.
Thora turned her crinkled eyes on Frankie, sympathy warring with some other untold emotion therein. “Those are big secrets to keep,” she said. “It will be safe to assume she had a reason. Are you sure you want to know?”
Frankie dug her teeth into her cheek, testing her certainty, but no matter the apprehension she felt, with Orla Monroe circling, Frankie needed to stay a step ahead if at all possible.
“I can’t let this go,” she said finally.
“If nothing else, I need to know what happened to my brother or sister. Owen could be right that they died young. Or what if we’re wrong about the inspiration of the song?
Maybe it wasn’t the Hattiesburg case. Maybe my sibling was kidnapped and never came back.
” If that had happened to Estelle, she might have rewritten that trauma into the more manageable one where Frankie was taken and returned.
It would almost be enough to forgive the lie.
“I didn’t even think about that,” Owen said.
Thora nodded. “I hear you.”
“Can you really help?” Frankie asked.
“Well, with her real name and a marriage certificate, I should think we’d be able to dig up something.” Thora rocked forward, but before she could push off her chair, Owen was there, helping her up. “Let’s head to the office. Owen, get my cardigan, will you?”
They followed her down the short hallway to a closed door that she pushed open with a flourish.
“I don’t let just anyone in here,” she said, flipping the light switch. “Ta-da.”
It was like walking into a space shuttle cockpit. Shelves full of electronic equipment lined the walls, and the long desk that sat beneath the window was jampacked with cables, keyboards, monitors, and speakers.
“What is all this?” Frankie asked, moving deeper into the room and stepping over two extension cords that were taped to the floor.
“A bit of fun,” Thora said, easing herself into one of the desk chairs. “My dearly departed husband dabbled with ham radios, and I suppose along the way I caught the bug too. But why stop at small potatoes?” She gestured to her setup.
“Grams can talk to people all over the world in here,” Owen said, beaming at his grandmother.
“Like who?” Frankie asked.
“You never know,” Thora said. “Depends on who’s there. Divine shared frequency if you will. But mostly I use it to chat with my regulars.”
Frankie looked from Thora to Owen, hoping he’d supply an explanation, and he must have caught her quizzical expression.
“Random folks she’s met over the years. Most are in the southeast corner of the States—same time zone and all that.”
“Mainly we check in once a week to make sure we’re alive,” Thora said.
“People are lonely out there.” She reached for a pair of headphones and put them around her neck.
“But other times, we help each other with specific research. Mostly genealogical—lots of people curious about their ancestry at my age, looking for a tether to the past before entering the great web beyond perhaps. Other times it’s book related, or, as in your case, past events, people, microfiche. ”
Frankie’s eyes widened. “That’s who helped you look for kidnapping articles?”
“Yep.” Thora flipped on a few switches. “Did you ever watch James Bond?”
“Sure.”