Chapter 27 #2
“I’m not sure why she would have,” Bob said, clicking around on the page. “She had that other checking account you already saw.”
“Maybe she forgot she had this one too?”
“Hmm…” Bob opened a page with a list of transactions and scrolled down farther and farther on the page.
“No,” he said. “It’s odd because there are exactly twelve deposits per year into this account from her other checking account—one per month—and one payment totaling all of those funds to the same recipient once a year on October 28 going back… well as far as I can see.”
Frankie jerked as if someone had slapped her. “October 28? You’re sure?”
Bob pointed. “There.”
“That’s my birthday,” Frankie breathed. This was getting stranger and stranger. Why would Estelle have made annual payments of six thousand dollars to someone every year on her birthday?
A terrible foreboding snaked up her limbs, sending her pulse galloping at the base of her throat. No birth certificate. Payments to someone on her birthday as if settling a shameful debt. What had Estelle done?
“The recipient seems to be an overseas account.” Bob navigated through a few menus and let out a satisfied hum. “Ah, yes, the receiving bank is in the UK,” he said as if that explained everything when the opposite was true.
“Can we see whose account?” Frankie asked, her voice coming from someplace far away.
“I’m afraid not. You’d have to contact them directly if you have more questions, but they’ll be closed for the day right now. I can give you the number if you’d like?”
Frankie nodded, barely holding it together while her mind screamed at her to flee.
As soon as Bob had handed her a slip of paper with the information, she was on her feet and moving, her feet flying across the floor tiles through the bank and out onto the sidewalk. She stopped there, her breath coming in choppy gasps, before she stumbled to her car and got in.
She pulled herself together enough to start the engine and leave the lot, but she was out of directions.
Behind her was all she’d known, the bright colors of a familiar life now seeping together into abstract shapes as she raced toward the unknown.
She had no idea where she was heading until she saw the spire of the church on the outskirts of town, and even then, she had no conscious plan to pull into the parking lot of the cemetery next door before she did so.
She parked across two spots, paying that no heed as she locked the car and took off at a hurried pace toward Estelle’s gravesite.
If there were people around, she didn’t notice, and quite frankly, she didn’t care.
She needed to unload the torrent of dread swirling inside her onto the one person who might once have been able to offer reassurance.
She fell to her knees in the grass before the stone that was still ringed with flowers, her fists tight in her lap. The same question she’d asked herself at the bank came spilling out as soon as her eyes landed on the inscription.
Beloved Mother, Shining Light
Estelle Lavigne
1958–2025
“Did you steal me?” Frankie’s voice broke when she put words to what had started as a tremor at her core upon finding out her birth certificate wasn’t real. “Please tell me you didn’t. Please tell me I’m yours and I’ve got this wrong.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks as she sat before the silent stone.
The missing sister, the abduction story, the song that hadn’t been about her, the lies upon lies.
It all pointed nowhere good. Had Estelle’s first daughter been lost somehow?
Was she the one who’d been kidnapped? Maybe not returned?
The grief could have made Estelle act irrationally, taking Frankie to fill the void.
No, she would have never.
“I don’t understand,” Frankie sobbed. “Tell me how it fits together. Who were you paying? Were you bribing someone? Settling a debt with money from the school? What did you do, Mom?” Her hands fell to the grass, and her face turned skyward as she struggled to hold herself together. “Who were you?”
And who am I? she thought. At best, the daughter of a liar, an unwitting co-conspirator, complacent and enabling. At worst, a casualty of a twisted mind, meant to be somewhere else.
My darling daughter, Estelle whispered on the breeze. My only child.
“But I’m not,” Frankie said, an edge to her words. “So why would you say that?”
Was it denial? A need to forget the daughter who’d been lost?
“What happened to her?” Frankie asked, frustration building like steam in a kettle at the void where answers should be. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She wiped the tears off her face and stood, her eyes hard on the gravestone. “I won’t be back until I know,” she said. “I don’t care how long it takes.” Then she turned and strode back to her car, those never-ending questions carving raw fissures into her soul.
That evening, Frankie was halfway home after sitting through a staff meeting, an auction run-down with the moms, and several lessons while mentally so checked out that there was no hiding it. She couldn’t even feel bad about phoning it in.
Kayla was the only one who’d commented, but Frankie hadn’t been able to make herself explain, so she’d gone with “bad headache,” and for once Kayla had let it slide. Possibly she was satisfied that Frankie was physically back where she was supposed to be.
If, in fact, here was where she was supposed to be.
As the fears from earlier reared back up, Frankie made a U-turn in an intersection and sped back the way she’d come, setting her sights on a house at the other side of town.
Lavignes walk tall no matter the burden, Estelle seemed to protest.
“Oh, shut up,” Frankie huffed, turning into Thora’s neighborhood. The phone number for the UK bank burned in her pocket, and if she was going to stay up until they opened over there, she didn’t want to do it alone. There was no weakness in that.
Owen opened the door laughing as if he and Thora were mid-conversational sparring, and as the sound rolled over Frankie into the evening, her insides softened enough to allow a smile of her own to greet him.
“Frankie, hey.” He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes still twinkling with mirth. “Didn’t know you were coming.”
“Me neither.” She shrugged, both of them rooted in place for an extended beat before Owen backed up, gesturing for her to come inside.
“Did something happen?” he asked.
Frankie toed off her shoes. “Is it that obvious?”
“Is that Frankie?” Thora called from the living room.
“Hi, Thora,” Frankie called at the same time Owen called, “We’ll be right there.”
He caught her arm to keep her in the foyer, sincerity settling across his features. “Are you okay?”
The warmth of his hand seeped through the thin fabric of her shirt, sending a burst of calm blooming from the point of contact. She could breathe again.
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “Everything’s a mess.”
He nodded, his hold on her pulsing tighter in a barely there movement of his fingers. “Then I’m glad you came here.”
Heat crept up Frankie’s cheeks. “Me too.”
“What’s taking so long?” Thora called from the other room.
Owen let Frankie go, and together they joined the older woman, who was watching them with narrowed eyes as they entered the room. “I sure hope you didn’t tell him all your secrets already,” she said.
“What?” Frankie sputtered. She didn’t have secrets. Not from Owen. If she hadn’t told him how much she was enjoying having him back in her life, that was a simple omission. No need to make a big deal out of nothing.
Thora smirked. “Why you’re here, I mean.”
“Oh.” Frankie sat down.
“Tell us,” Owen said. “What’s going on?”
And Frankie did. She shared what she’d learned about her birth certificate and the strange activity in the private account.
Her worries about what that might mean. How she didn’t understand how everything fit together but that she was convinced it did.
That she needed to call the UK bank as soon as they opened.
“What’s the time difference?” Owen asked.
“I haven’t had time to look,” Frankie said.
“Five hours,” Thora supplied as if everyone knew that. “So nine in the morning there is four a.m. our time. You’ll sleep in my guest room then.”
Frankie hadn’t realized she had that many hours left. “I don’t want to be any trouble. Maybe I should just go—”
“No. Stay,” Owen interrupted her. “It’s not a problem. Are you hungry?”
Frankie looked from him to Thora, who was pressing her lips together as if suppressing a smile while she returned her attention to the crossword puzzle in her lap.
In the past, she always would have answered such a question with a firm “no.” It had been ingrained in her not to accept charity, but she’d told Estelle off in the car, so why not now?
“I am actually,” she said. “I came straight from work.”
Owen lit up. “I’ll make us something. Grilled sandwich? French toast? Hmm…” He squeezed his eyes together as if trying to recall the contents of Thora’s fridge. “An omelet?”
“Whatever is easiest,” Frankie said.
“A croque monsieur it is,” he said, which to Frankie sounded anything but easy. “Be right back.”
Thora grinned. “I’ve created a monster.” When she noted Frankie’s puzzled expression, she clarified. “It’s a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, but teach him the difference between frying and sautéing and suddenly we’re using French terms.”
“Tea for you, Grams?” Owen called.
“Thank you,” she hollered. “Not that I mind,” she added in a low voice to Frankie. “Whatever makes him happy.”
“He seems to be doing better,” Frankie said.
Was it really less than three weeks ago that she’d first run into him at the library?
He’d been a shadow at the time, quiet and hidden beneath a layer of uncertainty.
No one she recognized. Now, he was Owen again, if a version that life had knocked about a bit. And she didn’t mind that part at all.