Chapter 31 #2
Thora let out a raspy giggle. “No, dear, but thank you for playing along with me and calling them agents.”
Frankie looked toward the closed door of her practice room. If she didn’t get back soon, that little guy might mutiny. “What calls then?” she asked.
“Right, so I have a friend in Atlanta whose sister’s husband’s brother was a pilot for American, and he can get you on a flight early Friday.”
The air stilled around Frankie. “What?”
“A flight. To London,” Thora said as if that simple explanation said it all.
“Friday,” Frankie filled in. Then she squeezed her eyes together and shook her head. “For me?”
Thora chuckled. “Of course, for you. Who else has important business at an English bank right now?”
“I can’t,” Frankie said on instinct. Now it made sense why Owen had been trying to stop his grandmother. “Sorry you went through the trouble, but I already told Owen I can’t afford it. It’s disappointing and frustrating, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Oh, it’s free,” Thora said. “I guess I left that part out.”
Frankie’s objections stuck in her throat. “What do you mean it’s free?”
“You’d use his buddy pass. Technically, it’s a standby ticket, but he knows there are open seats on the five-a.m. flight. He needs to know by eight tonight.”
Frankie’s hand went to her forehead as she paced the few feet of space available to her in the hallway.
She could go to London. Possibly find out where Estelle’s payments had gone.
She’d only have to be away for the weekend so she wouldn’t miss many lessons, except…
Darn. Cal’s son’s wedding was this weekend.
That was ten thousand dollars for the school that she shouldn’t walk away from.
But going later also wasn’t an option. She’d already missed lessons while in Alabama, so she couldn’t be gone several weekdays, and the following weekend was the auction.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Of course you know,” Thora said.
“I really don’t.” Frankie’s voice took on a note of desperation. “I’m going to need to think this through. There’s a… a lot at stake. People who are counting on me.”
“But what about you? What do you want to do?” Thora’s voice was full of compassion. “Isn’t that what matters most?”
Frankie crouched down in her corner, leaning her forehead against the wall.
This was an amazing chance but one that came with consequences.
She clutched at her collar as if that would make breathing easier, then she stood abruptly.
“I have to get back to my student,” she said.
“I promise I’ll think about it and call you when I’m done here. That’s the best I can do.”
Thora was quiet for a beat, then her voice returned, still gentle as if Frankie was a skittish foal. “You’re not doing it for me, dear. I’ll be fine either way. This is all about you.”
If that wasn’t a novelty, Frankie didn’t know what was. Maybe she could do this.
But then she found her student sitting under the piano playing games on his phone when she returned because she was a terrible teacher and possibly an even worse representative for Starview, so no—she definitely couldn’t.
“All right, back to the keys we go,” she said, urging the kid back onto the chair. “From the top. Show me your dynamics.”
He played, and she didn’t hear a single note, her thoughts far away across the Atlantic. The key to everything could be there, and if it was, didn’t she deserve to know?
The scales tipped again.
She took stock of everything she’d learned, spreading all the different pieces out before her and turning them this way and that—an unexpected death, someone wronged, secret payments, a hit song based on lies, a missing child, compulsive collecting, an invented heritage, a fake diagnosis, a failing school—but no matter how she tried, the pattern remained elusive.
She was at her desk, still trying and failing to spot the bigger picture when Kayla returned a little later.
“Success,” her friend announced. “Or, well, some of the items were costume jewelry and not worth much, but you got twenty-four hundred dollars out of it. Enough for the mouse guy and then some.”
“That’s great,” Frankie said, forcing enthusiasm into her voice. “Thank you so much.”
“I did keep one piece,” Kayla said, pulling a necklace out of the now almost empty baggie and dangling it in front of Frankie. “I didn’t think you meant to pawn it—it seems more like a keepsake.”
The locket at the end of the chain caught the light from the window, prompting Frankie to take hold of it.
She didn’t recognize the etched gold oval, but then again, she’d been in a hurry when she’d gone through Estelle’s jewelry drawer.
She flipped it over, her fingertip catching on an ornate A decorating the front.
Not E for Estelle, F for Frankie, or even G for Greg.
A. The hairs on Frankie’s arms rose with awareness before she’d even opened the dainty thing.
“Aw, such a cute picture of you,” Kayla said as the image within was revealed.
Frankie fought to maintain control of her breathing as the smiling toddler looking up at her in the photo made the past undeniably real. Same eyes and cheeks but lighter hair and a different time.
“Yeah, that’s not me,” she said, finally choosing to entrust Kayla with the truth. “That’s my sister.”