Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
FRANKIE
Now
Frankie knew the truth of Amber’s words the moment they were suspended in the air between them. Felt it, saw it, heard it. There was pain in her voice, regret, sorrow, resignation, and yet Amber kept her shoulders back, not wavering in the face of what she’d laid out before Frankie.
“I realize this must come as a shock to you,” she said.
“I figured she never told you. But I can prove it.” She walked over to a robust armoire in the small room off the kitchen and unlocked the bottom door.
After rummaging inside it, she returned to Frankie and handed her a short stack of stapled papers.
“They’re the maternity notes they gave me after you were born. ”
Frankie took them without a word, afraid of what might come out if she spoke. At the top of the page was Amber’s full name, and her date of birth. Then followed a brief medical history, test results, various appointment notes, and a recommendation for a caesarean section.
Because she’d been a child, Frankie thought, nausea rising in her chest.
On the final page were notes about the birth. Full term, healthy baby girl, October 28, 1991.
“What?” Frankie looked up from the paper. “I wasn’t born in eighty-nine?”
Amber stared at her. “That’s what she told you?”
Frankie nodded numbly. “Why the hell would she lie about that of all things?” She dropped the papers to the island and pressed her hands to her head. “I don’t…” She sucked in a deep gulp of air. “I don’t understand. You were what—fifteen? And she sent you to St. George’s?”
“Here, have some more tea.” Amber put the mug into Frankie’s hand and encouraged her to drink. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Frankie coughed as a gulp threatened to go down the wrong pipe. “She’s the one who should be sorry!”
It was laughable, the version of herself she’d been a few hours ago—so na?ve wondering about bank accounts and ancestors, questioning the dishonesty that was coming to light. But this? This meant nothing about Frankie’s life had been real.
A balloon of static energy expanded inside her, compressing every organ in her body.
She needed to get up, to move, to scream and thrash, but she was frozen in place, the only giveaway to her internal chaos a tremor in her hands that threatened to upend the mug she was holding.
“Please tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”
Amber was watching her with caution in her eyes, as if preparing for the hurricane swirling beneath Frankie’s skin to make landfall. Finally, she agreed. “Let’s go sit on the couch. I’ll grab you a blanket.”
Frankie let Amber lead her into the living room. She hadn’t even noticed she’d started shivering, but a throw around her shoulders eased some of the tension inside.
“How much do you know of the years before?” Amber asked, taking Frankie’s hand in hers.
“Close to nothing.” Frankie told her about going to Ferrisville and Jackson and how little that trip had yielded. “Just start at the beginning. Please.”
Amber nodded. “Okay.” She scooted back into the other corner of the couch and pulled her legs up underneath her. “First of all, you know Stella was only eighteen when she had me, right?”
Frankie acknowledged that she did.
“I think it’s safe to say I wasn’t planned, and that she didn’t really want to marry Dad.
Probably, the parents arranged it, and it was a doomed situation from the start.
There were some good years. I remember kicking a ball with Dad in our yard, saying grace before dinner, Christmas presents.
But even when things were decent, they were never not fighting.
I think Stella blamed him for her ruined life. Blamed us both maybe.
“She was beautiful, talented, charming, but all the plans she’d had went out the window with me and Dad, and she never let us forget it.
Don’t get me wrong, she still tucked me in, made my school lunches, and took me to the doctor when I was sick, but now that I’m a mother myself, I see the difference.
I would do anything for my kids. She would only do the bare minimum. ”
It was difficult to reconcile Amber’s description of Estelle as a mother with the image Frankie had of her as such. She’d been Frankie’s constant companion, always in her ear, her care and concern vocal and insistent.
When Frankie told Amber as much, there was no immediate response; instead, a shadow of something heavy swept across Amber’s face.
“I don’t know why she was different with you,” she said finally. “Maybe at that point she was ready? She’d chosen you? Or maybe she needed to prove to herself that she wasn’t completely horrible.”
The last word came out barbed, but Frankie kept quiet. She wanted Amber to tell the story at her pace.
Amber’s gaze drifted away from Frankie to a series of family portraits on the wall next to them, but after a minute, she found her resolve again.
“Anyway,” she said. “Dad started drinking. I was maybe four, five. First it was just on the weekend, but then he started missing work, getting into trouble…”
“Yeah, the sheriff told me about that.”
“Stella had to pick up the slack, and to her credit, she did. I never went hungry, and our bills were paid. She took jobs waiting tables and bartending, and sometimes she’d sing at those places too.
I think those were the only times she was truly happy back then—in front of a microphone with everyone’s eyes on her. ”
“The center of attention,” Frankie said. “Yeah, that never changed.”
“After we moved to Jackson,” Amber continued, “she worked at this place called Barnie’s.
Long hours. We lived in a trailer, and Dad never got his feet under him.
They had hoped he’d have more options for work there—clean slate and all that—but instead it was like he gave up.
And the more they fought, the more he drank. I was left to my own devices a lot.”
“That must have been hard,” Frankie said.
“It was,” she agreed. “I was this quiet country girl, and Jackson seemed enormous. The school…” She shook her head.
“I was used to several grades in the same classroom, but there you’d get swallowed up in the hallways.
I think I was eleven when I got drunk the first time.
Mom would go off to work, and I’d slip out the door with whatever bottle I could find and hang with some of the older kids in the trailer park.
No one knew, and no one cared. I still showed up to class and got decent grades, so… God, it feels so long ago.”
“Because it is,” Frankie said. Then she added, “But your accent gets different when you talk about it. Did you notice?” The pronounced British inflection had slowed and incorporated a Southern drawl the longer Amber spoke. Evidence of a distant past.
“I didn’t,” Amber said. “Huh. And here I was thinking I’d scrubbed my soul of everything from that time.” She gave Frankie half a smile that faltered as the bigger implication of her statement sank in. “I didn’t mean…”
“Me?” Frankie asked. She hadn’t missed that while Amber described Estelle’s lack of maternal instinct, Amber herself had been completely absent from Frankie’s life. But there had to be a reason, and she would reserve judgment until the story reached its conclusion. “I know. Please go on.”
Amber pulled a throw pillow into her lap and tugged at a strand of its fringe.
She was quiet for a beat as if bracing for the next part, but then she dove in.
“Stella left in April of eighty-nine,” she said.
“I watched her drive away—I don’t think she ever knew I used to do that.
I’d like to think she believed we’d be fine without her, but at that point Dad was already in such bad shape that I don’t see how she could have.
She was just done, I guess. I’m not sure where she went or what she did, and to be honest, I don’t remember much of that year.
I was out a lot. Had my first boyfriend—a real piece of work, but he showed me interest, and I was a sucker for that. ”
“You were thirteen?” Frankie asked.
“Yes. He was seventeen.”
“And is that how I…” Frankie tried to find a delicate way to ask if this juvenile delinquent might have been her father.
“Oh no,” Amber said, catching on. “Not Auggie.”
“Okay.” Frankie didn’t know if she should be relieved or not. If not “Auggie,” then the story continued.
“Dad died in December that year, and a neighbor took me in. Stella was trying to make a go of her music at the time, and she was hard to get a hold of, so for a while there was talk of foster care. I didn’t want that, so the following spring, I stayed on my best behavior.
No partying, nothing. And then one day, she was there.
She’d come to pick me up.” Amber’s voice cracked, her eyes filling with tears.
“I hadn’t seen her in a year, and I barely recognized her.
She was so much… more… than she’d been before.
She had nice clothes, her hair was done, she smiled at me.
I thought… I thought maybe she’d decided she wanted me after all.
” Amber pinched the bridge of her nose. “But she was only doing the bare minimum again, drawing the line at making me a ward of the state.”
Frankie pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
It was like watching a horror story unfold, the innocuous details and orderly contours of her life with Estelle morphing before her into something that was inevitably heading in a sinister direction.
“I’m really sorry,” she said, though those words hardly seemed sufficient.