Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
FRANKIE
Now
Matt and Kayla stared at Frankie across their breakfast table. She’d asked to see them first thing to get it out of the way, but now she wondered if that had been wise. Jetlag and this level of skepticism didn’t mix well.
“There’s no way,” Matt said for a second time, pushing off his chair and stalking to the sink. He opened the faucet, then closed it again as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing there. “Dad would never.”
“I realize how it sounds,” Frankie said. “It was a shock to me too.”
“Then maybe it isn’t true,” Kayla tried. “Maybe she… misremembered.”
Frankie cocked her head forward. “You think that’s the kind of thing blurred by memory? She said Estelle’s manager did it. She named him.”
“Yeah…” Kayla glanced at her husband across the room, wringing her hands on the table as if she at least wanted to believe Frankie.
“You’ve only just met this woman,” Matt tried, sitting back down and leaning forward. “You don’t know anything about her. How are you so sure she can be trusted?”
Frankie met his gaze head on. “I know Estelle lied about a lot of things. And I know Amber is her daughter—that would be obvious to anyone who saw her. Her story also matches the other things we’ve discovered, which means your dad met her and he’s never mentioned her to either of us.”
“Hardly evidence of guilt.” Matt’s voice was clipped.
“Maybe not,” Frankie conceded. “But at the very least, he would have known Amber was sent away and why, and that I wasn’t Estelle’s.”
“So he was loyal to her and kept her secret.” Matt crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve got to do better than that. This is a serious accusation, Frankie.”
If he used her actual name, he meant business, but so did she.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Amber’s story is true,” Frankie said. “You weren’t there.” She cut her gaze between them. “But I do understand needing proof, so if that’s what it’s going to take, I’ll get it for you.”
“How?” Matt scoffed, his expression eerily similar to his dad’s in that moment.
“From you,” Frankie said. “Thora knows someone whose granddaughter works for a lab in Charlotte. We’ll go in today, get a quick cheek swab, and she’ll expedite it for us. We should have the results tomorrow.”
Matt didn’t respond, the silence growing to fill the entirety of the large open kitchen until Kayla turned to him and took hold of his arm. “You have to do it,” she said. “If it shows that you’re siblings, you’ll know.”
Frankie watched Matt battling for another argument in his head. She’d backed him into a corner, but if that’s what it took to get him on her side, she had no choice.
“Fine,” he said finally, dragging a hand down his face. “Fuck.” He pointed to Frankie. “But we go now. I have a meeting at eleven, and I want to get this shit over with.”
Frankie raised her hands palms up in defense. “Whatever works for you.”
“I’ll grab my purse,” Kayla said.
Faced with the results of the test, Matt’s reaction was diametrically different. He cried, which in turn made both Frankie and Kayla cry, and then he raged, one expletive after the next reverberating through Frankie’s tiny house where they’d gathered.
“How could he do this?” he howled. “How could he…? To a fifteen-year-old girl.” He sat down on her love seat and buried his face in his arms, sobs wracking his tall frame.
Frankie and Kayla held on to each other near the kitchen counter where the laptop still sat open displaying the test results. Frankie had never seen him like this, but her instinct told her to give him space for now, so she kept Kayla back.
“And then to send her away… To lie about…” Matt gasped for air.
“Everything.” He moaned into his hands once again, shaking his head as the horrible image conjured from Amber’s tale no doubt played before him.
“I will never speak to him again,” he announced abruptly.
“I will change my name. I will fucking ruin him.”
“Okay…” Kayla broke free from Frankie and went to her husband. “Here.” She handed him a tissue and waited while he blew his nose. “I know this is awful, and you have every right to be angry, but let’s not be rash.”
Matt let out another gasp. “Do you think my mom knew?”
“I don’t know,” Frankie said. “It sounds like Amber was in the Nashville apartment the whole time, so maybe not. She also overheard Estelle referring to her as ‘her niece’ on several occasions, so who knows what she told people.”
Another sob shook Matt’s shoulders, perhaps this time in relief at being able to maintain esteem for one of his parents.
Frankie joined them, crouching down in front of Matt. “I’m really sorry,” she said, placing a hand on his knee. “If it’s any consolation, I couldn’t wish for a better brother.”
A half laugh half sob slipped out of him. “That would be the only good thing to come out of this. I always wanted a sibling, and you’re the very best, Frankwurst.”
Frankie hugged him, relief flooding her when he relaxed against her shoulder. Kayla wrapped her arms around them both.
Once they’d all settled enough to wipe eyes and noses and, in Matt’s case, down enough water for a marathon runner, they went outside and sat down on Frankie’s small porch.
The early evening air was the kind of lukewarm that you barely felt on your skin, and for a while, they just sat there, listening to the birds in the thicket behind Frankie’s house and the bees zooming in and out of Estelle’s flower patch.
“He’ll never admit it,” Matt said eventually. “Not even with the proof we have. And I think it’s too late for the law to intervene.”
Frankie nodded. That’s not what Amber had wanted anyway.
“So he gets away with it?” Kayla asked. “That doesn’t seem right at all.”
That had been Frankie’s fear too. Owen and Thora had let her lament the impossibility of the situation many times over since she’d been back.
She’d slept in their guest room again last night, hoping company would distract from the obsessive thoughts about the pending DNA test that had haunted her when she was alone.
She and Owen had stayed up past midnight turning this conundrum over and over, along with how Frankie should handle the looming auction, without ever settling on a solution.
It was a shame that she’d planned it as a celebration of Estelle’s life when she’d first hatched the idea.
A simple fundraiser for Starview would have been one thing, but now that Estelle was the figurehead, Frankie couldn’t help but feel like she was following in her deceptive footsteps.
Her grandmother’s first guitar, the signed CDs, and the framed gold record Frankie had decided to part with after all were still the big-ticket prices, and it wasn’t like she could withdraw them.
The school needed the fundraiser to be successful, and the community would hardly open their wallets if they knew what Estelle had done.
Unless…
Something about what Matt had said about it being too late for the law stuck with Frankie.
“Your dad is planning to attend the auction, right?” she asked him.
Matt frowned. “Yeah. Why?”
Frankie’s gaze was drawn to a large butterfly fluttering above the black-eyed Susans at the edge of the patch. It’s a Giant swallowtail, she could hear Estelle explain to her. They have the ugliest larvae, but look at it now. No one would know.
Except people did know. That’s what Estelle had gotten wrong.
No one admired the giant swallowtail less because of its plain beginnings; that wasn’t the measure that mattered.
If anything, it made the creature more impressive.
But Estelle had never cared to acknowledge flaws other than to cover them up, so that’s what Frankie had learned. Well, no more.
“You’ve thought of something,” Kayla said, recalling Frankie’s attention.
“Maybe.”
“You can’t accuse him in public,” Matt said. “As much as the bastard deserves it.”
“I might not need to.”
Frankie turned the different parts of her plan around in her head, testing their merit.
The court of law may have run out of time, but the court of public opinion had not.
It would be a bit of a gamble, and there was more than one chance of it backfiring, but she had to do something.
For too long, Estelle and Raymond had been allowed to wash their hands of their murky past. It was time to acquaint Aspen Creek with the real people behind the glossy surface.
Frankie just hoped she wouldn’t take down Starview in the process.