Chapter Fifty-One
Thirty days after I last saw George, I wake before the sun has fully risen, as if someone has called my name.
But the room is empty. The only sound is the flap of the curtains at the open window.
My heart’s patter is quick. Have I forgotten to do something, to be somewhere? I can’t think of anything.
When I get out of bed to shut the window, I find the sky stained with streaks of crimson and ruby. There’s no sign of rain yet, but the sweetness on the wind tells me it’s coming.
Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.
A blur of brown by the hedge draws my eye. Two rabbits are enjoying their breakfast, right by the spot where the cedar branches part. Just like when I was little, I feel the tug of something waiting for me.
Barefoot, I creep downstairs and hurry through the dew-glistening grass in my nightgown. The rabbits bound into the hedge as soon as they catch sight of me. I’m out of breath by the time I reach the mailbox. The little log cabin is now weathered and gray, and it creaks when I open the roof.
Inside are sheets of paper, torn from a notebook and folded in half.
George is home.
I hesitate before reaching in to remove the pages. I know whatever this letter says will change things yet again. I shut my eyes, and then I take them.
· · ·
George’s handwriting is a chaos of cursive and printing, the words racing from his pen. I read the letter right there in my nightgown and bare feet, only to find that it isn’t really a letter at all.
Once upon a time, there was a boy named George.
It’s George’s story.
George was very sad. First, he lost his mom, and then his dad left him behind. He was eight years old, and he’d only visited his grandmother twice before. Once when he was a baby and then again when he was seven, when his dad left him alone with his strange grandmother right after his mom died.
That weekend, the boy was afraid. His grandmother was tiny and leathery and wore funny wigs.
He hated the smell of her cigarettes. But his grandmother’s house had a gigantic backyard he could escape to.
And when he went outside, he heard a girl laughing and a woman calling her name.
He loved the sound, so he crept closer and closer to the laughter and to the voice calling, “Frankie. Frankie. Get down from there. You’ll break your neck. ”
The hairs on my arms stand. I’ve never heard this before.
He got as close as he could, until he reached a cedar hedge. He walked until he found a break in its branches, until he could see the girl, in the limbs of a red oak, and her mother, begging for her to come down.
He thought about that girl all year. How brave she must have been to go so high. How lucky she was to have a tree to climb and a mom who cared if she fell.
When the boy was eight, he was sent to live with his grandmother, who turned out to be not so scary after all.
As soon as he could, he ran to the break in the hedge, trying to catch a glimpse of the girl.
He saw her marching around in a yellow coat, muddy nightgown, and rain boots, yelling at her older brothers.
He saw her chase a rabbit. He saw the rabbit appear on his side of the hedge.
And then he saw two strange violet eyes, right in front of him.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m Francesca. But you can call me Frankie.”
I know who you are, he thought.
He needed glasses and had to squint hard to see her properly. She had the messiest hair he’d ever seen. It was a hurricane of blond. He thought it was incredible. Everything about her was incredible. Her firm handshake. Her bossy tongue.
She was convinced his grandmother was a witch, and he thought it must be nice to live in a world of fairy tales.
He didn’t know about her own pain, that she was like him in so many ways.
He wanted to attach himself to her like a barnacle, and he was worried she could smell it—that his loneliness seeped from him like a stench.
But she wanted to come inside. He couldn’t believe she wanted to come inside. He was certain she’d grow tired of him.
“I’m not interesting,” he warned her.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said. “Please. I’m utterly desperate for an adventure.”
He laughed harder than he had since his mom had died, and she seemed delighted by the sound.
He kept looking at her, this magical girl who seemed so fearless and bright, and he decided to bring her into the house.
George let her inside that first day, not knowing how deeply she would infiltrate him.
He kept waiting for her to grow bored, but she never did.
It turned out that nothing was boring when Frankie was around—not even him.
She was fierce and imaginative and opinionated, and he found that when they were together, he was, too.
George wondered whether she was rubbing off on him, or if it had been there all along—this aching need for more.
More fun. More adventures. More Frankie.
Years later, George would look at his best friend, lying on her stomach by the pool, and realize he liked her.
There was no stopping that feeling. No matter how hard he tried to get rid of it, it would come right back stronger.
Until, one day, he could no longer deny that he was in love with her, and maybe he had been all along.
This love was wild and obliterating—it felt exactly the way Frankie feared it would, a love that could sweep him up.
But unlike her, he’d gladly lose himself to it.
So he vowed that he’d wait until she was ready.
And when it seemed like she never would be, he tried to move on.
Move away. Go farther. Try to fall out of love. None of it worked.
No matter what George did, he kept falling in love with Frankie, over and over.
He’d loved her from the very beginning, he loved her in every second of every day since, and he’d love her until the end of time.
And if there was no happily ever after for them, he promised he would always be her best friend.
I stagger back to the house in a daze. My chest is so tight I lie down on the floor with a pillow under my shoulders to try to make more space between my ribs. I read the story twice more.
This love was wild and obliterating.
Yes, I think. It is.
I am obliterated. I’ve spent my life protecting myself against this very feeling. This helplessness. This ecstasy. But I have no choice. I give myself over to it.
I’m still on the floor when my dad comes down to put the coffee on. He’s already dressed in his Carhartt overalls—almost every item in my father’s closet is from Mark’s Work Wearhouse.
“All right?” he asks.
“Not really.”
When the coffee’s ready, he brings me a mug and a slice of banana bread and settles into his armchair while I sit crisscross applesauce on the rug.
“George is a good egg.”
“I know.”
“And I love him like a son.”
“I know you do, Dad.” From the beginning, my dad offered George a place under his wing. We all got special one-on-one time with my father in his workshop, and George was no exception. Once, I found them sanding down a cupboard door, my dad telling George about when he and Mom met.
Dad takes a sip of his coffee and sets down the mug. “But you can walk away, if that’s what’s right for you. I won’t let anyone pester you about that.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, feeling emotional. I break off a corner of banana bread and shove it in my mouth. I’m pretty sure he’ll call for backup if I start crying. “I don’t want to walk away.”
He nods. “Didn’t think so.”
· · ·
Brie has me working ahead on holiday dishes, so I spend the day making six types of stuffing and dreaming up new takes on turkey.
We eat the results for dinner, and I almost throttle my father when he pronounces that the apricot and sausage stuffing is a masterpiece, and why do we do it the same every year?
That night, after Dad goes to bed, my mom and I sandwich salted caramel ice cream between her chocolate-chip cookies and eat them while standing at the kitchen counter.
“I might have fallen in love with George,” I say.
She sets her ice-cream sandwich on the counter and brushes the crumbs from her hands. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yeah,” I say. I really do.
We sit side by side on the porch swing, and I tell my mom about George’s plan. I tell her about the floating sauna, and surfing, and the food. But mostly, I tell her how the week in Tofino made me see George in a new light.
“I always knew he was attractive, inside and out. But whenever I found myself thinking about him in that way, I ignored it. I forced him into a corner of my mind and never let him out. But this past week…he wasn’t in that corner anymore, and I saw how he’s become this incredible man.
He was always just George, you know? He was always there.
And now he’s…” I gaze out at the hedge that divides our property from the Big House. “George.”
I love him. I love him so much I feel like I might drown in it. I love that he’s nearby, but that he’s giving me space. I love how he provokes me and takes care of me and doesn’t let me off the hook for anything. I turn back to my mom. “Do you have any advice for me?”
“No.” She pats my knee. “I know you’ll figure it out.”
Before I go to bed, I cross the field, my heart in my throat, and leave a note for George in the mailbox.
Is there more?
· · ·
There’s a crisp white envelope waiting for me in the mailbox the next morning. On it, in George’s handwriting, is AGE 12. I open it greedily.
Dear Frankie,