Chapter 14 #2
Elsa shakes her head and comes back down the hall.
She grabs Frannie’s pushcart in one hand and takes her elbow in the other.
Frannie lets Elsa guide her up the stairs, ignoring Bridgette’s little giggles and pretending she’s not blushing just from the feeling of Elsa’s fingers in the crook of her arm.
“I created an account as soon as email became a thing. I log on to a computer whenever one is available,” Elsa explains.
“Do you write to people?” Frannie asks. She’s never thought to wonder whether Elsa could have pen pals.
Her stomach sinks. She could be conducting an entire affair via email, for all Frannie knows.
“Do you have other things? Instagram? Facebook? Do you have a secret TikTok where people just think you’re using a fuzzy filter? ”
Elsa scoffs and Frannie finds herself in her office, Bridgette collapsing the pushcart while Elsa steers Frannie back into her desk chair. Frannie sits with a little bounce and Elsa stands over her, unimpressed.
“I do not have TikTok. It’s an addictive type of media that neither I, nor, more importantly, the children, need to spend time engaging with.”
Frannie considers her haughty expression. “It’s entirely because you don’t have a phone, isn’t it?” Elsa wrinkles her nose. “Couldn’t you use someone’s old phone just on the Wi-Fi? You wouldn’t need a data plan.”
Elsa looks up at the ceiling for a moment before meeting Frannie’s eyes. “Whatever would I do without your dazzling insights?”
Frannie leans back in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “Rude.”
“Do you really think that hadn’t ever occurred to me?”
“Then why haven’t you done it?” Frannie cuts back.
“Maybe I just—”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to be distracting Frannie,” Bridgette’s little voice pipes in, half amused, half frustrated.
Frannie turns a laugh into a cough and Elsa looks up at the ceiling again, taking a deep breath before turning to Bridgette. The little girl smirks.
“You’re right, we should go. Leave Miss Franchesca to get her Very Important Work done so she can have more time to come up with thoroughly obvious suggestions.”
“My name isn’t Franchesca,” Frannie says, fighting a laugh as Elsa glares at her and takes Bridgette’s hand.
They vanish through the closed door a moment later and Frannie sits there in the silence, smiling. Until the quiet starts to get to her.
Frannie grinds the heels of her palms against her eyes, elbows braced on the black lacquer desk. She’s finally finished with her transcription and Henry’s off at a late dinner. It’s going on nine PM. The office is cold. And she’s been alone for the entire day.
No going to find her ghost friends, no whiling away hours arguing books with Elsa or playing games with Bridgette. She hasn’t even had time to read any of the big coffee table book on New York City electric systems she ordered for Michael.
How can working in the same building as her friends feel so lonely?
Frannie growls at herself and sits up, staring at the dark screen of her work laptop. She could get up, pack her things, and go home, but she doesn’t want to listen to Jonathan rehearsing his latest monologue, or Gretchen and Brad giggling in Gretchen’s bedroom.
It’s cold in the office, but it’s quiet.
Frannie wakes the work laptop and clicks into her book.
She hasn’t looked at it since she wrote that penultimate chapter.
She wanted to stay in the happy little bubble she’d been in with Elsa and the kids—in the possibility of getting them out, of getting their fictional counterparts out.
But Henry’s deadline for her manuscript is on Monday. She’s only got four days left.
The last two weeks have shown her that there’s no fairy tale to be had.
Frannie, and Charlie by extension, are both trapped by the realities of the Dakota Building and their jobs.
There’s no happy ending for a human woman and a family of ghosts.
At least, not one that either Frannie or Charlie can accomplish.
She’s typing before she really thinks about it, frustration bringing the words fast, sure, and devastating.
Charlie walks into her apartment, and no one’s there.
She runs back to the Dakota Building, but no one’s there.
Her ghost family is gone. The electricity ran out as they crossed the power lines, and their afterlife force disappeared.
Free and at peace, at long last, their immortality has ended.
Charlie loved them, and lost them, and now she’s alone.
The End
Frannie sits back, staring at her manuscript. A tear slips down her cheek and she wipes it roughly away.
It’s horrible, but it’s the right ending. The real one.
The lights flicker around her.
“Not tonight, Bridge,” she whispers, reaching out to close the laptop with a shaking hand.
She packs up her things, slips on her coat and hat, and turns off the light. The door to the office tugs shut with a muted snick and Frannie sniffles, walking out without looking back.
The street is cold. There’s no snow tonight, no magic in the air. Just the whipping wind cutting across the avenue and the dirty sludge on the sidewalk’s edge.
So she wrote a sad ending to a beautiful love story. So what? It’s just a story. It isn’t her life. It’s not her future. It’s not predestined that she’ll lose her ghost friends. It’s only predestined that she can’t afford to buy an apartment in the Dakota or across the street from it.
Life will move on. She never has to look at the draft again if she doesn’t want to.
It’s not real. It can’t be.
Her eyes water all the way home. She tells herself it’s just the cold.