Chapter Thirty #2
Frankie woke on her bedroom floor, her head pounding, her mouth dry. Summer sunlight streamed through her window, hurt her eyes. The memory of last night’s shame made her groan aloud. She stumbled to her nightstand, reached for her pills, and swallowed one with water.
She passed the closed nursery door on her way to the bathroom. She hadn’t gone into the room in months, not even to clean. If she had the energy she’d gut it, paint over the cheery yellow walls, give away the furniture, but she wasn’t strong enough to even open the door.
She took a hot shower, washed and dried her long hair and pulled it back into a loose ponytail, and then dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.
The phone rang.
She glanced at the wall clock. Twelve-twenty on a Saturday afternoon.
Barb.
Frankie knew her friend would keep calling until Frankie picked up, so she grabbed her beach hat and chair and left the house.
Carrying the chair across the street, she set it down in the sand.
As she stared out at the glittering blue waves, she remembered last night again, the way she’d frozen in the OR like some FNG fresh off the plane.
She couldn’t go on like this. She needed to quit taking the pills and get her life back on track. But how?
She pulled the hat lower on her head and pulled her sunglasses and a tattered paperback copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull out of the chair’s side pocket. Maybe the bird could give her some much-needed advice on how to live.
The beach was a hive of activity on this hot June day. Kids running around, teenagers in packs, mothers running after their children. It soothed her, these familiar beach-day sounds, until she heard a man shout out, “Joey, come back from the water. Wait for me.”
Frankie felt her skin tingle, even in the heat. She looked up slowly from beneath the wide brim of her sun hat.
Rye stood at the shoreline, facing this way, wearing shorts and a faded gray NAVY T-shirt.
The summer sun had darkened his skin and lightened his hair, which was long enough now that she knew he’d left the Navy. He moved in an awkward, limping way to keep up with his daughter—Joey—who giggled and tried to jump over the low roll of incoming surf.
His wife sat on a blanket not far away, wearing a billowy summer dress, one hand tented over her eyes, watching them, laughing easily. “Be careful, Jo-Jo!”
Frankie sank deeper into her chair, hunched her shoulders, trying to disappear, and pulled her hat down lower.
Look away.
She couldn’t.
It was bad for her, maybe even dangerous, to watch Rye with his family, but she couldn’t get up, couldn’t stop looking at him and the easy, loving way he was with his daughter. It had been a day just like this when Rye had shown up in Kauai, standing over her, saying, I swear I’m not engaged.
God, how she loved him.
She heard his wife—Melissa, her name was Melissa, Frankie knew from reading about them in the newspaper.
Melissa yelled something, and Rye and Joey moved toward her, him limping.
They were close enough now that Frankie could see he was gritting his teeth.
Ugly scarring encircled his wrists and ankles.
He knelt awkwardly in front of his wife, grimacing again in pain.
Help him, Frankie thought. Melissa, help him. But his wife just sat there, packing food back into a wicker picnic basket.
They look unhappy.
No.
He looked unhappy.
The thought was there before she could protect herself against it. And after all he’d suffered.
“Stop it,” Frankie muttered. They were a family, the Walshes, and their happiness—his happiness—had nothing to do with her.
She knew their true story now, how they’d met, how they’d married, the hardware store that her parents owned in Carlsbad, the managerial job that waited for him when he left the Navy.
Look away, Frankie.
This was wrong. Sick. Dangerous.
Frankie finally forced herself to get up. She turned her back on them, folded up her chair, and walked off the beach.
“Damn it, Melissa, slow down.”
She heard Rye’s voice behind her and froze. Then she gritted her teeth and kept walking, over the mound of greenery and down to the side- walk and across Ocean Boulevard. On the other side, against her best intentions, she turned slowly, stared at them from beneath the brim of her hat.
He and his wife and daughter were leaving the beach, heading toward the street.
Frankie had to leave. Now. Before she called out to him. She clamped the chair to her side and walked resolutely down the block toward her house.
All the way there, she thought, Don’t look back, Frankie. Just let him go.
But he knew she lived on Coronado, or at least that she’d been raised here. Did it mean something, that he’d brought his family here, to the beach she’d so often talked about?
She stopped at her car, which was parked in the driveway at her house, and looked back.
Now Rye was opening the trunk of a metallic midnight-blue Camaro, putting the picnic basket inside. Melissa opened the passenger door and helped Joey into the backseat.
Rye closed the trunk and limped toward the driver’s-side door.
Frankie opened her car door, tossed her things in the backseat, and slid into the driver’s seat. She plucked her keys from the visor, started the engine, and backed into the street. Slowly, her foot light on the accelerator, she drove forward, edged toward the stop sign on Ocean Boulevard.
Rye got into the Camaro. The engine started up with a roar.
She followed him. Them.
All the way across town, up Orange Avenue, over the bridge, she berated herself. This was stalking. Embarrassing. He didn’t love her. He was a liar.
Still, she followed them, drawn by an obsessive need to see his life.
If he was unhappy…
No. That was something she couldn’t think.
In San Diego, Rye turned onto A Street, which Frankie could see instantly was a street full of Navy families.
American flags hung from many of the porches, a few lonely yellow ribbons still fluttered from the tree branches.
Most of the POWs were home, but “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” was still a radio hit.
On this summer afternoon, the street was full of kids and dogs and women walking side by side pushing strollers.
He pulled up in front of a pretty Craftsman-style bungalow. The yard was a scrabble of discarded toys and roller skates and doll clothes. The poorly cut grass was brown.
Frankie pulled over to the side of the road, the engine idling as if she might come to her senses soon and drive off.
But she didn’t.
Melissa got out of the car. Holding Joey’s hand, she walked up to the house, pulling Joey inside, leaving Rye to carry their stuff.
Rye moved slowly in his wife’s wake, obviously in pain, carrying the basket and blanket. In the middle of the path to the front door, he stopped.
Frankie slunk down in her seat.
“I’ll never do this again if he doesn’t turn around,” she promised herself, and maybe God. She peered up through the window, saw him start walking, limping in a hitching, painful way. He slowly climbed the porch steps, holding on to the handrail.
At the closed front door, he stopped again, as if he didn’t want to go in, and then he opened the door and went into his house, back to his wife and child.
Frankie moved slowly back to an upright position, put the Mustang in gear, and drove forward. As she passed the house, she slowed, staring at the front door, feeling a toxic combination of longing and shame.
Rye opened the front door, stepped out onto the porch, and saw her.
She hit the gas and sped past him.
Idiot.
What had she been thinking? She was still in turmoil when she got home.
A gin on the rocks did nothing to lessen her anxiety.
She kept looking at the phone, thinking he’d call, wanting him to, not wanting him to.
Knowing all he had to do was call information to get her number.
After all these years, she was still Frances McGrath on Coronado Island.
But the phone didn’t ring.
Before the world even started to darken, she took two sleeping pills and climbed into bed.
What time did the phone ring? She wasn’t sure. Bleary-eyed, lethargic, she climbed out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
It was still daylight outside. The next day or the same day?
“Frankie? It’s Geneva Stone.”
Her boss. Shit. “Hi,” she said. Was her voice slurry, were her words coming too slowly?
“You were supposed to cover Marlene Foley’s shift tonight.”
“Oh. Right,” Frankie said. “Shorry. I don’t feel well. I should have called in sick.”
There was a long pause; in it, Frankie heard both displeasure and alarm. “Okay, Frankie. I will find someone else. Get better.”
Frankie hung up, unsure the moment she heard the click of the line if she’d said goodbye.
She stumbled onto the sofa, fell sideways onto the cushions, pulled her legs up, and lay down.
Tomorrow she would get her act together. No more pills. And definitely no more stalking. She wouldn’t even think of Rye Walsh.
No more.
Frankie sat in the director of nursing’s office, stiffly upright, her hands clasped in her lap.
“So,” Mrs. Stone said, her gaze steady on Frankie’s face. “You froze in the OR. During surgery. And you missed a shift.” She waited a beat. “Were sick.”
“Yes, ma’am. But…” She stopped. What could she say?
“I know the trouble you’re having,” Mrs. Stone said gently. “I lost a child myself. As a woman, a mother, I understand, but…” She paused. “This isn’t your first incident in the OR, Frankie. Last month—”
“I know.”
“Perhaps you came back to work too quickly.”
“I need to work,” she said quietly.
Mrs. Stone nodded. “And I need to be able to count on my nurses.”
Frankie drew in a shaky breath. Her life was falling apart. No, it was exploding. Without nursing, what would she have to hang on to? “I can’t lose this.”
“It’s not lost, Frankie. You just need to take a break.”
“I’ll be more careful. I’ll be better.”