5. — unsafe people.
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Staten Island, New York
Frankie, SIU Hospital
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“Your father is fine, so tone down the attitude and get some rest,” Sissy told her for the fifth time in the last hour.
“I want to see him.”
“It’s after nine. The ICU is not letting you walk these halls. Some people are actually sick here, Frankie. Sick and dying.”
She tried hard not to glare and failed. “I didn’t ask to be put in the ICU, okay.”
“Your father has connections. As for this hospital? There are people here who know those connections very well and must respond as expected, or they pay a price.”
That stopped further argument from Frankie, if only because it made her think.
Sissy took the quiet opportunity between them to tut around her ward with gentle hands that roved the surface scrapes on the underside of Frankie’s jaw and the stiches along the upper line of her eyebrow.
“Is that why when I told the EMT my name, he asked someone to make a call?”
She didn’t get an answer.
The moments after the crash were still somewhat fuzzy. She thought Larkin had been there, but the adrenaline kick from it all caught up to her. Did he show up right after it happened? Someone always tailed them.
“Belle fille. Je t’aime. Cela vous tuerait de le perdre.
But that would undo us all, too.” The soft whispers of French turned to English at the same time Sissy knelt beside the hospital bed to make Frankie meet her eyes.
A sternness stared back, but the fact she bent down put the two on level ground.
She softened a bit, trying to let the attitude bleed away.
“He’s got a minor concussion and a few scrapes and bruises.
The worst was the glass they pulled out of his hand.
He’s walked, talked, and they are going to let him eat in the morning.
You can have breakfast with him before they discharge you. ”
It wasn’t good enough. One look at Sissy told her it would have to be.
“Fine. Will you brush Sassy tonight for me?”
Sissy nodded. “If she’ll let me, you know how she gets.”
“She’s just old.”
“She follows me around all day to bark, for no reason. She doesn’t do that to other people. Only me. On my busiest days. That isn’t old behavior, it’s pettiness. Because do you know when she does it the most?”
Frankie pressed her lips together, suppressing the truth. “No.”
“You do. She does it every time the vet puts her back on a diet and I buy the food she doesn’t like. You stop giving her extra treats, the food minder changes the food, and who do you think she blames?”
“Dogs don’t understand pettiness. Only love.”
Cats, on the other hand...
Sissy laughed, her usual signal of giving up. “Fine, Taylor Swift, whatever you say. Someday you’ll write and sing odes to your animals the way she does for boys.”
“Ew, no thank you.”
She knew fame through the lens of her stepmother, and it would never be her world.
“Hmm, not Taylor Swift, then. Maybe Snow White? The animals loved her, too. And she was on movie screens.”
Frankie shook her head. “No Taylor. No Snow White. Just Francesca.”
“Francesca Dove,” came a new, but familiar, voice in the doorway. “The award goes to Francesca Dove! That does have a ring to it, you know.”
Sissy glanced over her shoulder while Frankie grabbed her hand as if it would keep her rooted beside the bed.
“Imagine gracing a stage and all you hear is a crowd chanting your name. The screaming people. You can’t even see through the lights and flashes. It’s an experience.”
Carina Russo-Gallo stepped into the ICU room, draped in clothing that she wore, not the other way around.
High-waisted slacks and a silk long-sleeve button up shirt tucked into her pants showed off her hourglass shape, and a peek at her chest with how many buttons had been left undone down the neckline.
Her standard Birkin, with glossy, black alligator leather, always open, hung at her elbow.
Approaching forty, she didn’t look like her thirties had yet to say hello.
Frankie wouldn’t keep Sissy at her side for long. Not with Carina nearby.
“The car is waiting for you,” Carina told Sissy. “I got here just in time to be told visiting hours are non-existent at this point, and the crew is leaving.”
Sissy nodded once and turned back to give Frankie a quick kiss on the top of her head.
She said goodbye and promised to be waiting at home the following day.
Carina didn’t close the door behind Sissy, but she checked the hallway before returning her attention to what she undoubtedly saw as a problem if her next words were any indication.
“The surgeon did a good job, sweetheart, but if you take a ball to the face over the next few weeks, it’s going to be tragic come picture time,” she warned, her open-toed stilettos clicking on the hospital floor as she crossed the room.
Frankie didn’t have time to think before her face found Carina’s soft hand.
She scowled up at her while Carina surveyed the damage.
“You know, the same surgeon who did this work fixed a cut on my lip once. Gave me a lip lift just to hide it, and I shot for Vogue three months later.”
“How’d you get the cut?”
“Someone punched me in the mouth with a nasty ring on.”
Curiosity ate at her.
Carina’s arched eyebrow told her not to ask. “Sorry, the look of it probably isn’t as important as how you’re feeling, is it?”
“It counts that you asked, I guess. And I can’t feel a thing after the needle they gave me.”
A laugh burst from Carina. She pulled a chair from the wall, closer to the hospital bed, and sat down with her bag resting at the side after she crossed her legs.
“You’re staying?” Frankie asked, trying not to sound too bitter.
“Not for long.”
“Oh.”
Carina sighed, cocking her head to the side as she looked Frankie over once more. “I bet I’m the last person you wanted to see here tonight, but here I am. I know better than to go see your father, so I’ll settle for you.”
She cleared her throat, uncomfortable with the feeling settling on her chest. “You worried?”
“Believe it or not, but life would look a lot different for me if you and your father weren’t around. Even if it is a messy one when we’re together. That can’t be helped.”
Couldn’t it? “You never liked me.”
“You wanted a mother,” Carina returned, unabashed, “which was fair because you were the sort of child who should have had one who loved you more than life. For a short time, you did until life changed as it usually does.”
“Did you know her, my mother?”
“Not well,” Carina returned softly. “Besides her, you had what he wouldn’t—couldn’t—give me.
There I was, mid-twenties, height of my fucking career, and it felt like my whole life had ended on the spot.
But I did what I was told to do, and I married the widower more than a decade older than me with the child, knowing good and well he could make my life hell every day if he wanted to. ”
“But he didn’t.”
“He didn’t. I did enough of that for all of us, didn’t I?”
Frankie stared at the warm blanket covering her instead of Carina. “I mean...”
“That’s how it goes when you’re angry and bitter and sick, I suppose.
So sick that you can’t even understand your own sickness.
” Carina’s emerald eyes surveyed her almond-shaped manicure with chrome tips before her gaze lifted to settle on her stepdaughter again.
“You can’t ever say I didn’t teach you something, though.
That I didn’t offer you perspective. You came out better for it in some ways.
Fragile in others. I should have worked harder on that maybe. ”
“Perspective?” Frankie’s heart ached when she laughed manically. “Is that what you call developing anxiety so bad that you’re puking into blankets at seven years old and hiding them in the washing machine? Because I don’t.”
Carina’s stare dropped instantly. “Later, I think. When you were older, you learned to give it as good as I gave it. Didn’t you? Do you think that just came out of nowhere?”
“I don’t think—”
“Do you remember your first week at high school? One example of many I could give you.”
Frankie did unfortunately.
“You called me because no one else could do for you what I could. I showed up, didn’t I?
I put that makeup on your face, taught you how to do your hair, put heels on you and showed you to own them, and walked you into a closet those girls at that Academy could only dream of.
You had a Birkin instead of a backpack, and those idiots teasing you the first week never said a thing more because they could only pray to be you after that.
You were untouchable to them. I made you untouchable.
I did that for you, Frankie. Me. If I truly hated you, wouldn’t I just enjoy your suffering when I could? ”
“Yeah, well, you also...fucked me up. A lot.”
“You lost your mother the day you learned to walk. I think you were traumatized long before I came along, but I certainly didn’t help. I can admit that.”
“You still don’t help.”
Carina shrugged. “You handle it better now, so.”
Jesus.
Frankie’s head hit the pillows, and she stared up at the ceiling while wishing Carina would leave sooner than later. “Did you ask anyone about Daddy?”
“They say he’s irritated. Slightly concussed. They’ve run scans and didn’t find any bleeds. I think they even plan to let him sleep tonight, if he makes it to twelve without issues. He’ll be fine.”
“They won’t let me see him.”
“They want him to rest,” Carina replied frankly. “Trust me, he’s asked for you, too.”
“You think?”
“Get real, child.” Her stepmother scoffed and the chair squeaked. Frankie looked her way to find Carina standing again, bag back at her elbow. “You’re the first and only thing on his mind every morning.”
The two locked eyes, and the silence stretched on. She figured out what Carina had meant earlier.
“He loves me. That’s what it is,” she said, knowingly. “What he couldn’t give you.”
Carina smirked. “Do I get to be mean back now?”