Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“So, Mom suggested you’re seeing someone,” Adam says, smirking at her over the rim of his half-full coffee mug.
Frannie scowls across the table at him. They agreed to meet for coffee for an hour before their annual Mom/kids brunch gossip session, and Bread Café is hopping. She’s not sure if she’d prefer her mother appear right now, or if she’d rather face Adam’s ill-timed interrogation on her own.
“She thinks it’s a woman.”
Alone, definitely. “Does she now?” Frannie asks, just to see him roll his eyes. “Mom says you and Carol are thinking about having another baby.”
Adam almost spit-takes. Ha.
“We shouldn’t talk to her,” he says, shaking his head.
His hair’s gotten long, falling into his eyes in frizzy red curls.
It matches his two-inch red beard, all of it tied together by the bags beneath his eyes and his dad-flannel.
He looks so grown up. As he should, with a wife, a thriving real estate business, and a three-year-old son.
But still, she expects him to be gangly and pimply and dragging her out to drive their father’s old Jeep too fast on the nearby highway for something to do on a long holiday afternoon.
Now they get coffee and talk about taxes.
“So, who is she?” Adam prompts.
Frannie hesitates. It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell him about Elsa. She wants to tell Adam, and Mom, and Dad, more than anything. Look who I found. Look who loves ME. Look who’s deemed me worthy.
But she can’t. They can never meet her, because she can never come here. And while it’s one thing for Frannie to sneak into the Dakota afterhours, she’s not sure how she’d explain her parents and brother coming along.
There’s an ache in her chest, but she pushes it away. She let herself fall in love with the immortal, ageless, wonderful ghost lady. This is the price she has to pay.
“Is she married?” Adam whispers.
“What?” Frannie exclaims, loud enough for multiple people to turn and look at her. One of them is her old English teacher, Mrs. Wheeler. Jeez. “No, she’s not married.”
“Then she’s, what, a celebrity? Why the secrecy?” he asks.
Frannie blows out a breath, trying to gather the words. “It’s … new.”
Which it is, and it isn’t too. They’ve only known each other four months, but it feels like so much longer. She can’t remember what her days were like without Elsa and the kids around, other than lonely.
“It’s a madhouse!” Mom exclaims, plopping down next to Frannie with a great sigh.
Frannie jumps in her seat, sloshing coffee out of her cup and down onto her sweater.
“Oh, shit,” Mom says, reaching around Frannie for the napkins.
Frannie can’t help but laugh as they both try and sop up the lukewarm coffee from her green cable knit. Mom’s no more coordinated than she is, and is still wearing her garish argyle gloves, which isn’t helping.
“I got it,” Frannie insists, gently pushing back her mom’s hands to get at the worst of the spill. “You get all your wrapping paper?”
Mom nods and pulls off her hat so her riot of gray and brown curls stands on end. She tries to run her hands through it, still wearing her gloves, so it only gets more staticky.
Frannie idly wonders if that’s what her hair looks like after Elsa messes with it. And if she’ll go the same gray as her mom or white like her dad.
She hopes to be a bit more graceful in her older age, as she watches her mother torque herself around to shrug out of the truly hideous, calf-length navy puffer coat she’s had since Frannie was fifteen. The horrible red-and-green Christmas sweater with red corduroys doesn’t help.
“Your dad got it for me,” Mom says defensively as Frannie and Adam stare at her Santa’s Oldest Helper sweater, complete with a picture of a grandmother riding shotgun in Santa’s sleigh.
Frannie’s deeply secular Jewish parents have been having an Ugly Christmas Sweater contest since she was three. Dad always wins.
Would Elsa ever want an ugly Christmas sweater? She’d wear one so well …
“It’s charming,” Mom insists.
“Very,” Frannie agrees, while Adam raises his hand to flag down Wendy.
She arrives with her signature exhausted smile, gray hair up in a messy bun with a Christmas headband controlling her flyaways. Same jeans and Bread Café purple polo shirt, as ever.
“Great sweater this year, Judy,” Wendy says, nodding to Mom.
“Isn’t it? Greg outdid himself.”
“As he always does. And great to see you, Adam. You need to bring that beautiful little boy of yours by more often. I’ll make him chocolate chip pancakes myself.”
“We will,” Adam promises. “How’re your girls?”
“Holly’s spending Christmas in Los Angeles with her in-laws, the poor thing.”
“No snow?” Mom exclaims. “Terrible.”
“It really is,” Wendy agrees. They share a mom look—the same one they’ve been sharing Frannie’s whole life. “And Laura’s here with the kids, mucking around on the school playground to tire them out.”
“Nothing better,” Adam says with a solemn nod.
Frannie wonders what kind of mischief Michael and Bridgette could get up to on a playground.
Wendy gives him a soft smile, and then turns to look at Frannie. “And here she is, the writer. Your mom is so proud of you.”
Frannie stuffs down the urge to hide behind her menu. “Great to see you, Wendy.”
“How’s New York treating you?”
“Yes, you have to tell us,” Mrs. Wheeler says, popping out from behind Wendy like a gossiping jack-in-the-box.
Mom jumps and lets out a loud laugh that turns half the heads in the room. Like daughter, like mother.
“It’s good,” Frannie says hesitantly.
This is a moment, a test case. Could she really do it? Could it really be enough?
“I actually—you’ll be excited about this,” she says to Mrs. Wheeler. “I work for Henry L. Olsen, and he had me edit the first draft of his latest novel.”
Both of them gasp and begin firing off questions. Mom beams, and Adam looks genuinely impressed. Mrs. Wheeler hangs onto the back of Mom’s chair to remain standing.
No one asks about her writing. No one seems disappointed she doesn’t bring it up.
And she … Maybe she really could do it.
She doesn’t have to tell other people about packing Henry’s suitcases or buying his groceries. She’s editing his work. That’s huge. And her parents can brag about the good stuff, all the stuff Frannie enjoys doing.
She doesn’t have to be an author to be important. Working for Henry is still using her degree. Working for Henry is valuable all on its own.
She wouldn’t have fame and fortune, but she would have Elsa and the kids.
For a chance at a real future with them …
She thinks it might really be enough.
Excitement floods her chest, clenches at her stomach, tingles in her fingers, almost like Elsa’s there with her. She can make herself permanent.
She grins at her mother, and tells another story about accompanying Henry to a talk show. She’s part of something great, working for Henry—part of his legacy.
And her own will be having her family, ghostly and trapped, but hers.