Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
FRANKIE
“Oh, hi.” I did not expect Grandpa to have a guest with him when I walked into his room.
He and a very neatly dressed and coiffed woman are sitting in side-by-side armchairs, both leaning into the gap between them, and giggling like a pair of mischievous kids.
“Frankie, Frankie.” Grandpa beckons me in with a grin of Cheshire-Cat-who-got-extra-cream proportions. “Come and meet Elsie.”
“Oh, Elsie. Yes. Hi.” I tuck the large brown envelope I’ve brought with me under my arm and scuttle toward her, hand outstretched. “I’ve heard a lot about you. How lovely to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Elsie says with a warm smile as she shakes my hand.
“None of it good,” Grandpa says with a wink.
“Oh, Sam.” Elsie bats at him but intentionally misses. “Your grandfather is incredibly proud of you, Frankie. And incredibly grateful for you looking after everything while he’s here recovering.”
The sight of these two in what is obviously the first flush of something fills my whole being with more squishy warm love than I could ever imagine.
Well, more than I could have imagined before I found Miller asleep with Petunia and almost passed out from the cute hotness of it all.
Shit, just that quick thought of him turns the warm squishiness into a ripping sensation tearing through my middle and I have to press my hand to my stomach to try to keep it under control until I’m back outside in the truck and can cry again.
Right now, I’m here to think about Grandpa’s future, not my own. And his seems to be glowing.
“I could not be more delighted to do it,” I reply to Elsie. “And I’m happy he has such good company to prevent him from spending all his time worrying about how I might be messing things up at the sanctuary.”
“I would never think you’d mess things up, Frankie.” He looks genuinely hurt by my joke. “Why would I ever think that? I trust you implicitly.”
“Just kidding.” I turn back to Elsie as I take a seat in the third armchair. “I hear you were one of Diane von Furstenberg’s dressmakers for a long time.”
“Best years of my life.” Elsie raises her eyes to the ceiling as if praising the heavens for such a fulfilling career.
“Not necessarily,” Grandpa says, a twinkle in his eye.
Is that how I’ll look back on my career when I’m Elsie’s age? Sitting in a retirement home, feeling wistful about my amazing life in marketing?
Christ, how laughably hollow that sounds.
It’s hardly like I create something lasting the way she did. Something that makes people other than my bosses happy. Something that can change the way people feel about themselves. A legacy to look back on.
Grandpa definitely has that. The sanctuary is his stunning legacy. And it definitely changes the donkeys’ lives. And the lives of the people lucky enough to adopt the ones who can be rehomed.
And look at what Miller’s created—solid buildings that change the way a city looks for maybe a hundred years and are filled with people living their lives and perhaps building families. Christ, there I go again. Thinking about him again, when he’s the last person I want to be thinking about.
But I can’t clear my head of Paige’s suggestion that everything he did to me was based on him protecting his family.
Anyway, just when I thought I was already wallowing at the bottom of the pit of inadequacy, Grandpa and Elsie have made me wonder if the one part of my life I thought I have together—my career—is actually a pile of meaningless shit too.
Elsie has the most delightful giggle at Grandpa’s flirtatious joke.
I have never felt more like a third wheel in my life. “I’ll go, Gramps. Maybe come back tomorrow to talk about…” I waggle the brown envelope.
“It’s me who should go.” Elsie springs to her feet as if she might also have technologically enhanced knees. “I only stopped in for a quick hello, and that was”—she consults her watch, moving her wrist farther away for focus—“ninety minutes ago.”
“We just can’t stop talking once we start,” Grandpa says with a sparkle in his eye I haven’t seen for years.
Clearly these two are a match made in heaven.
But finding conversation easy isn’t always a sign a relationship will work. I mean, I found conversation easy with Miller. And look where that got me.
But, like his brother said, Miller’s the smooth talker with the charm that got him to where he is in business. And that’s clearly all I was to him. A business deal. Someone he needed to sweet-talk into doing exactly what he wanted.
Elsie straightens the skirt of her dress, which fits her every curve perfectly, so I guess she keeps on top of her tailoring skills.
“Dominoes at ten a.m.” she says, pointing to Grandpa as she heads toward the door.
“Wouldn’t miss thrashing you for the world.” He beams.
As soon as she’s out of sight, Grandpa relaxes into his chair, closes his eyes and sighs. The smile on his face suggests he’s mentally left the room with Elsie.
And I could not be happier for him.
If she hurts him though, I’m breaking both of her remarkably spritely knees.
“She seems very nice,” I assure him.
“Breath of fresh air,” he says. “Just like having you around is too.” He reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
“Well, not exactly like it, I don’t think.” I raise my eyebrows at him.
He gives me a coy shrug. “As soon as I can walk for long enough, I thought I’d bring Elsie over to the house to meet the donkeys,” he says.
“Excellent idea. She can’t really know you until she’s seen you around them.”
That sentence, that fell from my lips without a second’s thought, makes my brain cogs turn in a different direction.
It hadn’t even crossed my mind until this moment that that’s exactly how Miller got to know me—as the real person I am when I’m here.
That person in Chicago with the office and the salary and the pants suits—who the hell is she? And how did I become her?
Christ, yes, this place—the sanctuary, the town—makes me feel like myself, makes me be myself.
It obviously doesn’t work for everyone, though. I mean, after his whole Petunia moment, I thought the sanctuary had also brought out the real Miller. That I’d seen who he really was. But all that time, I didn’t even know his real name.
Fuck. I have to do something to stop him from popping into my mind every second thought because it makes me feel like I’ve been kicked in the guts by Waldo.
Grandpa blurs a little in front of me as my eyes prickle and throat knots. But I will not shed tears in front of him.
That might be a tall order though, given the conversation we now need to have.
“So, I guess it’s time to talk business.” He gestures at the brown envelope in my lap, the sparkle now faded from his eyes.
I nod and slide out the papers inside. “I brought the two offers for you to look at again. Not that we need to accept either of them, of course. I just want to be sure we have a contingency. That we’ll hopefully never need. Because I’m hoping my plan—”
“Oh, I’m happy to go with whichever one you think is best.” Rather than taking the papers, he pushes them back toward me.
I freeze for a second, an icy chill running down my spine. “You mean you want to sell? Like, actually want to. As a free choice?”
“Being here and away from the day-to-day grind of everything has given me time to take stock,” he says. “Let’s face it, sweetie. I’m only going to get less mobile, not more.”
I might know that Paige is right about selling being the sensible, logical, dispassionate thing to do.
But Grandpa’s surprise change of heart makes my soul tremble at the thought of losing the sanctuary.
Of not having the place that’s been the one constant in my life.
The steady rock that I, just a moment ago, realized makes me me.
“Your knees are healing so well.” Even I can hear the panic in my voice.
“But then it’ll be my hips, or my shoulders, or whatever.” He gestures to himself from head to toe as if parts of him might start falling off at any second.
“But I’m going to get you help.” A tight desperation grips my throat.
“Mrs. B. is going to run the volunteer recruitment station at the Thanksgiving open day, and you know for sure she’ll commandeer every willing pair of hands she can.
There’ll be lots of help in place by the time you come home.
” I force down a swallow. “It’ll be fine. ”
“Frankie, darling.” He reaches across the gap between our chairs and takes my hand. “Sometimes things have to change. We don’t always want them to. I certainly wish your grandma was here with me and we were still laughing together as we muck out the stables every morning.”
A hundred tiny needles stab at the backs of my eyes.
“But that’s not how things are.” He pats the backs of my fingers. “I wish I was as capable as I was when I was thirty-one. Sadly, I’m not.”
“But what about the donkeys?” The words scrape out of me.
“There are other rescues we could move them to.”
The constriction in my throat turns to a rocklike lump as my vision blurs through welling tears. “But Jenny and Jack need to be together.”
“And we’d make sure they stayed together, sweetie.” He squeezes my hand. “Any of them that are bonded would stay together.”
“But I’m bonded to them too.” And now I can’t stop them—the tears roll freely down my cheeks, a constant stream of sorrow that I’m going to have to say goodbye to the best part of my life, the part that was the icing on the shit cake of how foolish I was for letting myself like Miller so goddamn fucking much.
“You have your life in Chicago,” Grandpa says.
“That’s not my real life.” The words leave my mouth on instinct without passing through any conscious filter.
“What does that mean?” His brows draw together with concern.
I’m not even sure how to explain it to myself, never mind someone else. “It’s like the person in Chicago is a person I made up. A part I play. A part in a performance that I’m not even sure I like any more. Or ever did.”
“Well, goodness.” Grandpa lifts my hand and kisses the back of it. “I guess there’s been a lot of new things rising to the surface these last few weeks. New things can stir up all kinds of feelings and confusion. I’m sure when you get back there you’ll be just as happy as you were before.”
That’s kind of what I’m worried about. Spending longer than a couple of days in Warm Springs for the first time in years has made me realize I’ve never really been happy in Chicago. Not really. Not like I am here.
I wipe my eyes with my cuff.
“Is that nice young man still here?” Grandpa asks. “The one who was helping you out?”
As I shake my head, the silent tears turn to torrents of body-racking sobs.
“Oh, my sweet girl.” His voice cracks. “Come here.”
He tugs at my hand until I move to sit on the arm of his chair. Then he wraps his arms around me and rocks me side to side like he did when I was an upset little kid.
“The Lions’ Den is on in a minute. You still like that show?”
“Hmm,” I manage.
“Then how about you stick around for a bit and we’ll watch it together? I love seeing that Leo guy rip into the terrible ideas.”
“He’s funny,” I say through a sniff.
And I’m transported back to being a kid, climbing onto Grandpa’s lap when I was upset about something, and he’d watch whatever cartoon I wanted with me to cheer me up.
He gives me a big squeeze.
“Don’t forget,” he whispers, “no matter what anyone else does or says, you should always choose your own adventure.”
The thing is, I think I just did.
Right at the moment it turned out I can’t actually have it anymore.