Frankie
49 days before coming clean
Frankie was just leaving the bookstore when the text came in. It was shocking enough for her to stop at the front.
Logan, anticipating her, had already found some books to shuffle beside the cash register. “You around later?”
“Apparently not.” She held the phone out so he could see Carey’s message: Baby news. Hit Thurman House after work.
“Whoa. That means Jake and Singer…?”
“You know everything I know.”
“Listen, if they get a little Asian baby, can I be the kid’s fake godfather? I’m just saying, I could be helpful.”
She made her voice deadpan. “Because you’re Chinese.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t be racist about it. I’d godfather a Japanese or Korean baby. Or any Asian Pacific Islander kid. Look, I’m just saying, I know from being raised by white people and there are some tricks the kid should learn.” He smiled, and Frankie steeled herself against it, but they’d known each other too long, and he knew he’d gotten to her. His smile expanded in an irritating way.
“You’re bugging me,” she muttered.
“If you want to come over later to tell me the baby news, I’m off at six.”
“I made your schedule. I know when you’re off.”
“I’m hearing that you memorize my schedule because you need to know when I’m available to nonsexually date you. And that is totally cool with me, FYI.”
Frankie picked up the closest hardcover and threatened him with it. “Can it, bub.” She glanced toward the back of the shop and called, “Izzy, I’m taking off! Fire Logan if you want, I don’t care!”
“She didn’t hear you,” he said helpfully. “She’s in the office.”
“I swear to all the gods, I will fire your ass for insubordination.”
“That might make our dates awkward.”
“You mean more awkward.”
“Oh, Frankie.” This time he leaned over the counter. “I don’t find our dates the least bit awkward. Anyway, if you want to stop by, you can.”
She wanted to punch him. She also wanted to spend more evenings curled up on his couch watching anime with him. It was unsettling. “I can’t believe this is my life.” The book hit the top of the stack with a thud. “Shelve this. And everything else. I’m leaving.”
“Bye! Remember to ask Jake if I can—”
“Totally not doing that!”
His laughter was cut off by the heavy glass door swishing shut. The thing about leaving Logan was that it always felt like an open loop. As if they should hug. Or wave. Or do … something to resolve the chord progression that always seemed to play in her mind when they were talking.
Frankie marched determinedly to her car. Screw all of it. Stop thinking about stupid-ass Logan.
There were more important things to think about. Like what qualified as “baby news”? Was there an actual kid? Or was this “maybe there will be a baby next month” news?
She pulled in behind Carey’s car and did a mental roll call of who was likely to be inside. Only Carey’s and Singer’s cars, and it was just after noon. So: Singer, Carey, Alice, and probably Emery, who was kind of Alice’s brother. Oh, right, and let’s not forget Lisa fuckin’ Thurman, emerged from the grave, or the cult, or Southern California, anyway. It was all basically the same.
Frankie headed for the door, wondering if she should have brought food. Did vague baby news have a traditional gift associated with it? Liquor, maybe? A stuffed bear holding a bottle of Xanax?
She knocked once and let herself in. “Hello? Is there a baby here right now, because I’m not changing fucking diapers!”
“No baby!” That was Carey’s voice. Coming from the kitchen.
The living room looked normal enough, but when she pushed through the swinging door to the eat-in kitchen, it was clear that all hell had broken loose. The counters were covered in dishes and a seemingly random assortment of food and cleaning supplies. Every lower cabinet was standing open. She looked a little closer.
“Hey, is that door supposed to be hanging there like that?”
Singer turned from where he was affixing some sort of … plastic strap thing to the refrigerator. His normally combed hair was frizzy on one side like he’d been running his hand through it, and his eyes were wide. “If you don’t have a way to fix it, your observation is useless to me.”
“Whoa, nellie.” She glanced at Carey, who minutely shook his head. Don’t fuck with Singer right now. Got it. “What can I do?”
“I need Alice’s help with that cabinet. She brought her toolbox. Can you—” He waved toward the rest of the house.
“Sure, I’ll grab her.”
“Thank you, Frankie.”
She saluted.
Alice and Emery were attaching some sort of brightly colored mobile to the ceiling right in front of the window of the nursery. Alice had attained honorary Derrie status by hooking up semipermanently with Carey; Emery seemed to have … followed them all the way from New York.
“This ladder was not made for fat girls,” she was mumbling as Frankie walked in. “Oh, Frankie, thank god. Will you stabilize me?”
Emery shifted the foot that was currently braced on the windowsill. “I could—”
“No, I need you right where you are, Em. Frankie has it.”
“I got it.” The ladder was dusty and cobwebbed; she tightened her grip. “Damn, where’d you dig this out from?”
“It was in the rafters in the garage. No black widows so far.”
Frankie froze, torn between her stabilization responsibilities and jumping back.
The ladder shuddered when Alice laughed. “Shit! Sorry, no, I swear, no spiders at all. Only webs.”
Emery shook his head. “You’re such a jerk.”
“I really am. Okay, let’s finish up.”
Frankie peered around the ladder to make sure no spiders were lurking. “Singer broke the kitchen, so he needs you.”
“Got it. Just have to—” The drill hummed, stopped, hummed, stopped, hummed again. “There. This is never coming down.”
“Isn’t the mobile supposed to be over the crib?”
“Technically.” Emery, balanced between a dresser and the sill, lifted his chin in the direction of the ceiling. “Unless you make it out of glass and live in earthquake country.”
Frankie giggled. “Alice, you did not make a baby mobile out of glass.” But sure enough, it wasn’t just glass, but broken glass. Thick shards, which Alice had painted all different colors, with swirls, and designs, then mounted on a disk of wood so they’d all hang at different heights. Was it a mobile if it didn’t move? Not that it mattered. Frankie was never having kids.
Although, considering the mobile or whatever was currently making rainbow splinters of sunlight dance across all the walls, she had to admit it was a cool idea.
“In my defense, I’ve never lived in earthquake country. Where I’m from, if you put something on the ceiling, it stays there.”
“Unless it falls,” Emery added.
Alice revved her drill at him. “Honey, when I install something, you better believe it doesn’t fall. I’ll leave you guys to clean up while I go fight crime and home improvement failures elsewhere.”
“You’re the sweetest!” he called after her, before offering a shrug to Frankie. “Sorry.”
“No worries. I mean, better to be in here than out there, anyway. Singer’s on a hair trigger. Where the hell is Jakey?”
“On his way home from work.”
“Huh. I’ll get the floor if you want to get everything else.”
“Sounds good.”
Emery was uncomfortably good-looking. From his perfectly mussed black hair to his body to his overall demeanor. He had dimples. And he never seemed fazed by anything. Not even Derries.
She steadied the dustpan to finish sweeping the bits of drywall on the ground. “Does anything ever surprise you?”
“Surprise me?”
“Yeah, you know. You hang out, but you never seem all that shocked by anything. Most people who spend time with us get a little green around the gills.”
Emery huffed a laugh. “You guys don’t scare me. And I don’t know. I can’t remember the last time I was really surprised by something.”
“What about the tattoo parlor? Don’t people shock you?”
“Never. Probably when I’m there longer and get more interesting jobs. Right now it’s mostly drunk college kids who want Chinese calligraphy they don’t understand.”
“You ever give them the wrong word as a joke?”
Another laugh. “I respect the ink more than that. But I’ve definitely been tempted.” He brushed his hands over the trash can. “What do you think? Clean enough for a kid?”
“Hey, you’re asking the wrong person. I don’t know anything about kids.”
“Alice and I used to watch my neighbor’s kids a lot, but I still get confused about which age is doing what. Singer said ten months, so I think we’re good.”
“Take your word for it.”
They carried the garbage can, broom, and dustpan out to the kitchen, where things were still chaotic but Alice appeared to be taking over. In the bustle Frankie heard her phone ding a notification.
Logan. Baby or no baby?
No baby, she sent back.
Carey looked up. “Whoever that is, tell them to pick up coffee. We were supposed to but got distracted, and all Singer has is instant.”
“Instant isn’t coffee.” Another ding.
Looking forward to being a godfather. I could be an Asian godfather to any kid, you know. The kid doesn’t have to be Asian …
She bit back a smile. You are not the kid’s godfather. Get over it.
“Who is it? Are they bringing coffee?”
Frankie focused on her cousin, feeling vaguely guilty. “No one. And no.”
His eyes sharpened. Hell.
Before he could ask, she retreated—or, no, fled. She fled to the bathroom, turned her phone to silent, and stayed there until conversations in the kitchen had time to roll in directions other than hers.
Carey knew Logan. He didn’t remember him from school, but he knew him now, as Frankie’s coworker. Everyone knew Logan. It wasn’t incriminating that Logan had texted, or that she texted back. They were friends; friends texted each other.
Damn Logan for making everything weird.
She emerged into the hallway and stood there for a minute, listening for signs it was safe to return to the kitchen. More whirling drill noises, Emery’s voice, then Singer’s. It was probably fine, but she hesitated.
Thurman House wasn’t all that sentimental. There were formal graduation pictures, one for Singer, one for Lisa, in the living room. And a family portrait taken when they were both early teens, maybe. But every other picture in the house was right here, in the hallway.
It was like a timeline of their perfect lives, tracing from Lisa’s birth on one end, through Singer’s, and then their various sports and activities, family shots at the holidays, all the way until sometime in middle high school when the Thurman elders had either stopped taking pictures or at least stopped framing and hanging them.
Singer had done plays all through high school, always starring as a quirky side character. In the sparse later-years section of the wall Frankie found only two pictures of Singer’s biggest extracurricular, one of which she remembered because it had been in the program (Our Town? Annie Get Your Gun?). The other was Singer and Lisa in the lobby of the theater, standing beside one another, he still in his costume.
Each of them was slightly turned away, like they’d been pulled together at random, not like they were brother and sister. But the smiles on their faces were identical.
Frankie shivered. The past was creepy as shit. She listened for a minute, trying to hear any proof that Lisa was alive, but if she made noise it wasn’t enough to rise above Thurman House’s current level of aural chaos.
The brightness of the kitchen was a relief. “Singer, what’s up with your sister?”
“Hmm?”
“Your sister, you know, the madwoman in the scrapbooking room?”
He shot her a look. “Do you have a point?”
“Well, yeah.” She cleared a spot of counter and hopped up, almost toppling a domino line of spray bottles with brightly colored fluids inside. “Does she ever come out of her cave?”
Singer glanced back toward the hall and shook his head. “I think she waits until Jake and I are out of the house. I haven’t really seen her that much.”
Ha. That got Carey’s attention, though Alice and Emery were still staying out of it. Like amateurs.
“She’s been back for weeks.” Care raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t seen her at all?”
“I saw her earlier today, when I told her about—about the baby. But not as a general rule, no. She stays in her room.” Singer tried to sound defiant at the end there, but Frankie wasn’t fooled. He felt guilty. She could spot that one a mile away.
Totally not her goal. She could tweak Singer’s guilt some other day. Time to slightly redirect the conversation. “I didn’t like the old version, but the new one’s kind of freaking me out.”
Carey got to his feet, brushing down the knees of his jeans. “Three years is a long time to be in one place. And then to be completely cut off from it. I’m sure there’s some kind of culture shock thing there.”
She poked him. “Is that what it felt like moving home after New York?”
“Probably more like how it felt to move to New York when I was eighteen. Everything was a little surreal, like I was living someone else’s life.” His hands spread. “Then again, Lisa came back here. That’s gotta be even more disorienting. All right, Singer. Cabinets are done. What’s next?”
Frankie paid half-hearted attention to the plans for the rest of the day, though it was hard to stop thinking of those identical perfect smiles in the pictures on the wall. Who was Lisa Thurman under all that bullshit? Did she even know?
It was so sick and wrong, feeling sorry for Lisa Thurman. Frankie resented the hell out of it.