Frankie remembered very well, but how did Hannah?
‘He burned them after she died.’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘He didn’t.’
Frankie’s chest suddenly ached and burned. ‘You’re lying.’
‘Why would I?’
‘To get me to take care of Charley.’
‘Will you?’
‘You’re bribing me?’
‘Is it working?’
Frankie had mourned the loss of those pictures. Certainly she’d taken her own. Thousands of them. But the ones that Charley had taken of Lisa were quite simply works of art. They showed her in ways no one else, not even her mother, ever could. Ways that no one, now, ever would. In addition, Charley had taken photographs of Lisa and Frankie together. Frankie could count on two fingers the pictures she had of herself and her daughter in the same frame.
‘Why did he lie about them?’
‘You broke his heart, Francesca.’
Frankie still refused to point out that he’d broken hers first.
‘You take care of Charley through his treatments and the pictures are yours.’
‘I’m thinking that they might be mine anyway. Eventually.’
‘Think again. I’ve seen his will. Everything, right down to his last camera, lens and camera bag, goes to me.’
Bastard. Why was Frankie surprised?
Because it was so unlike Charley to be vindictive. Frankie? Hell, yes. Charley? Never. Guess she’d been as wrong about that as she’d been about him being incapable of cheating.
‘How do I know you have them?’ Frankie asked.
‘Which one’s your favorite?’
‘The first one he ever took of us together.’
‘Right after she was born. She’s lying on your chest. You’re looking at her like there’s nothing and no one else in the world but her.’
Frankie had often looked at Lisa like that. So had Charley. Frankie had mourned the loss of that picture more than any of the others, and she had thought for decades that it was gone.
‘I’ll send it to you by FedEx,’ Hannah said. ‘It’ll be there tomorrow.’
She could say no. She’d lived without those photos for over two decades. Did she really need them back now?
Yes. And knowing that Hannah had them, had been able to see them while Frankie hadn’t …
‘Let’s make a deal,’ she said. ‘I’ll do what I can while he’s in treatment. With a nurse, which you’re paying for.’
‘And then?’
‘One of the many perks of divorce. I don’t have to watch him die, and you can’t make me.’
Hannah hesitated and Frankie waited for her to say: Wanna bet?
‘All right,’ Hannah said instead. ‘Keep me informed of his progress. Best time for me to talk is midnight or later.’
‘The last time I saw midnight or later I was wearing jeans two sizes smaller.’
Hannah laughed, then cut the sound off as if she couldn’t believe it had come out of her mouth. Frankie was kind of shocked herself.
‘You could email. Text. Whatever.’
‘Fine.’ Frankie did not plan to have any more conversations with Hannah than she had to.
For a second, she thought Hannah had hung up, then she heard her breathing.
‘How is he?’
Frankie nearly said, ‘I’ll email you’, but she was tired of being pissy. After a while, it just got old.
‘He was tired from the radiation. He had a nightmare.’ Frankie had no idea why she’d shared that. She hadn’t meant to and then babble-blurt, there it was. ‘Vietnam. The napalm dream.’
‘I don’t … He never … Not with me.’
‘He never had a Vietnam flashback dream?’
‘There were times he shouted out, but who doesn’t? He never spoke to me about Vietnam much. I know he has PTSD. It’s why he chases danger. He needs to reproduce the stress of that time to process what’s going on in his head. He feels more alive when he’s skating the line between life and death.’
‘He told you this?’
Hannah made a soft sound of amusement that didn’t sound at all amused. ‘No. My brother … he did some research. Then I talked to some psychiatrists. Not like Charley was going to.’
‘No,’ Frankie agreed. ‘So he wasn’t just being a danger-loving asshole.’
‘Oh, he was being an asshole, but I’m not sure he could help himself or that he knew why he was that way.’
‘You didn’t tell him?’
Hannah’s breath whooshed out. ‘What good would it do? He wasn’t going to change, didn’t want to change. Maybe he couldn’t.’
The line clicked.
‘Gotta take this call,’ Hannah said, then she was gone without a goodbye.
Frankie stood on the playground until the stars popped out. She didn’t want to go home, but standing here beneath the great big sky, she suddenly felt so small, so vulnerable, so lonely.
She couldn’t call Irene. Her friend would blow a gasket, burst a blood vessel, flip her lid. Worse, she might hop the next plane, shove Charley into a straitjacket and drag him personally to Hannah’s door.
Frankie wanted to avoid that.
She’d have to tell Irene something, sooner or later. Probably sooner. But not tonight.
She stayed where she was for as long as she could, but eventually she made her way back to the house, taking her time, breathing in slowly, deeply and then back out.
The door to the house was ajar.
‘Charley?’ she called.
No Charley in the living room, the kitchen or the downstairs bathroom. Not in the upstairs bathroom or the guest room, or the room that had been turned into a guest room. After.
She opened her bedroom door and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of him in the bed.
She considered spending the night in the original guest room, as spending the night in Lisa’s room was out of the question. She could paint the walls a hundred times, buy fifty new beds, seventy-five new bedspreads and sheets, tear the carpet out, put in hardwood, or the opposite. It wouldn’t matter. That room would always be Lisa’s and she rarely went into it.
But what if Charley became ill? What if he got confused? What if he wandered around searching for her, fell down the stairs and broke his neck?
Irene would say, Problem solved.
‘Shut up, Irene.’ Frankie went into the bathroom to change her clothes.
Before she lay next to him, she found a plastic tub, which she sat on the nightstand, just in case.
Her eyes opened to bright sunlight. The clock read 9:00 a.m. She hadn’t slept past seven in a decade.
Disoriented, she stared at the arm over her shoulder. She wiggled her feet and brushed other feet. She shifted her hip and bumped … not a hip.
Charley kissed her ear. ‘Morning, Fancy.’
He nuzzled her neck. His hand cupped her breast.
Why wasn’t she rocketing out of bed and racing for the bathroom where she could lock the door and take a scalding hot shower?
Because it felt too good. Both familiar and decadent. She hadn’t been held or touched in years.
She’d had boyfriends since the divorce – if you could call them that since they hadn’t been boys any more than she’d been a girl. She’d had sex, many times. Especially right after. Sex had been the only way she’d been able to feel anything at all back then.
But no one had been Charley. No one could be Charley but Charley. And he was right here. What could one minute hurt?
She turned her head. Decades fell away at the touch of his lips and she let them. She wanted them to.
She shoved her fingers into his hair, coarser than before.
No. Shh. Same hair. Curly. Maybe salt and pepper instead of just pepper, but …
Shh.
‘Should probably lock the door,’ he murmured against her mouth, even as his hand crept beneath her sleep shirt.
‘Why?’
He lifted his head.
&n
bsp; She smiled and touched his face.
‘I don’t want Lisa seeing what she shouldn’t way before she should.’
Frankie went cold. Her hand fell limply to the pillow. She got out of bed and headed for the door.
When she went right through, Charley said, ‘Fancy, wait!’
Thankfully, the doorbell rang. She wished it had rung five minutes ago. Before he’d made her skin hum and her blood bubble and her lips itch. Before she’d remembered quite a bit of what she’d spent years forgetting.
She opened the door with one hand and scrubbed the other over her lips until they stopped feeling anything but raw.
‘Ms Sicari?’
The woman on the stoop was in her forties, stout and blond. ‘I am Ursula. From Nurses Now.’
She had a slight accent Frankie couldn’t place. Russian maybe?
‘Mrs Blackwell hired me.’
Last night seemed a long time away. At least several kisses ago.
‘Right. Yeah.’ Frankie pushed the door wider. ‘Come in.’
‘Hey, baby, what …’
Charley stopped halfway down the stairs. His hair was tousled. He wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes.
Ursula cast Frankie a glance.
‘Not what it looks like,’ Frankie said, but she couldn’t help rubbing her lips again.
‘Not my business, Ms Sicari.’
‘What is your business?’ Charley descended the remaining steps.
He didn’t seem self-conscious to be standing half-naked in front of a stranger. But how many places had he been where shirt and shoes were optional?
‘I’m a nurse, hired by your wife to help take care of you.’
‘You hired a nurse?’ His eyes flicked to Frankie.
‘Not that—’ Ursula began, and Frankie made a sharp, silencing gesture with her hand.
Could Hannah have hired the woman without informing her of Charley’s unique memory issues?
‘I did,’ Frankie said slowly, holding Ursula’s gaze.
The woman nodded.
‘I don’t need a nurse.’
‘You have to go to radiation every day, and I have work.’
‘I can get to the hospital on my own.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean “no”?’
‘N–O. I understand that you rarely hear the word, but I’m sure you know what it means.’
Ursula’s head shifted back and forth as they spoke, like the bobble-headed dog Frankie’s father had always kept in the back window of his Chevy. Frankie missed that dog. She missed her father.
He’d died of an aneurysm a year before Lisa. She’d always been glad he hadn’t had to experience the loss of his only grandchild. Her mother had become fragile after the death of her husband. She forgot to eat most days. She wasted away. Losing Lisa had only accelerated the decline. She’d lasted two years before succumbing to pneumonia, but they hadn’t been good years for anyone.
‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ Charley said.
‘What if I need you to have one?’
That stopped him.
‘What if you drive to radiation and get sick afterward? How will you get back?’
‘I’ll take a cab.’
‘Because cab drivers are famous for their understanding and compassion.’ She didn’t even bother to try and explain Uber. What would be the point?
‘Huh?’
‘If you’re puking, no cabbie in the world is taking you anywhere. And you can’t call me. I’m working.’
If anyone understood that rule, it was Charley Blackwell.
‘What about Teddy Vexnard?’ Charley asked.
He had made one friend in the few months he’d lived here and worked at the Journal – the sports writer, Teddy Vexnard.
Frankie lifted her hand and touched Charley’s hair. ‘He’s dead.’
‘No. I just talked to him.’ Confusion flowed over his face. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘I’ll make you some coffee, yes?’ Ursula clomped into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
‘What happened?’ Charley asked. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
Teddy had died ten years after Lisa. If anyone had informed Charley, he hadn’t come to the funeral.
Frankie had been there. She’d spent the entire time staring at the door, both fearing and hoping that Charley would come through it.
‘A car accident,’ Frankie said. ‘He fell asleep at the wheel coming back from Monday Night Football.’
‘Hell,’ Charley muttered.
‘I’m sorry about Teddy. But will you give Ursula a chance? She’ll be here when I’m not.’
‘I’m not five,’ Charley said with a pout that made him seem about five.
‘Humor me.’
‘Fine.’
‘You wanna shower first?’ she asked. There were two showers but she needed to talk to Ursula.
Charley nodded and drifted upstairs.
Frankie entered the kitchen to the blessed scent of coffee.
‘Thank you.’ She took out two cups, held up one with a lift of her eyebrows.
Ursula shook her head. ‘I have had sufficient.’
Frankie filled her own, left the other next to the pot for Charley, then took a seat, waving Ursula into the other.
‘I can’t place your accent.’
‘I was born in Ukraine.’
‘You were a nurse there?’
‘No. I am a nurse here.’
‘You’ve dealt with patients like Charley before?’
‘Like how?’
‘Brain cancer. Memory issues.’
‘The service would not have recommended me if I had not.’
Was that a yes? Frankie should probably call the service, though would they tell her anything if she wasn’t the one paying them? She should probably talk to the one who was paying them.
‘Excuse me a minute.’
Frankie’s phone wasn’t on the countertop, but she found it on her first glance into her purse, then stepped into the front hall where she quickly texted Hannah.
Nurse Ursula has arrived. You wanna send me her references?
Almost immediately her phone chimed.
Ursula’s references, as well as several recommendations. Good ones, too.
By the time she’d given the nurse what background she had on Charley’s illness, told her the time of his radiation appointment and made sure she was familiar with Froedtert Hospital, Charley had returned, freshly showered and dressed.
‘I’ll just leave you two to talk while I get ready.’
The two of them eyed each other like rival street gang leaders. Frankie hoped a replay of West Side Story or Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ video wasn’t on the agenda.
When she came downstairs, Charley was cleaning his cameras and Ursula was making scrambled eggs. They weren’t talking but they weren’t glaring at each other either.
‘I’ll be at the Greek Orthodox church,’ Frankie said. ‘I’ll have my cell, though—’
‘Don’t call unless it is a bloody emergency,’ Ursula quoted Frankie’s earlier instructions back to her.
‘I actually said an emergency with blood, but you get the drift.’
‘Go.’ Ursula flapped her hands. ‘We will be fine. Yes, Charley?’
‘Yes.’ He squinted into the open back of a camera body. ‘Don’t worry a minute about me.’
The way he said it kind of made her worry, but after a slight hesitation – should she kiss him goodbye? Definitely not – she left.
She didn’t think about Charley more than half a dozen times all day.
Frankie got some great shots of the church for her client. Then some even better ones of the local architecture, flowers growing through chain-link fences, kids riding their bikes home after school and a puppy that had chased a cat up a tree. The latter would sell like crazy on her stock site.
She hurried home, excited to show Charley.
A police cruiser was parked in front of her house.
/> Frankie pulled into the driveway too fast, the bottom of her Volvo scraping against the cement. She burst inside. Two police officers spoke with a visibly distraught Ursula.
‘Where is he?’ she demanded of the room at large.
‘I only turned my back for an instant,’ Ursula said. ‘And he was gone.’
Charley
Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Late August, 1991
Charley drove into Fish Creek as the sun set on a Wednesday. Lisa was asleep, had been since just before they’d hit Green Bay nearly an hour ago. Up until then they’d sung grade school ditties, played the alphabet game, and the license plate game. If she hadn’t fallen asleep, he might have.
He’d tried to stay another day in Milwaukee with Frankie, but she’d practically tossed him out the door.
‘At this time of year you’re going to be stuck in traffic for hours if you wait to leave until Thursday afternoon.’
‘Don’t people have jobs?’
‘Not the last week of August in Door County.’
‘It’s going to be chaos, isn’t it?’
‘Which is why I wanted you to go in early June, but no. You were …’ Her voice drifted off. ‘Somewhere.’
‘Everyone’s somewhere.’
‘But you go to more somewheres than anyone else.’
He cast her a quick glance but she was smiling. Lately, Frankie had been a little testy about his traveling. He didn’t like it. He hoped it passed.
But she deserved a break and he had promised. Besides, he wanted to spend more time with Lisa. He wasn’t just saying so. The child had charmed him from the moment she’d come out of the womb. She’d changed him.
Frankie was off to visit Irene. The last time the two of them had been together without Lisa had been before Lisa. Charley kind of felt sorry for Manhattan.
‘Tell Irene hi.’ He took his bag from Frankie, grabbed Lisa’s hand.
His daughter smiled at him as if he were the newly risen sun. Sometimes that smile scared him. Sooner or later she was going to figure out he wasn’t that great.
‘Will do.’ Frankie kissed him.
‘Or maybe hold that hi.’
Irene already knew he wasn’t that great. The last time he’d seen her, she’d told him so. Along with an admonition that if he hurt Frankie she’d do something he still thought was anatomically impossible even though Irene had insisted it was not.
Just Once Page 20
