by Robin Hill
“Are you home? Sounds like you’re in a tunnel.”
“I sort of dropped my phone,” I say, snorting a bitter laugh. “Against the wall.”
“That bad, huh?” She sighs. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Later. I’m scared I’m going to cut my cheek on the screen.”
“I take it it’s totaled then?”
“Beyond. I’ll get on my computer and we can use email or—”
“You there?” she says, cutting in. “You’re breaking—I’ll—more bars—”
The call drops, and I fetch my laptop from the bag on the counter and move it to the table, but before I can get it open, Jane calls back. I manage to answer without slicing my finger, then lift the phone to my ear.
“You know you’re not going to get a strong signal until you get to the highway,” I say, smiling. “Just email me when you—”
“Francesca?”
My mouth snaps shut. It’s not Jane; it’s Darian, and to hear his voice so unexpectedly—so unpreparedly—completely throws me off kilter. I suck in a breath to steady myself as my free arm goes around my pregnant belly, but then I imagine it’s Darian’s arm, holding us both, and my throat swells. “You shouldn’t have called me.”
“Please don’t hang up. Please, Francesca.”
I drop into the closest chair at the table and lean forward, resting my forehead on the edge. Thick, heavy tears slip from my eyes and splash against my navy blue leggings.
“God, baby, I miss you so much. I’m so lost,” he says, the broken timbre of his voice shredding my insides.
I lay the phone beside my ear and hug my stomach tighter.
He goes on, speaking in a rush, his words tumbling out. “I’m sorry, Francesca. You were right to leave—I get it now. No more hiding. I’ll tell you everything. I’ll—”
“Why, Darian? I ask in a low whisper. “How could you?”
“Just come home. Please, baby. I’ll fix this; I swear. I’ll make it right. Drew’s helping me,” he says, his tone both desperate and hopeful. “He gave me a referral and I think it’s going to be a good fit, you know? I really want you to go with me.”
“Darian…”
“And all that other bullshit—the lawyers, the band…the show? I’m letting it go. All of it. I don’t fucking care anymore. Nothing is worth losing you.”
My eyes fall closed as more tears spill down my cheeks.
“Francesca, please, say something.”
I’m having your baby.
He waits for me to speak, and when I don’t, he makes a low, strangled sound deep in his throat. “Do you still love me at all?”
“So much I can’t breathe.”
“Then what can I do? Tell me; I’ll do anything.”
I sit up slowly and wipe my face with the back of my hand. “Leave me alone,” I say calmly but firmly. “That’s what I need from you.”
Then I toss my phone in the empty trash bin, retrieve my keys from the hook by the door, and go out.
Long blades of Johnsongrass blow in the breeze, tickling my arms as I sit Indian-style in front of my parents’ headstones. I hate coming here and rarely do, and until my father passed, I never did. But Dad insisted he be buried by my mother, so if I want to visit him in his final resting place, I’m forced to visit her too.
The cemetery is old and a little run-down, but it’s peaceful and almost always empty. It sits atop a small hill that’s surrounded by oaks and cedars. There’s a nice breeze and the Hill Country views are breathtaking. I think I’d come often if Dad had chosen a different plot for himself.
I once asked him why. Why he’d want to spend eternity beside her.
His answer was simple. “I loved her.”
But I never understood it. How could he love someone who betrayed him?
The same way you do, Frankie.
I often wonder what would’ve happened if she’d survived the accident. Obviously, she’d have been found out. Would Dad have stayed with her? I tend to think he would’ve—for me, if not for himself—and I wouldn’t have wanted him to.
“Frankie, she loved you more than anything. Let go of your anger, sweet girl. Remember the mom she was to you.”
“She left us, Dad.”
“Not you. Never you.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the word cheated.
Cheated, cheated, cheated.
I could only think it. She cheated on us, Dad.
“Not you. Never you.”
“Not you either,” I whisper, smoothing my hand over my stomach.
The hours pass in a blur of thoughts as I sit with my back to a tree stump, my gaze fixed on the horizon, and it isn’t until the automated lights flicker on that I realize the sun has set. Night has fallen, and I’m alone in a cemetery. I have to laugh at that. Jane would be petrified, and I suppose a week ago, I would have been too.
But I’m not scared.
I’m not anything.
A chilly gust of wind kisses my shoulders, and I shiver from the bite of cold. But the still air left behind is so warm that for a moment, I wonder if it wasn’t something more.
“Do you know I’m here? Can you see me?” I blink my watery eyes, opening them to her headstone. “Do you know I’m going to have your grandchild? Mom?”
I imagine her then, perched upon the granite wearing my favorite indigo sundress, the one with the tiny white flowers I used to pretend were stars. I’d stare at her for hours trying to make out the constellations.
“Help me understand how you could do it,” I whisper, “so I can understand how he could.”
“With Amanda, it’s complicated.”
Before I get my answer, a second gust of wind blows through the cemetery and carries her memory away. I pick myself up and go home.
Jane’s voice jerks me awake. “Dammit, Frankie! What the hell? I’ve been calling and emailing for hours!” She yanks the quilt off of me and it falls in a heap on the floor. “I had to leave Jacob with a neighbor so I could come check on you. He was supposed to have a sleepover.”
Guilt pulls at me, but I keep quiet.
“When’s the last time you ate something?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before storming out of my room. A minute later, the refrigerator door slams shut, and then her feet pound the floor as she comes back. “You didn’t touch a thing in there. Jesus, Frankie, you’re pregnant. Do you get that?”
I reach for my quilt and pull it over me. “I ate,” I say quietly. “Peanut butter and jelly. I know it’s not much, but…”
“It’s something. Protein, at least.” The bed dips as she sits beside me and picks up my hand. “I’m so worried about you. And not just you.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.” I breathe deeply and look up at her. “Darian called this morning, right after our call dropped. I answered because I thought it was you.”
“Shit, Frankie, what did he say?”
“More of the same. He misses me. Wants me to come home.” Home. The word falls out of my mouth with ease, as if I didn’t just misspeak. As if I didn’t mean back instead.
“Did you tell him?” she asks.
“I couldn’t. I will but…not yet.”
She threads her fingers through mine. “I know how hard this is, but I promise, you won’t feel like this forever.”
I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. “I wish I could pick one, you know? Either be pregnant at twenty-two or have my heart broken at twenty-two. Both at the same time really fucking sucks.”
Her lips quirk in a grin. “You never do anything half-assed.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Hey,” she says, “it’s only ten. Why don’t we raid the cabinets for junk food and binge watch something?”
I meet her gaze with an apologetic smile. “I promise I’ll be better tomorrow, but tonight…”
“Tonight you want to wallow.”
“Yeah.”<
br />
“Tomorrow,” she says, eyeing me sternly as she pushes to her feet. “I’m holding you to it.” She tucks the quilt around me the way I’ve seen her do for Jacob, then slips quietly from my room, closing the door behind her.
I don’t sleep after that, and after two hours of wallowing, I get up to see if Jane’s awake—wondering if her offer still stands.
The house is quiet but for the low din of the TV playing in the living room. I find Jane fast asleep on the sofa, and I cover her with a throw.
“Frankie,” she says, her eyes fluttering open. “What time is it?”
“Almost midnight. Go back to sleep. I’m just turning off the TV.”
She glances past me to the television, then sits up with a jerk, the blanket falling to her waist. “Where’s the remote?” she asks, her voice rushed as she searches between the cushions. “Do you have it?”
“It’s right behind—”
“Hey, Darian, over here!”
My body stills and my gaze locks with Jane’s wide, panicked eyes. I lean over her and grab the remote off the end table, my thumb pressing the volume button as I turn around.
“Frankie, listen to me,” she says, scrambling to her feet. “You don’t need to see this.”
“Darian, what are your thoughts on the re-release of ‘Halcyon Girl’?”
I swallow hard. “What is it?”
“Footage of Darian,” she says gently. “On WMN. I’m so sorry, Frankie. I was flipping channels when I found it and then I must’ve fallen asleep.” She blinks her eyes closed. “It premiered earlier. They’re replaying it now.”
“Where is he?” I ask, but then I see him, hidden behind a swarm of paparazzi and a frenzy of camera flashes. He steps out of the passenger side of a black sedan, and a single camera zooms in on his face—on his glistening, bloodshot eyes and sunken cheeks, his scruffy beard.
My heart lurches in my chest.
“Darian, why did you drop the lawsuit against your former band mates?”
“Oh God,” I say, lifting a hand to my throat. “What’s today? Is it Sunday? There’s supposed to be this thing on about the band.”
“That Was Then?”
I nod.
“That’ll come on next,” Jane says. “This is some kind of pre-show.” She reaches out to touch my arm. “You knew about it?”
I nod again.
“Maybe we should turn this off and watch that instead,” she says, and out of my peripheral, I notice the subtle shift of her head as her gaze moves between me and the TV. “Frankie…”
The moment she says my name, Darian turns and stares directly at the camera—directly at me—and I stumble back onto the sofa. “Why is he just standing there?”
“I don’t know,” Jane says, “but we need to turn it off.”
“Not yet.”
“Darian, what do you have to say about Cade Corban’s disappearance?”
“Darian, is it true your fiancée left you?”
Jane sits in front of me on the coffee table with her back to the TV, and I have to crane my neck to see around her.
“You don’t want to watch this,” she whispers. “Frankie, please.”
I look at her then, and the tears welling in her eyes make my breath hitch. The voices behind her get louder, and the cameras flash faster, brighter, like a flickering crown of light around her head. My gaze slides past her to the screen.
On the other side of the car, Amanda stands, and my skin turns to gooseflesh. She shuts the driver’s side door and walks around to Darian, completely at ease. Peering up at him, she smooths her hand up and down his forearm, then squeezes it. The intimacy of the gesture turns my stomach. I lift one hand to my mouth and hug my waist with the other, the remote still clenched in my fist.
Darian’s gaze shifts from the camera—from me—to her. He nods, and then with the smallest flicker of a smile, he takes her hand and walks with her to the lobby door.
I aim the remote at the TV.
Rewind and play.
Rewind and play.
He takes her hand.
Rewind and play.
Pause.
It’s a loud kind of quiet. The calm before the storm. A few blissful seconds of nothing. And then I hear Jane’s voice, muffled like distant thunder. “Frankie, look at me.”
I slowly turn my head until her wide, unflinching eyes capture mine.
“You’re okay,” she says.
“No,” I whisper. “I don’t think so.”
I can feel it coming, the swell of emotion that’s been building inside of me for weeks. All it takes is a blink, a break in contact, to make it crest.
“Jane…I can’t.”
“You can,” she says, gathering me in her arms as I slide off the couch. “I’ve got you.”
A sob tears out of me. “I thought I could…I …”
“It’ll get easier, Frankie. I swear.” She sits back on her heels and smooths my hair away from my face. “We’ll figure it out.”
Ship of Fools
Darian
“Darian! What are you doing here?” Amanda’s loud, obnoxious voice comes at me from the other side of the passenger window, followed by the hostile rapping of knuckles against the glass.
“For the love of God, Amanda, can you please take it down a notch?”
I peel open my eyes, grateful for the low light of the parking garage. My head is throbbing, my neck aches, and my mouth feels like I’ve been sucking on cotton balls. Scotch for dinner wasn’t my best idea, neither was sleeping in my car.
It was better than the alternative.
The knuckle rapping stops. “Do you realize it’s after seven?” she asks, her voice lowered to a whisper-shout.
Fuck…
“I may be late coming in today.”
“You think?” She jiggles the handle. “Don’t suppose you could let me in before someone sees us.”
I fiddle with the locks until I hear them click. “If you promise to use your inside voice,” I say as she gets in. The door slams shut and I flinch.
“Sorry,” she says, not sounding all that sorry. She turns sideways in her seat, and I can feel her judging gaze as it rakes over me. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks for your assessment.” I jut my chin at her giant purse. “Please tell me you have aspirin in that thing.”
“No…” she says, drawing out the word as she rummages through her bag, “but I do have this.” She produces a glorious bottle of water and I snatch it out of her hand. “Why are you still here? I thought you took a cab home last night.”
“I didn’t think showing up tanked two nights in a row was a good idea.” I twist the cap off the bottle and gulp it down. “Thanks. You may have saved my life.”
She laughs. “You still have to survive Frankie.”
A knot forms in my stomach at the thought.
“Hey, wait a minute…” I turn back to Amanda, my gaze skimming over her in her Captain Kangaroo uniform. The one I can’t help but make fun of. The one she was wearing last night. “You didn’t go home either.”
A knowing smirk spreads across her lips and I grimace.
“Amanda, please tell me you didn’t have sex on my couch again.”
She shrugs. “How many times have I told you to trade offices with me? It’s only fair; you’re never here anyway.”
I shudder at the thought of Mike’s bare ass sliding around on my Italian leather sofa. “The office is yours…couch included.”
A loud, high-decibel squeal bursts out of her. “Really?”
“As long as you never make that sound again,” I tell her. “And not until you get back from Austin.”
She sighs. “I hate you for this.”
“I know.”
“But,” she says, smiling coyly, “not as much as I did yesterday.” Her hand shoots across the center console and she wiggles her fingers. A rock the size of Texas catches the scant light like a
prism, firing it into my sensitive eyes.
I lean away from the glare and grab her hand. “Holy shit, Amanda.”
“Can you believe it? I called Mike in tears last night after you left to give him the news about Austin. He came right over and proposed! He was planning to do it on the Fourth but figured I could use the cheering up.” She bites her lip. “And then one thing led to another—”
“And you defiled my couch. Again.” I squeeze her hand. “Congratulations. I’m really happy for you. And I promise, Austin is temporary.”
“I know. And Mike’s going to take some time off and come with me. We’re flying out this weekend.”
Relief floods me. One less thing to worry about. “Thanks, Amanda. Anything you need, let me know.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch about it,” she says gazing at her hand. “I’m just…in love. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“All right.” She reaches for the door handle. “I’m out of here. I left a message for Leslie that we’d be in offsite meetings all day, so don’t worry about being late; don’t even bother coming back. We deserve a little downtime.” She makes a face. “You especially. Take two days…just don’t forget the thing with Cross’s lawyers on Friday.”
“What time?”
“One. I’ll have Leslie order lunch.”
“Sounds good.”
“You’ve reached Francesca Valentine. Please leave your name and number and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
“It’s me,” I say as I turn into the Publix parking lot. “I’m sorry about yesterday…and last night. I know I should have called. I should have done a lot of things. Anyway, I’ll be home soon and we can talk, okay? I love you.”
The second I hang up, Drew calls and I feel a sudden tightness in my chest. I’d be tempted to ignore it if I didn’t think he’d call right back.
“Hey,” I say, translation: Thanks for the other night. I know I was a jackass, but I’ll make it up to you.
“Hey,” Drew says, translation: Yeah, you were, but what else is new?
