by Heather Long
Laughing, Gene glanced at me and then surprised me with a wink. “Boy hates when we use his full name, but he’s far too polite to correct us. He’s a good boy though, we like him. Ted did right by him, and he seems awfully fond of you.” Eugene Grayson gave me a piercing look before he held out his hand. “It’s been a long time coming, young lady, but I’m Eugene Grayson.”
“Frankie Curtis,” I answered him exactly as I had his wife. His grip trembled faintly and took what seemed like a robust man and made him seem a little frailer beneath the surface. That was the only reason I bit back my next comment. My nerves were fluttering like mad, but I was also on guard. These were Maddy’s parents, the people who cut her off and ultimately, cut me off.
“Shall we sit? Pat, let’s get the kids some food, and then we can talk like civilized people.”
“Of course,” Patience said smoothly as she accepted his arm. “Please, join us. I know you must have questions.”
Questions?
Oh, I had questions. But instead of leading Patience away, Eugene offered me his other arm, and I stared at it a minute, then Archie swooped in to wrap an arm around me. “Excuse me, sir, but I’d like to be the one to escort her to the table.”
That earned us a pair of assessing looks from both Eugene and Patience. They nodded and moved ahead before Archie pressed his lips to my ear. “Good?”
I glanced at him and gave a slow if uneven nod. But even as he pulled out my seat and I took it, the scrutiny from the other two at the table weighed on me. What did I want out of this meeting? That would be what Erin would ask me. Was my anxiety misplaced? Did I want to blame them? Did I want them to answer all my questions and tell me they’d wanted me, even if Maddy cut them off too? Or did I want them to just tell me they hadn’t cared because Maddy had broken all their conventions? What did I want to know?
Or was it that I simply wanted them to like me?
Once we were seated, someone brought out the drinks Archie had asked for. The woman who served us turned out to be someone else from the one I’d seen earlier or the butler. But instead of quiet reserve, she wore a bright smile and radiated warmth. While she didn’t say much, she seemed pleased to see me. Only after she’d served the salads and excused herself did Patience sigh.
“Martha is going to gloat at me for weeks after this.”
Eugene laughed. “And rightly so. You’ve been worried about meeting her and fighting the urge to call her for two years out of fear she would be too much like her mother.”
Patience flicked a look over to me. I raised my eyebrows. What did she want me to say? Thank you for not lumping me into the same category with Maddy?
When the silence stretched out, Eugene glanced between Patience and I before he opened his mouth, but I had one question and I wanted to know the answer before we went too far down this road.
“I met you before,” I said abruptly and pulled the focus of the whole table. “You came to Texas. You and Maddy had a big fight and then you left, but you didn’t say two words to me then. So you knew where I was, where we were, and you knew her. So all I want to know is why? Why did I never hear from you?” Not to let Eugene off the hook, I glanced at him. “Why didn’t I ever hear from either of you?”
Chapter Nineteen
I’ll Be Your Ally Through All Your Battles
Archie
The silence at the table grew, but Frankie didn’t back down. My little badass met their stares evenly. She’d asked that question in a strong voice, one that commanded respect, even if she didn’t realize it. Fuck, I loved her, but more than that, I was proud of her. Frankie despised confrontation. She could handle it, but she’d never liked it. Another mark of Maddy’s influence. Yet in the months since she’d unloaded at us at the apartment, there’d been a noticeable shift in her demeanor. She didn’t back down, and if anything, all the knocks that kept hitting her had made her stronger.
I flicked a look from her to the grandparents, who both wore controlled expressions, even if Eugene’s slipped a little at her question. She’d scored a mark on them. Considering she’d only just met them and wasn’t as familiar with this world as I was, she may not have seen it. But I had.
At the same time, if they compared her to Maddy again, I was going to rip them a new asshole. Frankie was nothing like Maddy. Polite courtesy only went so far.
Eugene cracked first and leaned forward, focusing on her. “I don’t know if our explanation will ever be enough.”
“Maybe not,” Frankie agreed as she lifted her chin. The determination in her eyes seemed to gleam even brighter. I needed to tell her later just how stunning she was in that dark green sweater, jeans, and boot combo she had on. Maybe when I peeled it all off. “But I’d like to hear it one way or another.”
With a glance at his wife, Eugene sighed. “Your mother—Madeline…” he began, then hesitated again. “A parent never wants to talk ill of their own child.” His lips turned down, but the droop to his shoulders disappeared as he sat a little straighter. “She was a difficult, demanding, and very competitive child. These are not negative traits, not really.”
“We encouraged it,” Patience admitted, and while Eugene could hold Frankie’s gaze, she couldn’t. She kept looking away. “Perhaps too much. I had…three miscarriages while Madeline was young, and each time, she grew more agitated with me for trying to have another child. I thought at first she was just trying to excel to prove to me I didn’t need to have another one. Selfishly, I wanted to think the best of her that she didn’t want me to be sad.”
Eugene put a hand over his wife’s. “When we couldn’t have more children, we accepted it and focused all of our energy on Maddy. She was such a happy child for a long time. She excelled at school, at home, in all of her extracurriculars. She was charming, delightful, and won the hearts of everyone who knew her.”
Yeah, I might have to throw up if they keep this line of the story going. Rather than comment, I kept my focus on Frankie. From the moment she’d asked the question, I’d settled a hand on her thigh. Our legs were pressed together, but I wanted her to remember she wasn’t alone.
“Again, I have to stress she was happy. Or so we thought. When we enrolled her at Blue Ivy Prep, we did it because she wanted it. The agreement was initially, she would say there during the week and come home on the weekends. By the time she reached seventh grade, however, she wanted the full immersive experience, so she alternated weekends she came home. By the first year of ninth, she stopped coming home except for holidays.” Patience looked so troubled. “We thought it normal. She was a young lady, she wanted to assert her independence.” When she flicked a look at me, she didn’t have to tell me that was also the year she and my dad had probably started dating.
“We’ve always been close with your family, Archie, as I’m sure you’re aware,” Eugene said, taking up the thread, even as Frankie’s hand slid over mine. I turned mine over, and we interlocked our fingers. “She and Edward practically grew up together, but I don’t think they really noticed each other until that year. The relationship accelerated at an unseemly rate.”
“We don’t really need those details,” Frankie said with a faint grimace.
“Good thing, because I don’t particularly relish sharing them.” Eugene’s voice had grown stronger. “That was also the year she began to act out. We heard through sources of her throwing her weight around at school. She’d gotten access to a small trust fund set up by my mother. It was for incidentals, pocket change.”
If it was anything like the one I came into, then it would’ve been a lot more money to Frankie than they realized. Fortunately, they skipped ahead and didn’t focus on that.
“She began to host illegal parties,” Patience said with a sigh. “The headmaster tended to overlook these infractions because we contributed a great deal of money to the school.”
Frankie shot me a look, and I gave her a little shrug. I couldn’t help it if our names did that. To be honest, that onus wasn’t on us. Yes, I had
taken advantage of the fact more than once, but again, I wasn’t the one who created the situation.
“In their junior year, it all came to a rather unfortunate and disturbing head when two students overdosed at one of her parties. While no charges were filed, the school had done what they could to mitigate the circumstances, and we had to fight to keep her in because they wanted her to withdraw.”
But no way could they have forced the issue. “You paid to keep her in,” I supplied, in case Frankie didn’t understand why they would have asked but not forced the issue.
“There was no proof,” Patience said. “That other than those two students attended her party. There was no proof that Maddy supplied the drugs. There was no proof that Maddy had anything to do with them. It could just as easily have been a case of wrong time, wrong place.”
Right.
“Still, Maddy promised no more parties. She did stop throwing them.” Eugene sighed. “That was when Eddie started hosting them for her.”
Of course he did. Then again, would I really tell Frankie no if she wanted something badly?
“When they graduated, Eddie proposed,” Patience continued as she lifted her cup and took a sip. “They were both far too young, but Maddy threatened to elope if we forbid it. Fortunately, we weren’t the only ones opposed, and Ted had much firmer control over Eddie. They had to graduate college, and they had to be in their careers a year. That was the agreement. For that, we sanctioned the engagement.”
“No offense,” Frankie said abruptly. “I am trying to understand what indulging her every whim has to do with ignoring me.”
“We weren’t trying to indulge her whims,” Eugene stated. “Though ultimately, we did, because Maddy never took denial well. She often found a way to make what she wanted happen. In the beginning, we thought it was luck or just her perseverance, but later…later we learned the hard way. Her relationship with Eddie was always troubled. They fought, almost constantly. He wanted them to move in together, but she wanted her own place. After all, they were going to be engaged for years, they should embrace their single, committed lifestyles.”
I swore Eugene was going to roll his eyes, but he caught himself.
“What he’s trying to say tactfully is that Maddy wanted a place to see other boys. She enjoyed winning the hearts of those who seemed impossible. Like it was a personal challenge.” Patience’s lip compressed. “She began with a business acquaintance of ours when she was just sixteen. We found out much later, or I assure you, that would never have happened. At college, this need to conquer others only grew, and it became something of a competition between her and Eddie.”
The whole concept was nauseating. The one-upping each other in the shitty to each other department, the need to assert herself…
“When Maddy threatened another student with a pair of scissors because she’d had an affair with Eddie and nearly shaved her head, we insisted she see a psychiatrist.” Eugene looked a hundred years old all of a sudden, and Patience looked away.
Frankie’s fingers suddenly tightened on mine, and the bite of her nails dug into my skin.
“She refused at first, but when she faced actual criminal charges, she made a deal to seek psychiatric help if the charges were dropped, and unfortunately, we made sure that happened—the charges being dropped.”
I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for these people or throttle them. “What happened?”
When Frankie started to pull her hand away, I tightened my grip and glanced over to find her mouth whitening as it compressed. She was probably biting the inside of her lip or her cheek. Either way, I didn’t want her focused on Maddy’s actions, they were taking a long roundabout way of answering her question, which left me suspicious as hell about what their answer would be.
“She saw a psychologist for a few months, and I thought it was going well, but I should have known better.” Patience sighed. “The next year or so, things escalated with Eddie and they escalated here. Her acting out took on an entirely different kind of flare. There was a far meaner edge to it. Eventually, Eugene told her if she couldn’t be respectful, she couldn’t return here. Then…Eddie got the girl pregnant.” She cast me a look. “I’m sorry, Archie.”
“Well, I’m here, I can’t be too upset about it.” What did they want? An apology? It was Frankie’s turn to grip my hand.
“Maddy seemed to be truly devastated,” Eugene admitted. “She tried to kill herself the day after Muriel and Eddie married.”
Frankie flinched.
“We kept it quiet, swept it away so no one would know, and insisted she go back to her psychologist.” Patience looked away. “Unfortunately, that man was part of the problem. Maddy had seduced him at some point. Then she just ignored us, went back to school like everything was normal, but she was in the social columns constantly, a new man every weekend. She went after all of Eddie’s friends. She was acting out her hurt. And then she got pregnant herself, and I’m afraid that was the final straw.”
“Young lady—Frankie,” Eugene said in a weary voice. “You asked why we didn’t do anything, but we did want to do something for you. At first, we wanted her to marry the father, but she refused to identify him, and then we were quite afraid she’d gone and gotten herself pregnant with Eddie. But that came to naught. When I told her I’d cut her off if she didn’t at least contact the father, she emptied her bank accounts and walked away. She refused to speak to us. The only reason we knew about your birth was because Ted told us.”
That lined up with what Grandpa told me.
“I did try to reach out to her,” Patience said. “After you were born, but she refused to take my calls. Then she disappeared entirely. I found out later she changed her name.” She glanced at her husband. “She used my maiden name—Curtis. We paid a private investigator to find her, and it took time to even realize she had changed her name. That day I came to visit…that was after Eugene’s heart attack. She’d refused all our calls, sent back our letters as addressee unknown, even when we sent them to you. I wanted to try and repair that relationship, but she refused to listen to anything I had to say. What she wanted was for me to apologize and admit we’d been wrong. When I threatened to take you from her, she told me she would kill you first.”
The fuck? Frankie flinched, and I stared at them.
“That is why we withheld contact, because I believed her. You were hers and only hers. The only thing in her life no one could take from her, and she’d kill you before she allowed it.” A distinct fog of tears touched her voice as Patience spoke. “I love Maddy very much, but there is something deeply wrong with her. We should have done more, but…”
“But we were afraid,” Eugene said slowly. “She wanted nothing to do with us or our money. We told her about changing the terms of the trust fund. I’d hoped that would encourage her…”
“Because you thought she wanted your money,” Frankie said in a raw voice that had me wanting to strangle everyone involved. Her nails dug crescents into my hand, but I didn’t let go. She could draw blood if she needed.
“She wants control,” Eugene admitted. “For us to surrender everything to her because we were wrong. After she threatened you, though, we couldn’t risk it, so we backed off. You seemed happy and healthy according to Patience.”
Frankie snorted as she fell back in the seat.
“We hoped if we gave her what she wanted…”
“You know, it sounds to me like you gave her what she wanted all the time,” Frankie said slowly, and I glanced over to find her not looking at them but looking up at the sky. It was coolish outside, but the sun shone down on their warm little room, giving them an illusion of a much warmer spring. “And you decided that it was better to leave me with someone who threatened to kill me if you interfered. That seemed reasonable to you.”
“She did like to exaggerate,” Patience said quietly, but there was no mistaking the devastation in her voice. They had believed her. It was why they’d retreated.
I could le
ave it alone, but I wouldn’t. “You don’t believe that,” I said flatly. “You were afraid of her. You have been for a long time. You couldn’t control her, not even with money or power or emotion. You tried to get her help, but she sabotaged that. You covered up her crimes, bought her out of trouble, and then when a child was involved, you distanced yourselves.”
“Frankie is fine,” Eugene said in a firm voice, then glanced over at her as if making sure. “We had every intention of reaching out to you on your eighteenth birthday, when she couldn’t interfere. When you called…we were relieved.”
Relieved.
I pinched the bridge of my nose as Frankie withdrew her hand. “Okay.” Just that one word, two simple syllables, but her expression was so guarded, I had zero trouble seeing the walls going up. “Do you know who my father is?”
“No,” Patience said quietly. “We tried to find out, but it would seem she’d been very promiscuous in those last few months. Losing Eddie cost her something deeply, and I don’t think either of us realized how bad it was.”
“My grandfather said you cut her off,” I interjected. Because right now, I believed them, but I also believed Grandpa.
“It’s what you told people,” Frankie answered for them, and there was so much empty disdain in her voice. “To cover up her choices again. You erased her bad actions by shifting the blame of her departure to something you decided, not her. I guess appearances were very important.”
The fact Patience paled and Eugene couldn’t look at her pretty much confirmed it. “Well, good to know that you didn’t really care what happened to either of them as long as it happened far away.” Yeah that earned me a dark look from Eugene Grayson. Sorry Grandpa, he might’ve been your friend, but I wasn’t impressed. My parents sucked, but Grandpa hadn’t distanced himself from me, even when they fought.
At least I’d always known he was out there.
“There’s a trust for you,” Patience said, scooting forward as though those words were an olive branch to repair the breach between them.