When We Were Friends, page 5
Lexi’s eyes watered again. “It’s always intense.” She blinked quickly. “I keep screwing things up. Getting a dog was supposed to be our thing, Teeny and me. But I’m in over my head and...” Her shoulders shook with silent sobs.
“Oh, Lex.”
Frannie took Lexi’s tea and set down both glasses on the picnic table. She laid a hand on Lexi’s shoulder. Lexi threw herself into Frannie’s arms and sobbed harder. Frannie stiffened, overwhelmed and unsure of how to respond. She patted Lexi’s back until the crying subsided then pulled away.
“Sorry,” Lexi said. She wiped away her tears. “I just... Sometimes it’s so overwhelming. I work with little kids all day long. I get them, and they love me. And then I come home, and my stepdaughter doesn’t even want to...” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Sorry,” she repeated.
Frannie shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. It’s a lot. She lost her mom so young, and here you are trying to...” Frannie stopped speaking before she could say ‘replace her mom.’ That was probably how Bettina felt, but that was unfair to Lexi, a woman who just wanted to love and be loved.
Lexi stared at her, waiting for something, some words of wisdom. Damn, she was looking to the wrong person for that.
“It just takes time,” Frannie said. “With dogs, you know. Max needs time to adjust, to learn to trust.” What was she saying? Why was she going on about the mutt when it was so obviously the kid breaking Lexi’s heart? She was total shit at giving advice about something so important.
But Lexi nodded. “Yes, we all need time to adjust.”
“There is one thing that might help,” Frannie said. “I know it’s not my business, but she told me she wants to be called Bettina, not Teeny.”
Lexi frowned. “Rob gave her that nickname when she was a baby.”
“But she’s not anymore. I think that’s her point.” Frannie waited for a backlash. Who was she to tell Rob and Lexi how to raise their kid?
“No, she’s not. Thanks for telling me that.” She squeezed Frannie’s hand.
Frannie had braced herself for an angry comeback, but she wasn’t prepared for Lexi’s gratitude. “You’ve got this now, and I have to run.”
Far and fast and forever.
Lexi wasn’t the only one in over her head. Family friend, kid helper, mutt tamer. It was all way beyond Frannie’s capabilities. She was in the deep end and sinking fast. And her thirty days couldn’t be over soon enough.
CHAPTER FIVE
Frannie stood in the middle of a narrow aisle in Patty’s Grocery and Packet Store, a printout of her list in her hand. The prison commissary had been limited, but there had been a comfort in that. Now she stared at row after row of vinegar. How in god’s name could there be a need for more than a dozen brands and half a dozen types of vinegar in a town with 2,432 people? She finally did the sensible thing and closed her eyes and grabbed a bottle off the apple cider shelf.
“Interesting selection technique.” She jumped at the sound of a male voice behind her. “Very discerning.”
“Seth Collins.” She turned to face him, surprised to find him just a few feet away from her but relieved that she wasn’t being tailed by store security as she had been more than a few times back in Madison, in the grocery store near her halfway house. “Are you following me?”
“No. Not that it’s a bad idea.”
Frannie slipped sideways and started walking—fast—in search of the next ingredient on her list. Apparently undeterred, Seth kept pace with her.
“I hope stalking me isn’t going to become a habit for you. There are laws, you know.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Then took a second look. He might be a pain in the ass, but he was a fine specimen of man.
The grin that widened on his face told her he hadn’t missed her double take.
“This is purely coincidental,” he said. “I swear. I’m picking up supplies. I’m staying at the motel for a few days to oversee the new integrated security system for Patrice’s businesses.”
“Army pay must not go very far.”
“Army pay is fine, and they’re pretty strict about moonlighting. I’m just doing Patrice a friendly favor.”
Frannie turned down the next aisle and stopped in front of the baking soda. “There’s a motel in this one-horse town? I must have missed it.”
“Just outside the town limits, north off of State Road 3. Patty’s Roadside Inn.”
Frannie shook her head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is there a business in this town my boss doesn’t own? And are they all named after her daughter?”
“Yes to the second question. As to the first, a few dentists’ and doctors’ offices. The pharmacy on Main. The two gas stations. Although she did threaten to open a car wash to compete with the Gas and Go if old man Wentworth didn’t step up the detailing service.”
“You sound like a local,” Frannie said. “Why are you staying at a motel?”
“I live close to Camp Atterbury. My place is about an hour away, and I didn’t feel like driving back and forth all weekend.”
Seth pulled a box of baking soda from the shelf and dropped it into Frannie’s shopping basket. She raised an eyebrow and glanced from the box to his face.
“It’s point five cents cheaper per ounce than the other brands,” he said then shrugged. “Can’t be any worse than your very scientific selection technique.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my technique. You need to fixate less on it.” She kept the box he had picked and moved along the aisle.
“I can’t,” he said as he kept pace with her. “I’ve been thinking about your technique since I saw you at the diner Thursday. Or at least, what I imagine to be your technique. Blame my Y chromosome.”
Frannie blushed. She couldn’t remember the last time something had embarrassed her enough to make that happen. “Yeah, see, this is how you get labeled a stalker.”
He pulled a box of high-protein granola cereal from the shelf as they passed it, without missing a step in keeping up with her. Good reflexes. Not that she was thinking about his reflexes. Or his technique. Except at the moment, she couldn’t think of anything else.
“I’d prefer to be a suitor.” He stopped walking, and despite herself, Frannie stopped with him. “Unless you’re not interested. Seriously, Frannie, I’m not trying to be a creeper. But I would like to make you dinner.” He peered into her basket. “Especially now that I see you’re living on apple cider vinegar, baking soda, and aloe vera?”
“I leave the cooking to Oscar at the diner. This stuff is to make shampoo.” She ran a hand through her hair when he glanced at it. “Not for me. For a dog. It’s a long story.”
“You can tell me over dinner. At your place. I don’t have a kitchen at the motel.”
He was giving her that intense look with the half smile that he had given her that day at her locker, when she had sworn he was on the cusp of asking her out, and against her better judgment, she had been on the verge of accepting. Then he had talked about a party instead, and the bell had rung, and they had gone off to their own classes, and a couple of months later he had graduated and left Smithton. Now here they were, reconnecting, less than a week after she had reconnected with Lexi, in a small town a hundred miles from where they had all grown up.
Frannie started walking again. She didn’t want to look into his eyes when he answered her questions. “You mentioned Lexi a few times at the diner. Are you still in touch with her?”
“I’ve seen Lexi, yeah. I asked her about you, about how you were doing. I was surprised when she said you wouldn’t see her.”
Adrenaline made Frannie’s hands shake. Fight-or-flight was kicking in, the way it had the first day she had walked down the street here and most days those first couple of weeks after she had been paroled. And the few times she had been cornered in prison, before she had agreed to pass along some messages for an embezzler, an arrangement that had bought Frannie some safety for the rest of her sentence.
“It’s weird that you’re both here in this tiny town,” she said.
“Not so weird. I’m the reason Lexi is here.”
Frannie stopped and stared at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. They had arrived at the meat counter, and he began picking through packets of filet mignon. “Do you like steak, Frannie?”
Steak. The word made her mouth water. She hadn’t had steak in years. There had occasionally been a grayish blob referred to as steak in the prison cafeteria, but she had learned to steer clear of that pretty fast. She had been living frugally since she had been paroled, saving every penny she earned as a shampoo lady that she didn’t absolutely have to spend to survive. The money Lexi owed her was the real nest egg, but until Frannie had that in her possession, she wasn’t taking anything for granted.
“I like steak.” She was letting herself get distracted. “But what do you mean, you’re the reason Lexi’s here?”
“I told her about this place when I ran into her back home. It was about a month after I’d heard what happened to you.” He glanced at her. “She said she couldn’t stand to live there anymore, and she couldn’t go back to college. An army buddy of mine grew up around here, and I’d visited him a few times. I told Lexi about it. I thought she might like it.”
Frannie nodded. “This is a Lexi kind of place. I thought that the first minute I saw it.”
Seth held a packet of steak over his shopping basket. “So, did I pass? Do I have permission to come over and cook for you?”
The steak looked tempting. The man holding it looked absolutely mouthwatering. There was no way in hell she should give in to the temptation of either of them, but she hadn’t been on a date since before prison, and she hadn’t ever had a man—other than diner cooks—make dinner for her. And there was that matter of the schoolgirl crush she’d had on this scholar/jock/dater-of-cheerleaders after that one charged conversation at her locker. What could it hurt to take a bite of the forbidden apple? She would be long gone before it could bite her back.
“Okay, dinner,” she said.
“Tonight okay?”
Yes, yes, yes. She took a deep breath. “Well, maybe. I mean, I guess that will work for me.”
He dropped the steak into his basket. “Good. Now all we have to decide is what vegetables I’ll make and what time I can come over.”
“As for vegetables, anything that’s not boiled.” She grimaced at the memory of four years of soggy green stuff. “As for time, that depends. Have you ever bathed a dog, Seth?”
He looked down at her basket. “That long story you were telling me about?”
“Yep.”
“Bathing a dog is one thing I haven’t done, but I’m a hella fast learner.”
That comment shouldn’t have made her pulse throb in her throat the way it did. At this rate, she would be biting into that apple before they even got to the dessert course. She flashed a smile and hoped her face didn’t betray her lewd thoughts. “Then meet me in the yard behind the apartment building beside the diner in two hours.”
He grinned. “The apartment building Patrice owns? I’ll be there. Now get out of here while I find ingredients for dessert.”
Maybe she had given away her secret thoughts with a stupid look on her face. She cleared her throat. “What am I getting for dessert?”
He dropped his gaze to her lips then looked into her eyes. The heat from his stare ran down every inch of her spine and the backs of her legs, into the tips of her toes. “Any damn thing you want, Frannie.”
With another grin, he turned on his heel and left her drooling beside the refrigerated case of raw beef.
She almost called after him to tell him the dog they were washing belonged to Lexi’s stepdaughter, but she stopped herself. Some instinct told her she should surprise him, should surprise him and Lexi both with their meeting that afternoon. Even with Seth’s explanation of how he had introduced Lexi to Licking, something didn’t sit right with her.
She was being paranoid, but paranoia had kept her senses sharp and her person relatively unharmed those years behind bars. Paranoia reminded her to keep her distance from people around her. Paranoia worked for Frannie. She wasn’t about to give it up now.
LEXI PARKED HER MINIVAN across the street from Frannie’s apartment building. It had been years since she had driven over to Frannie’s place. And this time she was bringing Teeny and Max with her. Old life and new life, weaving together into a seamless tapestry, like the threads of the friendship bracelets she and Frannie had made a week after meeting each other.
“And this time it will be fine, Max. I promise.” Teeny was stroking the dog’s head as he lolled on the back seat beside her. “Francesca promised too.”
Lexi smiled as she watched them in the rearview mirror. Today had been a good day, and Lexi had Frannie to thank for that. Teeny and possibly even Max already trusted her. They knew she would take care of them, just as Lexi had known when she had walked up to the most fearless girl she had ever seen, a girl fearless enough to sit alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime and read her Goosebumps book and not give a toss what anyone thought of it. Fearless enough to tell Seth’s brother to back off when he had pulled Lexi’s ponytail that first day. Fearless enough to take care of Lexi all those years, until that fateful night when Frannie had sent Lexi off to the hospital and continued on without her, until the police had caught up with Frannie in some backwater town in Kentucky and dragged her back to Indiana.
As she had already done multiple times that day, Lexi repeated her intention mantra she had set during her morning meditation. Today, Frannie and I will take a step forward in our relationship. She took a cleansing breath in through her nose and blew it out through her mouth.
“Hey, Teeny... I mean, Bettina. What would you and Max think of calling Frannie Aunt Frannie?”
Teeny glanced up and met Lexi’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Max doesn’t talk.”
“I know that.” Lexi forced patience into her voice. “I guess I meant you could call her Aunt Frannie, and he’d know who you meant by that.”
“Oh.” She returned to petting Max’s head. “But she’s not my aunt,” Teeny said. “Daddy and Mommy don’t have sisters and brothers.”
She didn’t mean to be sharp, at least that was what Teeny’s teacher and Rob both kept telling Lexi. But it still cut Lexi to the quick when the normally sweet girl, now her daughter, dismissed her ideas or affections. They had grown so close when Lexi was Bettina’s preschool teacher and even in the early months of Lexi dating Rob. But by the time Lexi was in love with both of them, Bettina had distanced herself from Lexi.
Lexi swallowed the lump in her throat. “But Frannie’s like a sister to me, and we’re all a family now.”
Bettina glanced up at the rearview mirror again. “I think Francesca and me would think that’s weird.”
With that, she unbuckled her seat belt and grabbed Max’s pink leash. She opened the door and hopped out onto the sidewalk.
Lexi joined them and took Max’s leash in one hand and Teeny’s hand in the other. At least the girl still hung on tightly and smiled up at Lexi as she practically skipped across the street.
“You said Francesca told you she made dog shampoo. I told Max it would make him beautiful but not itchy. That’s what will happen, right?”
God, Lexi hoped so. She squeezed Teeny’s hand. “I’m sure of it. Come on, Max. You have to give it a try.”
The dog got distracted by the fire hydrant in front of Frannie’s building, although he seemed more interested in lying down next to it than in marking it. Lexi shook her head. Poor misfit mutt. He was the one she had hoped Teeny would pick, but even she sometimes had her doubts he would ever be a normal dog. And of all the kids in the world, Teeny needed something normal in her life.
They’d had to schedule his grooming at Frannie’s place because he refused to set foot in the backyard at home since the fiasco of their last attempt to wash him. He seemed to be taking the same attitude about Frannie’s yard, which was impossible since he had never been in it. It took a few more minutes to coax him to enter, with Lexi tugging at his leash and Bettina pushing him from behind. When they finally crossed the threshold of the wrought-iron gate into the yard, Frannie, who had been waiting there for them, closed it behind him. He whipped his head around and looked at Frannie.
“Yeah, I know how you feel, buddy.” For just an instant, Frannie’s expression was wistful, but she covered it fast with a smile and a tousle of Teeny’s hair.
For at least the thousandth time, Lexi wished she could do something to change what had happened, to wipe out those years of gates and fences and prison walls that had closed in her best friend. But there were no magical spells or incense-fueled incantations to fix what Lexi had broken.
“Hey,” Frannie said to Lexi in greeting. She pointed to Lexi’s bright-blue rain boots. “Good choice. You probably should have worn your raincoat too.”
Lexi moved forward to hug Frannie, but she had already turned away to follow Teeny and Max into the yard. Frannie laughed at something Teeny said as she pointed to Max, who barked and romped off to a distant corner of the fence, and then Teeny laughed too. Lexi laid her hand on her belly and blinked back tears. This is good. They’re bonding. This is what I wanted. It wasn’t a lie so much as it was a half-truth. The whole truth was that Lexi wanted to be invited inside their happy bubble with them.
“Hey.” Frannie smiled at Lexi. “Come on, Lex. Let’s teach you how to wash a dog the right way.”
That was it, the invitation she had been waiting for. Now Lexi laughed, too, and walked with Frannie to join Teeny and Max by the fence.
The screen door squeaked behind them, and Frannie glanced over her shoulder. Her smile widened, which made Lexi turn, curious about who could make her friend beam that way. Lexi sucked in her breath in surprise.
“Seth!” Lexi called.
“Lexi!” He looked as shocked as she was.
Seth set down two glasses of iced tea on the wooden picnic table a few feet from the back of the building and crossed the yard. He held out his hand, and Lexi shook it instinctively, only wondering about the formality after she dropped his hand, which was cold and moist from the glasses. She glanced between him and Frannie, trying to figure out when and why they had reconnected.
