An Arm and a Leg Page 11

  She headed for the door, opened it and stuck her head out. As if it were an oscillating fan perched atop her neck, her head swiveled back and forth as her eyes strained for a glimpse of the Chevy. But the guy had apparently been smart enough to stay indoors on this chilly morning.

  Relieved, Frankie stepped through the door, pulled it closed behind her, and engaged the deadbolt. She stuck the house key in her pocket along with a canister of pepper spray and headed toward the street.

  The icy air teased its way through the fabric of her knit mittens. Its frigid fingers searched for a way under the headband protecting her ears, while the moisture from her breath curled up around her cheeks and disappeared over her head.

  The neighborhood dogs remained quiet in recognition of the small human who passed through their domain each morning. She waved at her neighbor Lola, a sweet elderly woman who’d brought food when Tim died.

  Deep in thought, Frankie barely glanced at the vaguely familiar young jogger who approached her from the opposite direction. He nodded at her, his slightly pockmarked face smiling and friendly. She absently nodded back.

  At the end of her walk, she pulled her house key from her zippered pocket, unlocked the thick wood front door and stepped into the entryway. Collette, true to form, hurtled out of the semi-darkness, caromed off her right thigh and disappeared again into the unlit hallway.

  “Okay,” she said to the cat’s retreating backside, “you’ve made your point.”

  She opened a bag of gourmet dry cat food, measured one third cup into the cat’s food dish, and set it on the floor in front of the feline. Collette threw a withering look of reproof over her shoulder, the look as articulate as any words as to how she felt about the small portion.

  “Don’t pull that look at me. The vet says you need to lose some weight. No one’s going to adopt a fat kitty.”

  After she’d showered and dressed, Frankie put the teapot on. She selected a jar of chocolate mint tea from her stash of homemade teas, dropped a teaspoonful into the infuser of her porcelain teapot, and poured not-quite-boiling water over it. She steeped the tea for exactly three minutes, filled her insulated travel mug with the brew and headed for the garage.

  For the next three hours she went through the two drawer metal filing cabinet containing Uncle Mike’s important papers. She made two piles: one to keep and one to trash.

  Schooled in the art of making do on very few resources, Uncle Mike had never thrown anything away. The discovery of an electric bill from twenty-five years ago stiffened Frankie’s resolve to go through her own papers and throw out anything over three years old.

  In the second drawer she spotted a manila folder with the words Documents - in case of need written in her uncle’s nearly illegible scribble. She opened the folder and pulled out a pile of legal papers, some of them brittle and yellowed with age.

  At the top of the stack she found an original death certificate for someone named Jonathan Christopher Stanton dated thirty-two years ago. Behind that were two birth certificates, one for a female named Colleen Frances Stanton, and another for a baby boy named Peter Timothy Stanton. The father for both was listed as Jonathan Stanton, the mother a Kelby Jean Stanton. Both births took place at Llano Estacado Memorial Hospital in Plainview, Texas.

  Although Uncle Mike had never come right out and said so, he’d led Frankie and Tim to believe they were born in Albuquerque. Why would he lie about that?

  Adoption papers behind the birth certificates indicated Michael James O’Neil in Hale County Texas had adopted a girl three years old and a boy age eight months. At the bottom of the final page were the signatures of her mother, Uncle Mike, Uncle Mike’s attorney, and a judge. Each signature was followed by a date.

  The image of her young, terminally ill mother signing away her two small children brought tears to Frankie’s eyes. It must have been tough to know she would not live to see her children grow up. Heartbreaking to know that they were so young they would not even remember her within a few years.

  Like an elastic string yanks a paddleball backward against its wooden paddle, her eyes jerked back to the date at the bottom of the document. Assuming it was not a typographical error, the paper had been signed over a year after Uncle Mike said their mother had died. He’d lied about that as well.

  Bits and pieces of memory, meaningless when taken singly, began to coalesce. Things like Uncle Mike’s anger when Frankie or Tim asked questions about the circumstances surrounding their mother’s death. He’d adamantly refused to talk about their parents at all. She’d always chalked the anger up to her uncle’s inability to deal with the loss of his sister.

  Careful not to damage the documents, she replaced them in the manila folder. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her poncho and punched in a number.

  “Buenos días, Nana Alma,” she said. “Any chance you’d let me buy you lunch tomorrow? I’d like to talk to you about some things.”

  “Of course, mi’jita. It’s been too long.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  For the better part of two hours the next morning Frankie went through her ritual. The process was beginning to eat up way too much time, and once she started back to work she’d have to make some adjustments. But for now she needed the sense of security that came with looking over her provisions. And hadn’t she read somewhere that it was a good thing to have a stockpile of non-perishables in case of an emergency?

  She remembered a television documentary about people who never threw anything away. Their houses became so filled with trash and filth that many of them were declared health and fire hazards. A couple of them were even slated to be torn down.

  But Frankie only collected food, not random garbage. And she kept her stash neatly organized. She wasn’t like those people on television, was she?

  She pulled a plastic box from her hall closet, set it on the kitchen table, and pulled off the lid. She lifted out the check books she’d taken from the junk drawer in Tim’s kitchen.

  As Flatte suggested, she scanned the carbon copies of the few checks her brother had written over the past two years. Most of them were for rent on Tim’s apartment. She’d have to get account details from his bank, but he’d made notations of debit card purchases and an occasional cash ATM withdrawal. None were ever more than a couple of hundred dollars. He’d apparently used online banking to pay his utility, cell phone, and other bills. The checking account balance, currently less than twenty dollars, hadn’t reached more than five thousand dollars.

  Frankie went over the register again, but found no record of the funds Tim had mentioned in his letter. And she didn’t find any payments to Jeremy Flatte. At first she’d thought he might have used plastic to pay his bills, but no credit cards had been found in his wallet, and no bills had come in the mail.

  Feeling like a student unable to understand a simple math concept that had been repeated over and over for her benefit, she headed for her closet to select an outfit for her lunch with her old nanny. Maybe Alma could clear up the questions about the documents she’d found. And maybe she knew what really happened to her mother.

  ****

  As Frankie pulled into Alma’s driveway the old woman came out to greet her. Of substantial yet rock solid weight, Alma’s strides were strong and her body nimble, even though she must be nearing eighty. Her thick, silver hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her walnut colored face creased in a smile as she enveloped Frankie in a bear hug and half dragged her toward the house.

  “Did you think I would allow you to spend your money on food when I can still cook?” Alma pushed the front door open. “Come inside, I’ve made some of your favorites.”

  The chiles rellenos, enchilada and refritos meal accompanied by warm, buttered, homemade flour tortillas was as flavorful and marvelous as any Frankie could remember. The two women chatted amiably as they ate, and Frankie basked in the love of the only mother figure she’d ever known.

  After lunch, the two washed and put a
way the dishes before Alma pulled out the stainless steel, stove-top percolator she’d used since Frankie was a kid.

  “Go make yourself comfortable in the living room. I’ll bring you a cup.” Alma began measuring coffee grounds into the percolator’s basket.

  Frankie wandered around the living room, looking at the family photos displayed on the walls. Spread out like a geological timeline, the earliest photos started at one corner, ending with the later ones at the other. Memories tugged at her heart as her eyes slid over the photos of a young Uncle Mike, an adorable smiling infant Tim, and her own image, her teenaged mouth filled with shining metal braces.

  Why did otherwise intelligent people insist on displaying pictorial proof that life was terminal, proof that we will inevitably lose the ones we love? What masochism drove humans to memorialize the havoc wreaked on each other by time? To lovingly capture its inescapable march as baby teeth erupted and disappeared, as first love burst onto the scene and left heartbreak in its wake, and finally as wrinkles appeared, eyelids drooped, chins sagged.

  But worst of all were the changes to the eyes. The sparkling, joyful, in-the-moment gaze of the toddler became the insecure, self-conscious sideways glance of the teen, which then dimmed into the life-hardened, the desperate, the lonely stare of…

  Tears pricked at Frankie’s eyes, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. That was the trouble with photos—they kept you bound to the past. Kept you from focusing on now.

  “Do you still take your coffee black,” Alma called out from the kitchen, “or have you taken to drinking that artificially flavored swill?”

  “Still black and strong enough to float a new quarter,” Frankie yelled back. She turned away from the photos and walked to the sofa.

  Alma returned with two thick ceramic mugs. Ribbons of steam curled upward from each cup, wafting the marvelous fragrance of freshly-brewed coffee into the room. She handed a mug to Frankie and sat down on the sofa next to her.

  “What’s troubling you, mi’jita?”

  Frankie’s face heated up.

  Alma chuckled. “No need for embarrassment. I’m happy you called and I’m very glad to see you. But I know you too well not to know when something’s up. What is it?”

  Frankie described the papers she’d found. “Do you know anything about our adoption?”

  Alma’s gaze dropped to the mug she cradled in her hands. “I know your uncle loved you and Timmy as if you were his own. I know he always did what he thought best for both of you. What more do you need to know?”

  “I need to know how our mother could have signed the papers over a year after Uncle Mike said she died. I need to know why Uncle Mike basically changed our names. I need to know who I really am.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed at what I can tell you. Your uncle hired me at the same time he brought you and Timmy home.” Alma’s eyes shifted to the right, just above Frankie’s head. “I never saw these papers you describe.”

  “Nana, did Uncle Mike ever tell you our parents’ real names?”

  “If he did, I don’t remember it. No, he never spoke of family history. You know how he felt about that.”

  “Only too well.”

  Alma patted Frankie’s shoulder and looked into her eyes. “Then perhaps you should leave the past alone.”

  “That sounds fine in theory. The problem is the past won’t leave me alone.”

  “And how is that?”

  “I’m afraid I may be losing my mind.” Frankie looked into her old nanny’s eyes, her own filling with unshed tears. “I’m hearing things.”

  She was surprised to see Alma smile. “Things?”

  “Voices.”

  “Ah. Voices of your dead relatives?”

  Frankie’s astonished look must have been comical, because Alma laughed. “I’m sorry, mi’jita.” She laid her hand on the younger woman’s arm. “I know it’s not funny to you. I’m just so glad you’re finally opening yourself to be who you’re meant to be.”

  “Who I’m…” Frankie shook her head as if trying to dislodge a huge spider web from the corners of her mind. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you hear voices because you’re fae, Child. Fae, like your Irish ancestors.”

  “Fae? What does that mean?”

  “It means you were born in the caul. Your mother’s water never broke. You were delivered while still in the amniotic sac, a sure sign of the gift.”

  “But what has that got to do with my hearing voices?”

  “The gift shows itself differently in every one who receives it. With your uncle it was the ability to understand what other people were thinking. That’s what made him an extraordinary operative. As for you, you’ve been given the ability to hear and talk to your Irish ancestors.”

  Frankie searched Alma’s face for any sign that she might be joking. But her old nanny just sat there, her face beaming in innocent delight.

  “So being fae made Uncle Mike a hero while it makes me look like a lunatic? Not sure how I feel about that.”

  Alma chuckled. “I know very little about these things. Only what your uncle told me when you began to show signs of having the gift. He was so afraid you’d misunderstand it, but was more afraid of how the world would deal with you.”

  “And Tim?”

  Alma pursed her lips and sighed. “Timmy was a wonderful young man. Smart, generous, kind. But he wasn’t fae.” She smiled, a far-away look in her eyes. “I remember coming into your room when you were small, and there you were in your Wonder Woman pajamas, standing in the center of your room, laughing and chatting away with someone I could neither see, nor hear. As you got older, the other kids probably made fun of you. For whatever reason, you pushed it away until it eventually grew silent.”

  “I don’t remember any of that.”

  Alma patted Frankie’s hand. “Now that you’ve opened your heart to the gift, it will come when the time is right.” She stood and picked up the empty mugs. “Can I get you more coffee?”

  “No thanks, I’d better get going. I still have several errands to run.”

  After goodbye hugs and promises to call more often, Frankie walked to her car.

  She was no nearer the truth about her past now than before, but she had learned a couple of things. Not only was her old nanny growing senile—all that talk of some kind of fae thing—but Frankie was convinced Uncle Mike had told her a family secret. A secret of such magnitude that Alma wouldn’t speak of it, even years after his death.

  Your past helps make you who you are. But your job is to learn from it, not allow it to define you.

  As if a cold draught had blown across her scalp, Frankie’s hair moved and she shivered. Because although she didn’t understand how she knew it, this voice wasn’t Uncle Mike’s, Tim’s, or Jenny’s—it was Grandmother O’Neil’s. And she’d died long before Frankie was born.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Once she’d completed the legal paperwork to donate her Jeep to a new mission sponsored by her church, Frankie called the young pastor and explained her intentions. He offered copious thanks and said he could be there within the hour to pick it up.

  To pass the time, she made hot tea and sat at her dining table. She pulled Tim’s laptop toward her and turned it on.

  The screen lit and the monitor wallpaper blinked on to reveal a photo of Uncle Mike with his arms resting on the shoulders of a teenaged Tim and Frankie. The photo should have brought a smile at memories of happier times. Instead, it seared her heart with grief.

  Other than the dock running along the bottom of the screen, no icons appeared on Tim’s computer screen. She clicked through various windows and drop-down menus before clicking on the Documents icon. Among dozens of files, she spotted one labeled Journal.

  The tempo of her pulse kicked up a notch as she opened the file and scanned Tim’s daily entries, the first dated nearly two years ago. Written in a tone of excitement, the first pages included interesting bits of arcane m
edical anecdotes and stories about people with whom he worked.

  At first, Tim’s words reflected his joy and gratitude at being allowed to fulfill his dream of becoming an anesthetist. But they soon grew morose, questioning, and filled with doubts about his vocational choice.

  It broke Frankie’s heart that her brother had kept all his pain inside—that he hadn’t felt he could come to her with his concerns.

  At the end of the word processed pages Tim had attached a five-column spreadsheet. The leftmost column consisted of thirty-two names. Next to each one Tim had typed in things like ft amp and kid rem. Possible abbreviations for medical procedures? Foot amputation? Kidney removal? Dates filled the third column, and the fourth listed dollar amounts. The mostly-blank fifth column contained a few dates, the most recent only days before Tim’s death.

  She could understand why her conscientious brother might keep a record of his patients. But surely he’d performed medical services for more than thirty-two people over his two-year residency.

  And the costs he’d listed, if that’s what they were, had to be wrong. There was no way a kidney removal would be billed at only three thousand dollars. And where, outside a slaughter house, could a foot amputation be done for only one thousand dollars? And what were the dates in the fifth column, follow-up visits? If so, why were there only five?

  Frankie shut off the laptop. Time for a trip to the hospital to pick up Tim’s personal things and have a chat with Mina Landowski, a nurse who’d sent flowers to the funeral. Maybe she could shed some light on what had been going on in Tim’s life that made him, as Flatte said, behave as if he needed to get his house in order.

  She checked the locks on her windows, set the Katy bar on the back door, turned on the barking dog, and grabbed her purse and jacket. After ensuring she’d put a canister of pepper spray in her purse, she locked the front door and headed for her car.

  She drove to the hospital, parked in the visitors’ lot, and made her way to the main entrance. The double glass doors opened when she stepped onto the black rubber pressure pad in front of them, then shushed closed behind her. As if it had been lying in wait, the smell common to hospitals everywhere enveloped her, and she wrinkled her nose.