— AUSTIN —
16. SALT IN MY WOUNDS
“Did you hear that?” Pauly asked, coming up beside me and looking around in concern.
I heard it all right. It was the glorious sound of 1,000 ping pong balls tumbling unexpectedly out of a closet.
“No worries. Just a little surprise I left for Frankie.” Little my ass. Her entire floor was probably covered. I chuckled. Ping-pong balls might not be as hard to get rid of as glitter, but they were infinitely more satisfying.
“Where is she?” Pauly looked around. “I hope she doesn’t think I’m doing this by myself.”
I threw a scowl in his direction, but he had his back turned to me, still searching out his sister. I wanted to remind him that Frankie had been doing a lot all by herself for weeks, but it wasn’t my place to get involved in sibling politics. Even if Pauly had often felt like an older brother when we were kids.
“She got a call from a possible sponsor, but she had to meet them this morning. I offered to stay and help,” I said.
Pauly lifted an eyebrow. “You really want to spend your Saturday selling my family’s junk? Man, I don’t even want to be here.” He had on his typical DiGorgio tough guy attitude, but I saw the way he looked at the items around us, at the many individual meaningless things that when put together meant everything—Nana’s home.
I lifted my hands and shrugged in mock carelessness. “Hey, if you don’t need my help, I can go hang out by the pool. It’s gonna be a hot one.”
Hot was an understatement. It was already eighty-five degrees, and it was barely eight in the morning. That didn’t seem to be phasing the hard-core yard sale shoppers, though. They had already descended upon the DiGorgio yard like ants at a picnic.
“You’re a dick.” From Pauly, that was almost a compliment. He tossed a glance in the direction of my pool, probably remembering all the times my mother refused to let him, and his brothers, come over to swim.
I slung my arm over his shoulder. “First we sell, then we swim,” I told him.
Pauly adjusted his baseball cap and gave me a grim smile. “Deal,” he said, eyes scanning the flurry of activity around us. “And thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”
“Sure,” I said, heading off to one of the tables. “I didn’t have anything planned today anyway.”
What I didn’t want to tell him was that I would do anything to see that look of hope on Frankie’s face that she had when she answered that phone call. I’d almost forgotten how much I liked seeing that expression. And if suffering in the heat for a few hours could help make that look a permanent fixture on her face, I’d willingly suffer it.
***
“What do you think is taking her so long?” Pauly asked as he lounged on a raft, one leg hanging in the water while he drank a beer.
I shrugged. “I’m guessing it’s going well. If they didn’t want her, she would have been back already.”
Pauly huffed. “Or else she’s taking out her aggression on the trail somewhere.”
I grabbed a beer from the cooler and settled onto a lounge chair in the shade. “Nah. She wouldn’t go out alone. Besides, her bike is still in the garage.”
I started to peel at the label on my bottle, refusing to let Pauly see how anxious I was. Pauly had called Frankie as soon as the yard sale was over, but she hadn’t answered. Which wasn’t unusual for Frankie. At least from what I remembered. She was never a big fan of the phone, always preferring to talk face-to-face because she said she wanted to see the facial expressions of the person she was talking to.
“People can’t lie,” she said with conviction, “if you’re staring them in the face.”
“Sure they can,” I argued. “I’ve seen your brothers lie to Nana a thousand times. Every time they get caught breaking a rule, they tell her they didn’t do it.”
“Yes,” Frankie admitted. “But she knows they’re lying because she can see the lie in their eyes.” She pointed two of her fingers at her own eyes and then at mine, as if to make her point.
Pauly kicked his foot, splashing water in my direction and pulling me out of my memory. “Oh, really?” he asked in a sweet, teasing lilt. “You know where she keeps her bike? Isn’t that precious. Still got it bad for my baby sister, don’t you?”
I glared at him over my bottle of beer. “I live next door, dipshit. It’s not too hard to hear her lugging that thing in and out of the shed every day.” I didn’t bother to tell him that I’d been right next to her using his bike to ride with her.
He just gave me a knowing glance and made a huffing sound of disbelief. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. We sat in silence for a while, the heat of the sun becoming more bearable as afternoon gave way to longer shadows and the creeping coolness of the early evening air settled around us.
Pauly finished his beer, and when my eyes roamed across the yard and fell on the familiar silhouette of the DiGorgio house, I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “So you and your brothers are okay with selling Nana’s house?”
He sighed and took a deep breath but didn’t open his eyes. “Wouldn’t matter what we thought. It’s not our house or our decision to make.”
I drained my beer and set the bottle on the ground, the glass making a hollow clank on the concrete. “Well, Nana doesn’t seem to be in the right state of mind to make that decision. It’s not really fair to leave it up to her.” I felt the heat of my anger and frustration climb across my shoulders and up my neck. I shifted uncomfortably.
“It’s not her house either.”
My brain fired through a dozen different meanings for that comment and it still made no sense. “What?”
Pauly sat up a bit on his raft in the pool, the water sloshing over his waist with the movement as he nearly toppled himself over. After regaining his balance, he heaved out another heavy breath and said, “The house doesn’t belong to Nana. It hasn’t belonged to her in years.” Pauly had to have seen the confusion on my face because he didn’t wait for me to ask another question. “A few years ago, the house had gone into foreclosure. Right around the time you went out to Vegas. Nana never told my brothers and me, but Frankie found out.”
Pauly paused for a moment to let that sink in, but it only birthed another flurry of questions. I had so many things I wanted to ask, but I didn’t know where to start. He saved me the trouble of trying to sort through my confusion.
“After Mom died, Nana was the one who took care of Dad’s legal expenses.” He said “Dad” the same way someone might talk about Hitler—with hatred and disgust. “She borrowed money against the house, but after a while, she couldn’t make the payments. By the time Nana told us, the house was already in foreclosure. Tommy and I were in school, and Jimmy had a young family. We thought she was going to lose the house because none of us had the money to pay off the debt.” He let that comment sink in. “Until Frankie came back from Vegas.”
I’d been staring at the water, but at those words, my gaze locked onto his with laser beam focus. “What do you mean when she came back from Vegas?”
Pauly lowered the bottom of his beer bottle into the pool and watched it make patterns as he twirled it in the water. “Frankie went out for your opening night, just like she said she would. But she left later that same day and went straight to Texas. Before the week was over, she’d sent a check to Nana to pay off the money owed on the house.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said shaking my head. “How much money?”
Pauly’s grin was almost sideways as he answered, “Fifty thousand dollars.”
I almost fucking choked on my tongue. Fifty thousand dollars? “How would Frankie even get that much money?” Surely she didn’t win it gambling. Frankie was lucky, but not that goddamn lucky.
He chuckled. “If you think I’m going to tell you that, you underestimate the fear I have of my baby sister.” His cocky grin said otherwise. “I shouldn’t have said anything at all. Frankie would rip my nut sack off with a pair of pliers if she knew I told you this much.” He lifted his beer to his lips and took a long swig, pool water sluicing down the sides of the bottle and dripping all over him.
My mind was racing, trying to think of ways Frankie could have gotten that much money. None of the possibilities gave me any comfort. I didn’t even want to consider all the reasons that Vegas was popular and how one might walk away fifty grand richer.
Reaching up, I dug my fingers into my hair and dragged them across my scalp, unable to make sense of what Pauly had told me.
“My mom said that Frankie never came out to Vegas,” I mused, as if that was a plausible response. As if that was anywhere near as shocking as the fact that Frankie had that much money in the first place.
Pauly used the leg that was dangling in the water to push his raft toward the side of the pool so that he could come closer to me. “I hate to break it to you, Stone, but your mama lies. Add that she’s a mega bitch and I wouldn’t put much stake in what she says.” Pauly reached down to splash water up over his heated skin.
I stood up and walked to the bar that ran along the back of the house under the pretense of changing the music on my iPod. “So, Frankie came to Vegas?” I asked, staring down at the list of songs, not paying attention to what I chose. “Why did she leave? Why didn’t she come to opening night? She made a promise.” I finally looked up from my iPod.
Pauly smirked at me. “Like I said before, I’m not risking my nut sack to give you any details. You’re going to have to get those from Frankie.”
“But you know what happened,” I prodded. “You know why she left.”
“Of course.”
“So why not just tell me? She’s never going to.”
“She’ll tell you,” he said firmly, almost as a reprimand.
I set the iPod down and the first notes of Mumford and Sons’ “I Will Wait” echoed across the patio. Of course I’d inadvertently chosen this song.
I crossed the patio and collapsed onto the deck chair. “And was her reason a good one?” I asked, although I couldn’t think of how it possibly could be.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. She thought it was a good enough reason.”
I growled in annoyance. It was frustrating to almost have the answers, but not have access to them. Every single one of the DiGorgios was locked up tighter than Fort Knox.
“Fine,” I said, knowing he wasn’t going to tell me any more secrets. A DiGorgio would rather give up their right arm than give up family trust. “So, the house was paid off. If Nana doesn’t own it, who does?”
“Frankie.” Pauly frowned at me like I was an idiot. Maybe I was.
“Nana just gave it to her?” I couldn’t imagine Nana being that frivolous, even if Pauly was right and Frankie had saved the house from foreclosure.
“Have you met Nana?” Pauly asked, incredulous. And by the look he was giving me, I knew he was seriously questioning my intelligence. “Of course she didn’t just give it to her. Nana made us earn a plate of cookies through hard labor. No way she’d hand over her house for nothing.” His mouth twisted in disbelief at my comment and he waved his hand in annoyance. When I didn’t say anything in return, he sighed. “Nana offered to sell the house to Frankie for twenty-five thousand dollars if she could come up with the amount in a year.”
“Why would Nana make a deal like that? And weren’t you and your brothers angry?”
Pauly’s head shot up. “Are you kidding? No one loves this house as much as Frankie. Jimmy made a life for himself down in Texas, Tommy plans to live and work in New York, and even though I’m planning to stay close, I don’t want to live in this town. That house means a lot to me,” he said, gesturing next door, “but Frankie loves it. Nana knew that if she left the house to her, that Frankie would treasure it. It would be a place for our family to always come home to.”
“So, Nana made her buy it? For twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Well, she couldn’t very well just give it to Frankie, could she?” He said it like I had no common sense. “Nana came up with an amount and terms that would be challenging for an eighteen-year-old to meet, but not impossible. And Frankie worked her ass off. She ended up giving Nana more than she asked for,” he said proudly.
He jumped off the raft and hissed air in through his teeth at the sudden chill of the water as he sank chest deep into it.
“Frankie has owned that house for three years, but this is the first time she’s been back to see it since she left for Vegas.” He waded through the water and rested his arms on the edge of the pool.
Pauly pinned me with a hard look as if expecting me to say something. When I stayed quiet, he continued.
“I think Frankie thought she would eventually move back here. Raise her family here.” He flinched at that comment like he’d said something he hadn’t meant to, and then wouldn’t meet my gaze.
Maybe he thought it was rubbing salt in my wounds to mention family and Frankie when she’d been avoiding me for four years.
It was.
“Anyway,” he said with a shrug, turning to lean his back against the wall of the pool to prop his elbows on the side, “when Nana had her stroke, everything changed. We had to put her in a nursing home after she came home from the hospital because she needed ‘round the clock care. Jimmy and Frankie moved her down to Texas to this place that has some of the best care available in the country. They’ve got her in physical and occupational therapy. Frankie is determined to get Nana back to a place where she can have her independence again.”
Pauly shook his head and cast a sideways glance at me. “That kind of care doesn’t come cheap. We’ve already gone through the savings Nana had from the money Frankie paid her for the house. We’ve all maxed out credit cards, and Jimmy even took out a home equity loan on his house.” Pauly lifted his bottle of beer and took a sip. “And we still don’t have the money we need.”
His words hovered over the pool where we sat, as if the ripples caused by his body were from the echoes of his confession.
“The house is all we have left to offer up for Nana’s future. As Frankie said, if the money we get from selling the house gives her even the smallest fighting chance at being able to live a normal life again, how can we not take it? It’s just a house, but Nana is family. She was there for us when neither of our parents could be.”
I felt like an ass for all the snide comments I’d made to Frankie. No matter how angry I’d been with her, the thing was, I didn’t know the truth. But I did know Frankie. And I should have trusted that she would have a good, selfless reason for her choices. I’d never known her to be selfish, and the more I listened to Pauly, the more I realized that despite her secrets, she was still the same Frankie I fell in love with as a kid.
The same Frankie I was falling for all over again.
Knowing that she had worked so hard to save the house and Nana, I had to wonder what else she had taken responsibility for or sacrificed over the years. And how that affected her broken promise to me.
More than ever, I wanted to know the secrets Frankie was keeping from me. I had a feeling that even though she was scared to tell me what they were, they just might make me love her more than I ever imagined was possible.