Page 35 of Frank's Felon
The cabin was barren, except for a small table in the corner with a few tools. A squirrel ran down the inside of one wood wall, stopped to stare at her and then reversed direction. Her eyes followed the squirrel up the wall and onto a branch overhanging the cabin. The cabin had no roof.
“What is this place and why are we here?”
“This is my place, or it will be once I finish building it. My cabin burned down nearly a year back, about a month after Damien rescued Tess. One of the traitors I told you about burned it down, trying to kill her. Fortunately, she wasn’t here at the time. I lost my clothes and my book collection. That’s it. No one else was ever in danger, but I lived alone. Still do.”
“Frankie––”
“She’s not mine. I wish she were, but she isn’t. If I’m lucky, maybe someday I’ll have a child as sweet and loving as her.”
“Her name. I thought—”
“I know what you thought. I could see it written on your face. You thought I’d betrayed you, lied to you, used you.”
“Yes,” Delilah said, her voice choked with emotion, relief mostly, but something more mixed in. Frank was telling her all of this for a reason. He wanted her to stay.
“All that other stuff you said back there, about you being easy and a criminal. . . First off, Delilah, you’re anything but easy. I’ve never worked so hard in my life trying to prove myself to someone as I have to you, and let me tell you, I’m always trying to prove myself.
He’d said that before. What did he of all people have to prove? From everything she had heard and seen, Frank was an excellent guard who was responsible for training the other guards. He cared about this pack, and it showed in how they spoke about him. They admired him.
“As for your past, it’s done, behind you, at least it is if you’ll let it be. You’re bright, caring, resourceful, and you’re a survivor. You’ve done what you’ve had to do to protect your sister and yourself. No one could ever fault you for that, so stop putting yourself down. You deserve better, and I won’t let anyone treat you with anything less than respect, including you.”
“If you truly respected me, you’d tell me why you need to prove yourself to anyone, especially me. What are you hiding Frank?”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“There’s something you’re intentionally not sharing with me, so yeah, you’re hiding something.”
“There’s nothing, Del. Go ahead. Ask me anything you want.”
“What makes you live in a cabin so far out from the rest of the pack? It’s like you don’t belong.”
“I want to belong,” he said, his words dry and short.
“But you don’t feel as if you do? Even though Tess talks as if you’re the big brother she never had, and Frankie runs to you like you’re her dad?”
“They’re different. Special.”
“Yes, they are special, but I have a feeling what makes them special is that you’ve let them into a place you keep shielded from others, including me.”
“Pot. . .kettle, again, Delilah. You’re the one keeping me out. Have been from the day we met. You couldn’t tell me why you were here, and now you won’t tell me why you’re so eager to leave.”
“You want the truth, Frank? I need to leave before Tess finds out I wasn’t simply slow at finding her. I was locked up. In prison. Up until three months ago, I was dealing with asshole guards and a bigger asshole warden. I’m mad all the time, scared of ending up back behind bars, and I’m not the person she knew. And I’m tired of pretending that everything’s fine, that I’m fine, that I’m the person I was before I left our pack.
“Sooner or later, she’s going to realize the worst truth of all. If I hadn’t taken off before William sent her out on that raid that got her captured by the WSSO, he would have sent me out, and I wouldn’t have fucked up like her group had. I would have cased the right place, made it in and out without getting caught because I’m not the sweet honest sister she thinks I am. I’m the sister who could have prevented her from getting captured and tortured. Our entire fucking pack would still be alive today if I’d been sent out instead of Tess.
“But as you say, the past is done. I can’t change it, but I sure as hell can do something about my future. I can’t and won’t go back to prison, Frank. I just can’t. But if I stay here, sooner or later I’ll do something and end up in prison because when it’s all said and done I’m a royal screwup. A year in prison, Frank. You don’t know what that does to a shifter, especially when you can’t release your wolf for any reason because if you do, the fucking guards will know what you are, and they’ll kill you or worse.”
Her wolf paced within, wanting to run, to escape just the reminder of what the past year had been like, and her wolf had never tried run from Frank before, except as part of sexual foreplay. Now she and Delilah both wanted to escape Frank’s harsh glare. He didn’t understand, and there was nothing Delilah could do or say to explain how helpless and trapped she’d been, how nothing terrified her more than the prospect of returning to prison.
With a very controlled expression on his face, Frank walked to the mantel above the empty fireplace and opened the metal box above it. He pulled out a small stack of letters and set them on the table beside her, then quietly left the cabin without a word.
Delilah pulled out the one chair from the table and sat down. She counted the letters. Seven in total, and all were addressed to Frank at the state penitentiary. The first letter was addressed over five years ago, and the most recent was shortly over a year ago. Each one was signed the same, ‘Takara, Mason, and Frankie’ and all were in the same lovely handwriting. Takara’s she guessed.
She read each letter in order, starting with the one that when she unfolded it had a baby picture. Frankie as a newborn. Takara explained that Frankie was named after Frank, but she didn’t say why. She had spoken ofThe Odysseyas well. She had been the one who had sent it to him. Frank’s comments were beginning to make sense. Tess said he loved books. He’d had that book in the prison for what, four years? The book he had tried to give to her, and she had callously dismissed.
The next few letters spoke of people in the pack. Who was dating whom, or who had blood-bonded. Updates about life. . . life that had passed Frank by while he was in prison. That had to have hurt him, and yet he had kept these letters, in a fireproof box, as if they were his most prized possessions.
There was one letter she found particularly disturbing. The one written two years ago, letter number 6. In it, Takara wrote how she had been officially elected to be the pack’s recording secretary, a position which did not previously exist. They said anyone who could write to Frank and keep him updated on a weekly basis since the day he was convicted could record the pack’s history, laws, and rules. Takara said being the pack’s recording secretary wouldn’t be nearly as important as writing to him. That he was her first priority, and after he returned home she’d consider this recording secretary nonsense. She also asked if he liked the letters from the first graders, how Molly was having trouble with her letters and that’s why her letters was a bunch of smiley faces—pictures of everyone in the pack, apparently.
