Page 4 of Gravity of Love
No.Frankie took a deep breath. She had to stop picking apart and overanalyzing every conversation. It was a habit that was hard to break.
Her mom was happy. For now. She had to trust that.
Instead, Frankie decided to enjoy the tiny dopamine hit of having successfully navigated another round of Defcon 3 emotional subterfuge. Cora Costas was still none the wiser that her only daughter had broken off a six-year engagement. She deserved a medal, or at least a glass of wine for the call and the breakup.
Speaking of, a quick check of missed messages revealed one from her ex-fiancé. He’d sent it while she was talking to her mom.
Tristan:I love you. We need to talk. Can you believe my dad and your mom? Crazy?! Don’t you think this is a sign? We can fix this. Call me back.
“Wow,” she exhaled.
The saddest thing about his text was that he probably thought he’d nailed it, whereas Frankie saw it for what it was. A desperate digital attempt at reconciliation trying to use their parents getting together as a ploy to sneak past her emotional firewall. It was low, even for him.
She stared at the message, thumb hovering, then pressed down on the trash can icon. Delete. She imagined the data vanishing into the ether and felt a small surge of satisfaction.
Even though she knew it was a long shot, she scrolled her phone to her bestie, her ride-or-die, the other half of her brain’s name, Zee, and pressed it.
Zee was short for Zion Ash, portrait photographer extraordinaire whose work had been compared to Annie Leibovitz, David LaChapelle and Herb Ritts. He regularly shot for Vogue, ELLE, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s BAZAAR. He was the kind of person who lit up a room the instant he entered—the sort of human being who left an imprint on your mind, a brushstroke of wild color you could never quite scrub away. Frankie and Zion’s friendship was an endless loop of inside jokes, reality TV binges, and a kind of emotional support that defied categorization.
It didn’t ring, just went straight to voicemail.
“This is Zee. If this isn’t my mama or Frankie, hang up and text me, because I guarantee I donotwant to talk to you.”
She couldn’t help but smile even though his phone was still either out of service range or in airplane mode. It always gave her a little serotonin boost that she got a shoutout in his voicemail, being one of only two people he wanted to speak to on the phone. She was, however, disappointed that she still couldn’t get ahold of him.
He left for Tibet four weeks ago to visit a Buddhist monastery. That was all the information she had. No specifics. No names of hotels. No return date. It wasn’t unusual for Zee. A few years ago, he disappeared on a trek in Peru, and she didn’t hear from him for eight weeks. And once he was MIA in Switzerland and radio silent for five weeks. He liked to go off-grid to reset every once in a while. Typically, her life didn’t fall apart during those stretches, this time, it did.
Grabbing her mug from the table, she walked to the kitchen counter and pondered whether something stronger than another cup of coffee was the next right step in her day after the newsshe’d just learned. Before she could decide, a scream—raw, primal, the type that detaches your soul from your body—ripped through the house.
“Noooo!”
Frankie spun towards the front room so fast her hip caught the edge of the counter. She hissed through her teeth as pain shot through her body. Her face grimaced and she raced into the next room, heart drumming in her chest as possible disasters flipped through her mind: Yaya fell and hurt herself, Garfield was injured or worse… the house was on fire, there was an intruder. She vaulted over the ottoman into the living room, where Yaya was hunched forward in her recliner, both fists clutching the edges of her phone.
“Yaya!” Frankie’s voice was desperate. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Yaya didn’t answer, just shoved the phone at Frankie with trembling hands. “Look! Look!” she insisted, as if the phone were an explosive device only her granddaughter could properly disarm.
It was a message from Cindy, the receptionist at Golden Years Retirement Home.
Cindy:Arthur’s been shot. He’s at Pine Ridge Hospital.
Frankie felt the room tilt. Arthur Santino was Yaya’s “gentleman friend.” He’d been the reason she’d begun wearing lipstick again. Now that was a man who definitely fell into the strong-silent category. Frankie had met him three times, one of those being his ninetieth birthday, and hadmaybeheard him say three words, luckily Yaya talked enough for both of them.
“It’s okay.” She knelt beside the recliner, her hand instinctively wrapping around Yaya’s bony wrist. Her grandma’s entire body was shivering, her lips working soundlessly as if she were trying to pray but couldn’t conjure the words. “I’m going to call the hospital.”
“No, no, no,” Yaya repeated, shaking her head so hard that her bun started to unravel. “He’s alone. No family. He has nobody. I have to go. I have to go to him right now!”
Yaya tried to stand from the recliner when her legs gave out, and she nearly toppled forward. Frankie caught her, the same way she’d done when she was a kid and Yaya used to “faint” for dramatic effect during family holidays. But this was real, and Yaya felt so frail in Frankie’s arms it scared her.
“Sit for one second.” Frankie lowered her back down in the recliner. “I’ll get your shoes and your purse.”
“No! He needs me now!” Yaya’s voice was brittle but determined as she stood once again. “I’m going to drive!”
Frankie sighed in exasperation. Yaya last drove during the Reagan administration, and even then, it was a family-wide ordeal that ended in a flat tire and a citation for running a stop sign while yelling at a squirrel.
“I’ll drive. Let me grab your shawl. And your medicine. And water.” Frankie moved in fast-forward, filling up a Stanley mug with water, snatching Yaya’s shawl from the hook on the wall, and stuffing her ancient purse with tissues, her Monday-through-Sunday pill organizer, granola bars, and trail mix. She filled Garfield’s slow feeder bowl with diet kibble, snagged her own wallet and phone, and did a last-second scan to make sure that the house wasn’t going to burn down.
When she stepped outside, Yaya was waiting at the car, arms tightly crossed, exuding the patience of an irate DMV customer. She’d managed to put on a pair of orthopedic sandals, one navy and one black. Her lips were set in a hard line, the kind of expression that made grown men in the family fake their own deaths to avoid confrontation.
