Say You're Sorry (23 page)

“But you weren’t snooping. Not really.”

“I’m not sure what the hell I was doing. I want to believe Frannie, of course. And I do. She’s always been such a grand kid. Then I find myself thinking, Why would she do this now? Why would she go crazy now?”

“Well, maybe it’s a weird form of senioritis. A temporary thing. Maybe she’s freaked about leaving home, going off to Yale. Everyone’s made such a big deal about it. Y-A-L-E. Maybe she feels like pressured, is afraid she won’t do well, and she’s just acting out.”

“I’ve thought of that and more. I stay up nights trying one story, then another. And Hope’s gone crazy too. I asked her about the earrings, and, well, you know this stage she’s going through. ‘Search me,’ she screamed, ‘if you think I’m a thief!’ Then she stormed into her room and started pulling out clothes, books…. She threw that pitiful macramé thing she wears sometimes as a necklace on the floor. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘Go through everything.’ It was awful.”

“The sibling rivalry thing doesn’t help.”

“I know. That’s never changed, since they were tots. We thought because they were so close in age that it wouldn’t happen, but it’s always been there, in one way or another. That’s one thing, Natalie, to be said for having a single child.”

Natalie nodded around a mouthful of her second slice of tart.

“But, on the other hand, in the past few years, Hope’s pretty much screened out Frannie. She doesn’t pay much attention to her sister. She has her own friends, her own life.”

“Nonetheless, Frannie’s getting into Yale has to have made some impression on her. Don’t you think Hope’s jealous? It seems natural that she would be.”

“I don’t know,” Jane shrugged. “Hope’s grades are just as great as Frannie’s ever were. Actually, she’s been talking about med school, thinking about colleges with good premed programs. Harvard, maybe. I hope she doesn’t set her sights too high.”

“On the other hand, she might make it.”

“Yep. Of course, another option she’s considering is bagging college and hitchhiking to New York to earn her keep playing guitar in the subways.”

“Oh, God! Please, anything but New York.” Natalie’s Megan was in school there, but she seemed to be majoring in the bright lights of the big city. “So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Keep our fingers crossed, I guess. Pray that the whole thing goes back to wherever it came from.”

*

It was a couple of days later that the tiny box, glowing with Tiffany’s distinctive light blue, showed up on Frannie’s bed.

“Look at this!” Frannie shrieked, shoving the box under Jane’s nose as if it were poop and Jane the offending pooch. “Where the hell did this come from? Why is this happening to me?”

Jane didn’t bother frowning at Frannie’s language. She wondered the same thing. Where the hell had the box come from? Why was this happening?

“What is it?” she asked the furious Frannie. “Show me.”

With trembling hands, Frannie opened the box and removed the silver bangle bracelet with the tip of one finger, as if she really didn’t want to touch it.

“Jesus,” Jane breathed. “Still in the box. You think it’s a gift?”

“Precisely.” Frannie spit out the words. “A graduation gift. Everybody’s been getting this exact bracelet.”

“So? Maybe somebody gave you one, too.”

“Sure, Mom. One of my best friends thought it would be a really cool idea to give me this bracelet, unwrapped, with no card. To just leave it on my damned bed!” Then Frannie dissolved in tears. She couldn’t stop crying, and her sobs ripped at Jane’s heart.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jane now said to Natalie across the table.

“Have you considered calling the police?”

“What could I say to them, Natalie? ‘Someone is coming into my house and leaving my elder daughter gifts. And we want them to stop.’”

“I see what you mean. But, on the other hand, maybe they know where the stuff is coming from. I mean, maybe someone’s reported it missing.”

“Perhaps. I don’t know.”

“Have you talked with Hope again?”

“I had to. I’ve been trying to think about this logically. It’s hard because, for one thing, you know we’ve always left our back door open; anyone could come in. But I’m trying to zero in on the kids who have regular access to our house. Frannie’s circle of friends is small and incredibly tight. It’s hard to imagine any of them doing anything to make her look bad. So I sat Hope down and asked about her friends, especially Heather, who’s been so needy since her parents divorced.” Jane caught herself. Damn. She hadn’t meant to say that. Megan had gone through a rough time at the beginning of Natalie and Jack’s divorce. In fact, she’d run away.

Natalie waved away her apology. “So what about Heather? What did Hope say?”

“That it might make sense if things were being stolen from Frannie. But the other way around? Why would her friends, Heather or anyone, want to give things to Frannie? And Hope’s got a point, you know. This whole thing’s so crazy. What does it mean?”

“I think that’s what you have to figure out, Jane. Either Frannie’s taking these things and has made up this whole scenario to cover her tracks, or someone is trying to make it look that way, trying to make Frannie look like a thief. Now, who would want to do that? And why?”

*

Monday evening, Jane called Natalie. “We know who the bracelet belongs to.”

“I’m coming right over,” said Natalie. Within minutes she was sitting at Jane’s counter, watching her chop onions—or trying to. She was so upset, it would be better, Natalie knew, if she put down the knife.

“Lisa Broadhurst. It’s her bracelet.”

“She’s in Frannie’s class?”

Jane nodded. “A friend of Frannie’s. Not a close friend, but a friend. Frannie said everyone at school is talking about someone having stolen Lisa’s bracelet, and Lisa’s very distressed, of course.”

“How about the skirt and the pearl earrings? Were those hers too?”

“Frannie didn’t know. And she couldn’t very well ask, could she? I mean, not without incriminating herself.
Incriminating!
Jesus, I sound like Court TV.” Jane dropped her head into her hands. “Lisa’s parents have called the police.”

“Did Frannie tell Lisa that she has the bracelet?”

“No. She couldn’t figure out how to do that. ‘What am I going to say, Mom? How am I going to tell her? She’s going to think I took it, that I went into her house and took it.’”

“Well, she has a point there,” said Natalie. “How did you advise her?”

“I told her to try to calm down. To wait. I called Max at the office, and he’s coming home early, and we’re going to sit down and talk this thing through.” Jane paused. “Max thinks we ought to have Ed join us.”

“Ed, his brother? The lawyer?”

“He’s a criminal attorney.” Jane shook her head. “Criminal. Can you believe this? It’s like some kind of nightmare. Poor Frannie. Oh, God. My poor little girl. I feel so awful for her. I wish it were happening to me. I wish I could step into her shoes.”

“We all feel that way,” Natalie soothed. “Mothers always feel like that when bad things happen to their kids.”

*

Jane rose early the next morning, before the rest of her family, as she did every day. She liked to have a little quiet time with her coffee and the paper and gain the use of herself before the day’s onslaught.

This particular day was one she was not looking forward to, and she was having difficulty focusing on the paper.

They’d decided, in their family pow wow the night before, that Frannie, Jane, and Max would go over to the Broadhursts’ house early that evening. Jane was to call them and make the appointment for the three of them to try to explain the inexplicable.

“What am I going to say?” Frannie had wailed.

“We’ll just tell them what happened, sweetie,” said Max. “We’ll lay out the facts. We’ll tell them the truth.”

“No matter what, they’re going to think I stole Lisa’s bracelet,” said Frannie. “What else could they think?”

“We’ll take them the bracelet. We’ll tell them our story. That’s all we can do.”

“Everyone at school’s going to be whispering about me.” Frannie had stopped moaning. Her tone had grown icy. Stoic. This attitude hurt Jane even more than her daughter’s distress.

Frannie had always had that capability, to shut down and ignore pain. It had served her well as a long-distance runner. When other girls fell by the wayside, their outer limits met, Frannie could simply shut the door on her fatigue, the screaming in her legs, her lungs, her gut, and soldier on. Jane had wondered from time to time what this toughness, this capacity for insensibility, said about Frannie. But she and Max had decided that Frannie actually felt not too little, but too much, that the thick walls she threw up were for protection. Frannie had a very tender heart.

“I think we’re within our rights to ask for the Broadhursts’ discretion,” said Max. “I remember meeting Pete Broadhurst when we were having that brouhaha with the zoning commission. He seemed like a reasonable man.”

“Everyone’ll know.” Frannie stared straight ahead, her mouth tight, her face stony with resignation. “All Lisa has to do is tell one person, and everyone will know.”

“Oh, honey,” Jane said, and tried to draw her daughter close, but Frannie could not be comforted. And Jane knew that she was probably right. People would know. People would talk. But maybe they’d be incredibly lucky…. Oh, God, she thought, if only she could do this for Frannie. If only she, with her years of perspective, the nonchalance that age and experience bring, could shoulder this burden.

Now Jane stood, poured herself another cup of coffee, then flipped the entertainment section of the paper over to the back page to take a look at Natalie’s column. She usually found something there that made her chuckle, and God knows, today she needed a little cheering up.

If Only I Could Step Into Her Shoes
, the headlines read.

Jane blinked. Surely not…

“If only I could step into her shoes” was also the beginning of the first sentence of Natalie’s column. Then the piece laid out the particulars of the Millman family’s dilemma. The mysterious appearance of the skirt. The black pearl earrings. The silver bracelet from Tiffany’s.

Jane raised one hand to her mouth as she read on with growing horror. “No,” she cried through her fingers. “God, please, no.”

Natalie hadn’t named their names. She hadn’t said, “Jane and Max Millman and their two lovely daughters, Frannie, 17, and Hope, 16, of 1212 Pineapple Street, in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland…” But she might as well have, as far as anyone who knew them was concerned. Frannie’s schoolmates would definitely know. Their parents were reading these very words, this very moment, calling to their children, “Hey, guys, look at this.”

And she had quoted Jane, word for word. Jane could hear her own voice as she read, the words swimming there in black and white before her:
I want to believe (her), of course. And I do. She’s always been such a grand kid. Then I find myself thinking. Why would she do this now? Why would she go crazy now?

Word for word.

How did Natalie do that? How could she remember?

It’s like some kind of nightmare. Poor (daughter). Oh, God. My poor little girl. I feel so awful for her. I wish it were happening to me. I wish I could step into her shoes.

Had Natalie tape-recorded their conversation? Had she worn a wire like that hideous Linda Tripp? Was Natalie the same kind of traitor as that despicable woman, the same brand of Judas, who would betray another woman, her
girlfriend
? Would she sell out Jane and her family, neighbors, people she’d known for years, whose kitchen table she’d put her feet under, for a goddamned column, to fill a space, for an easy day’s work? But here they were, Natalie’s neatly constructed sentences and paragraphs which went on to deduce—and this seemed to be the point of the column—that parents of “privileged children” often were blind to what their kids were up to.

Privileged?
Yes, Frannie and Hope were, but no more than Natalie’s Megan. And they weren’t thieves.

Then Jane felt her gorge rise, and she thought it possible that she was going to be sick, that she was going to spew all over this vile piece of fish wrap.

Jane swallowed hard and forced herself to focus. There had to be some explanation. More important, there had to be some way to stop people from reading this. Some way to protect Frannie. Jane felt as if fires were raging all around her, but she was frozen in her chair. She didn’t know which way to turn, what to do.

Then the phone rang, and she lurched for it. “Yes?” she gasped.

“Jane? It’s Ed.” Max’s brother. The criminal attorney. The sweet man, the brother-in-law whom she’d always loved, who’d brought his wisdom, his considered advice, his sense of fair play to their kitchen table the night before.

The same kitchen where Natalie had sat and nibbled at her family’s very soul.

“Jane,” he managed again, then faltered.

“I’ve seen it.”

“Goddamnit!” She could see him, shaking his head. “What about Frannie?”

“No, not yet. I don’t think she’s up yet.”

“Listen, sweetheart, I’m on my way over. That bitch, Natalie. Why would she do this? You know, she makes it sound like Frannie really is a thief. I want you to know she’s not going to get away with this, Jane. We’re going after her, sweetie. Big time.”