Chapter 15: Fear of Rejection

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Frank hated going to bed angry.

His wife seemed to thrive on it.

She hadn't been this way when they were dating. Her behavior had been so different back then. Even when they were engaged, she had been calmer, more understanding, more… like him.

As their dating relationship had grown deeper, Frank discovered that Leah was highly sensitive, and so he had adjusted his behavior accordingly, even feigning emotion when it was necessary. She had expressed concerns about him being too quiet, and he had attempted to quash her concerns by introducing topics of conversation that highlighted his own interests, which then caused her to call him self-absorbed.

Their first argument had ended with her giving him the cold shoulder, and him groveling about it the next day. She seemed to take well to him groveling, and because it was a quick fix, he had committed himself to mastering the practice of it.

His by-the-book, on-one-knee, vanilla proposal had briefly brought back the Leah he remembered from when they'd first met. Their engagement was short – by her design – and any arguments they'd had during that time had been brushed under the rug to favor focus on their upcoming nuptials. Her expectations of him seemed to have heightened, but he felt confident that he could meet them as her soon-to-be-husband.

About four weeks before their wedding, she began to change again. It was so subtle at first – a tiny shift in her tone of voice, a biting word, or a sidelong glance. He sensed it before it had even begun, but like a ripple on a pond, the stone had already been thrown, and there was nothing he could do to stop it from displacing the water.

He had assumed she was just under a lot of stress from the wedding planning. Deep down, a part of him had acknowledged the red flags, but he couldn't bring himself to back out. He had boarded this train as an honest, paying passenger. He had only to expect that he would reach his destination in due time.

Frank Farmer was not the sort of man who made a habit of groveling, or faking interest in conversation, or saying words only to placate a partner. But this woman, who now wore $9,000 worth of his salary on her left ring finger, had turned him into such a creature, and he could not recognize himself anymore. But at the end of the day, he was still just a man, and there was one prize which kept him running: that this emptiness he had felt for years would soon be gone. Nothing came without a price. The absence of a woman in his life had created a craving too great to curb. And here was a woman who had tolerated the undesirable structure of his job, called him handsome, cooked him dinner every night, and told him she loved him.

They had married in front of a small audience of thirty people, in a church, in the middle of spring. And on what should have been the happiest day of their life, they argued that very night about where they would live for the foreseeable future.

She seemed to want too much of him too soon. They had discussed the future ad nauseam before taking their vows; she had told him she was comfortable with his career, she had told him she wasn't ready to start a family yet, she had told him she was content living in a small house. Then overnight, it seemed, all of those things she had told him were no longer the case.

She had become highly critical of his every move, and it had gotten to the point where he was exhausted just from being in the house with her. He started working more because of it, and she started to resent him for favoring his job over their marriage.

He had been surprised when she switched to part-time. She hadn't told him she was planning to drop hours until the day her boss had approved it. Frank had gotten angry with her, insisting her decision was the type which should be discussed with a spouse beforehand. She didn't even humor him with a reason. Just said, "It's what I want right now."

It was a Wednesday morning when he woke up to a familiar empty bed. It seemed they were always ships passing in the night with their work hours. He had hoped with her new schedule that she would have been home from work on his only day off that week. But she had left for work that morning without even kissing him goodbye.

His ears stung with the words they had exchanged the night before. It seemed every other night they were having some kind of debate. Leah was not the type of woman to make her husband sleep on the couch. She preferred the cruel and unusual torture of having her husband lie in bed right next to her so that he could fall asleep to the sight of her bare back as she gave him the cold shoulder.

He knew that he was oftentimes just as much a part of the problem as she was. Communication in relationships didn't seem to come easily for Frank, who preferred to remain silent in most circumstances. How many times did she expect him to whisper romantic reassurances in her ear? Wasn't once or twice a week enough? Sometimes he swore she must be keeping tally marks on a chalkboard somewhere in the attic for how many times he had wronged her. If there was one thing about being a bachelor he missed most of all, it was that he had mostly been a stranger to the feeling of inadequacy in every aspect of his life.

He hated days like this where they had gone to bed angry and could not make up the very next morning. He knew the routine now: Leah would come home from work, tired and grumpy from a long day, wanting to vent about her coworkers. She would complain about having to cook dinner, and then she would continue regarding him with all the stiffness of a cardboard cutout until he apologized for something he didn't remember doing.

The only thing he could think to do at this point to try and dampen her hostility towards him was to clean up the house. She seemed to appreciate order and stability as much as he did, so he spent the first few hours of his day off picking up each room, finishing the dishes and laundry, and taking out the trash.

While dragging the bags out to the curb, he noticed that there must have been a hole in the bottom of one of the bags. A trail of waste had been left behind in the grass – another mess he would have to clean up. He cussed to himself and reluctantly followed the trail of items which had fallen out, picking up each as he went. A mechanical pencil with no lead, a bottle cap, a crumpled grocery list . . . then a prescription label with her maiden name – half the words blacked out by marker – and two small white pills.

Thoroughly confused by his discovery, Frank took the pills back into the house and set them on the kitchen counter. He lifted the prescription label up to the light so that the blacked-out text was no longer a mystery. "Clomiphene citrate."

He was perplexed by the unfamiliar generic drug name, confused that he had been married just a few months ago and his wife had already withheld being on a daily medication. But if these pills were a daily medication, why would these two have been discarded intentionally?

That was when it hit him. Maybe they didn't belong to that prescription bottle. Maybe they belonged somewhere else.

Clutching both pills in his hand, he ran upstairs into the master bathroom and tore open the drawer under the sink. It felt absurdly invasive, holding her birth control pill container in his hand, but he had to know for sure. With little effort, he was able to match up the fallen pills with the ones that were still in the container. . . which was caught up to today. Which told him one thing: slots were being emptied, but perhaps not consumed.

Angrily, he tipped over the small waste basket beside the toilet and rummaged through the used tissues and tampon wrappers in search of more discarded pills. Of course she would be too clever to throw them into the trash right there. So had she been throwing them into the kitchen trash instead where it was less conspicuous?

All he'd had to see were those two pills and that blacked out prescription and his detective mode kicked in full force. He spent the next two hours tearing apart the master bath, and then the guest bathroom.

The guest bathroom was where it got ugly. In the cabinet under the sink, he found an orange prescription container, stripped of its label. It was filled with white pills which looked deceptively close to her birth control, aside from very nuanced differences in the tiny circumference of their shape. But further back beneath the sink, stuffed into two crinkled plastic Waldenbooks shopping bags, he found them.

At first he thought they were litmus strips used to test the pH of the hot tub on their patio. But these did not look the same. Some of them had blue ends, and others were pink. From the same bag, he extracted a notebook with unfamiliar markings and a calendar with stars on specific days. With every new detail he discovered, his heart sank further and further. Though he was just a man, he could use context clues.

The dishonesty was the part that hurt him the most. She'd told him they were not going to try for a baby until they had been married at least two years. She had told him her career was priority number one. Now it all made sense, why she'd suddenly dropped to part-time a few months after they married. Why she always seemed to want sex every day for one week out of each month and then act like he didn't exist for the rest.

Now that he had made such a harrowing discovery, he was faced with the challenge of how he could possibly approach her about it. He didn't want to make it seem like he'd been snooping for no good reason. But he also felt betrayed, and he wanted her to pay for that betrayal.

That evening, after much deliberation, he had decided on a gentle, dishonest approach. He showed her the two discarded pills he had found, pretending to be concerned that she may have unintentionally skipped them by accident.

She didn't even try to play along. She immediately threw herself against him and began to sob.

"I don't want to wait anymore, Frank," she cried into his chest, "I'm already thirty-three…"

He could not help but sympathize with her. After all, she was his wife.

Even though she had been dishonest. Even though he wasn't ready for children. Even though he knew in his gut that this would not be the last time she lied to him.

The worst part about it was, he wasn't even in denial. He was just desperate for something in his life to turn out right.

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Before he had gone to bed, he saw the missed call from Leah. It wasn't the first time she'd called him, promising to change, asking for another chance. She had cried at his feet for forty-five minutes the day he'd served her the divorce papers.

Frank had been at a disadvantage during their marriage, unrehearsed as he was with the strange domestic dance of cohabitation. But the intricacies of United States law were not so strange to him, and he'd relished in having the upper hand at last once his attorney had appeared on the scene. Having played the big leagues in Washington for years, he recognized the tactics, he knew the lingo, and he was shamefully satisfied while watching his small town wife struggle to stay afloat in front of a judge. Finally, Frank had given her the ultimate cold shoulder. If she wanted to say even a single word to him, she would have to say it to a lawyer.

Still, she'd gone kicking and screaming through court, determined that he should never find any peace apart from her. The involvement of secret phone conversations, missing money, and the concealment of IVF had made their case more complex than most. Frank had found sick enjoyment in watching the state settle this mess that she had created, as exhausting as the process was. At the time, he'd hollowed himself completely, determined that every time their gazes locked across the courtroom, she would be meeting the eyes of a machine. He considered it ironic how Leah had never really known the cold capabilities of the man she'd married until he was in the process of divorcing her.

Her fury was palpable, having been forced to surrender in a scenario where her manipulative little jabs and denials of affection no longer worked. Instead she had to submit all requests to make him miserable in writing, and stare at him in a suit from the opposite side of a room.

Divorce was not an overnight battle. He had learned to cope the hard way, managing to revel in the small, satisfying milestones of success — when she'd finally dropped his surname, when the money all found its way back to where it belonged, when the final payment cleared to his lawyer.

It had been nearly two years, but Leah Christensen still continued in her quest to cause her ex-husband pain.

Frank hated himself for answering her calls. She would cry and he would feel guilty, then he'd be stern with her and she'd get hysterical. The last time she'd called him was three months ago, and he'd had to hang up on her.

He made a bold move by not calling her back this time.

He turned his cell phone off and settled into bed, ignoring the weighty guilt in the pit of his stomach. His therapist had always told him not to feel guilty when it came to his ex. It wasn't his responsibility to placate her anymore – he wasn't her spouse. Being civil had proven a challenge, but Frank had at least wanted to try for Leah's sake. Sometimes being civil might mean ignoring the call.

With a sigh, he reached across and opened the drawer of his nightstand to find the only item he'd kept inside. Despite being alone in the bedroom, he kept the object hidden inside his hand until he had turned off the lamp.

The last time Rachel had stayed at the cabin, she had left only one personal belonging behind: a small lavender velvet scrunchie. He had only seen her wear it once in her hair. Usually she'd left it coiled around her wrist like a bracelet. Frank was not a sentimental person by nature, but on the nights he'd had trouble sleeping, he found himself playing with the innocent hair accessory like a lovesick teen. In the safety of his solitude, he had twisted it between his curious fingers, and even experimentally stretched it around his own wrist. It was a secret he would never share, but at the very least it usually helped him fall asleep. Tonight was no exception, but he had never fully reached the deepest cycle of sleep. He could tell when he woke up just before sunrise, his brain in a fog.

He still didn't sleep too well out here.

At night, the silence was deafening if there was no wind. In the summer, the cabin was ensconced by the hum of crickets and nightbirds, an ideal volume of white noise by which to fall and stay asleep. In the winter, he could hear a tree branch crack from half a mile away.

He was very in tune with the sounds of the night, so when he heard just one unfamiliar sound, it woke him immediately. He went downstairs to investigate and found Fletcher sitting by the fireplace in the living room, head in his hand.

"You okay?" Frank asked him, causing the boy to jump. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"I got a headache."

"You're probably still adjusting to the cold," Frank said. "I don't keep anything in the house. Do you want me to run out and get some Advil for you?"

Fletcher looked imploringly at him. "You don't have to do that."

"It's no problem. I'll go down to the drugstore."

Frank quickly ran back up to his room to change. He couldn't resist checking on Rachel before he went back downstairs. She seemed to sleep so peacefully anywhere she was. He envied her for that. She was kind of a princess when it came to pillows though. At first glance it was hard to even find her in the mountain of pillows on the bed. He smiled fondly to himself as he closed her door slowly so as to not wake her.

As he walked back downstairs he saw Fletcher by the door. "I can come with you," the boy said.

Frank nudged him aside with a hand on his shoulder. "You sit back down. You have to stay with your mom."

Fletcher nodded obediently and went back to his armchair.

"I'll be back in twenty minutes."

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The sun had just broken the horizon when Frank arrived at the local drugstore. His eyes took in every character as he made his way from the parking lot to the store.

A scraggly man with a cigarette leaning against his Silverado. A middle aged woman with her teenage daughter, sitting on the bench next to the vending machine. A young man with a full dark beard digging through his plastic shopping bag full of items. All of them unbothered by the frosty air; all of them unaware that they were being monitored by a complete stranger.

The harsh white lights of the store caused him to squint at first entry. He glanced at the signs above the aisles, using them to guide him to his destination. He quickly located the ibuprofen and removed it from its place on the shelf.

Weaving his way back through the store, he passed through another aisle which made him pause. The harmless blue and black box stared back at him, practically taunting him from the shelf. Rachel's behavior during their rare moments alone was enough of a warning that he should be prepared. Not only that, but she had made him promise to fuck her. If he went back on that promise, he was certain he would be leaving Tahoe in a body bag.

His eyes lifted cautiously to glance over the shallow shelf, in the direction of the cash register. The young female cashier must not have been more than sixteen years old. She currently stood, twirling her strawberry-blonde hair around one finger as she rang up a pack of Marlboros for a short gray man in a slouch hat. It made no sense to Frank how effortlessly he could risk his life at the level of international security, and yet still cower at the thought of having this young girl ring up a box of condoms.

Almost subconsciously, his finger lifted to touch the top corner of the box, tipping it ever so slightly towards him. The clang of the bell ringing above the door as another customer entered caused him to inhale sharply. With only the box of ibuprofen in hand, he made his way to the counter to pay.

The cold air whipped around him as he left the store, suddenly overcome with a sense of confused dread. There was no way to justify leaving without them. There was no excuse, nothing that had provoked such an unwarranted move. He would never have understood what had possessed him to make that choice, only that he'd made it on impulse.

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He recalled the unnerving darkness that had enveloped the house after Nicki's funeral. With its 40,000 square feet of unnecessary space, the house had never before felt so vast, so cold. He hadn't been able to sleep after Fletcher had probed him with questions about his greatest fear. That innocent young boy had been the only person in the world to make him answer honestly.

He drank just enough to the point that he felt like he was wrapped in a warm blanket, and his mind was in a pleasant haze. He stood up, testing his balance, and finding that he was able to walk just fine, he made his way up the grand staircase to check if Fletcher had made it back to his room.

Like a dark, dreary ghost, she emerged from the shadows, descending the staircase towards him. He could sense the hesitation in her when she saw him, but she did not stop. When they both reached the middle of the staircase, they tried to sidestep each other, once in each direction.

Her eyes met his, glittering with devastation, and he found himself tied to his place, unable to move.

When she began speaking to him, her voice was hysterical. "You! You brought this pain into my house . . . Where were you when it happened? Why didn't you save her? It was your job to protect me and she died doing it . . . It was me they were after. And you let them kill her!"

She gasped for air, as if the words had taken all the strength left within her to utter. But they hadn't. She raised her hand and slapped him across his cheek.

Under any other circumstances, he could have relied on his reflexes to anticipate such an attack. He had prevented too many simple assaults in his life before – but this was not the same. It was not only the alcohol that had impaired his response, but the trust he had put in this woman to never hurt him.

Rachel Marron had caused him more pain than perhaps any other human he'd known. Up til now it had all been internal, private, emotional pain. Now it was physical, and the sting of her hand still seized his entire body from the neck down.

He could see it in her eyes, how ravaged she was by her grief. It did not take much for her temper to flare. He tried to console himself, tried to convince himself that her anger was misdirected, but he had to wonder if her cutting words were true.

He had failed her.

She collapsed onto the steps at his feet. At first he thought she had fainted, but she was still sobbing. She clutched the ornate bars of the railing, muttering incoherently through her tears. "She never hurt anyone . . . She was good. She never wished anyone harm. Did she?" Rachel looked up at him, looking so pathetic, so weak. "Did she?" she asked him again, as if challenging him to betray her misguided faith in her only sister.

Frank was faced with a crossroads in that moment: take the high road and stay silent, or crush her soul with the disturbing truth. He looked down at her for a long time, watching the tears stream down her face. He shook his head 'no,' and Rachel hung her head.

"I didn't love her well enough. . . I didn't take care of her . . . She gave me only love."

His blood went cold as he listened to her cry in silence. He could not bring himself to console her, believing any offer of comfort would be rejected. With the sinking weight of guilt in his heart, he left her there and continued on his way.

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After Fletcher's headache had eased up, Frank invited the boy to go out on a walk with him by the lake, well before he knew Rachel was likely to wake up. As a native to Los Angeles, Fletcher surprised Frank with his tolerance of the cold weather, and he was all too happy to spend some time walking in the snow.

They walked along the lakeside path together for a while, talking about the property, Fletcher's classes, and the plans he had made with his friends for New Year's Eve. After a while, they had settled into a spot by the edge of the lake where the shade of the trees had spared the ground from snowfall.

Fletcher was someone who could enjoy silence as much as Frank, and Frank appreciated this about him. After some time listening to the birds and water, Fletcher surprised him with a forward question.

"You and Mom are… kinda close now, huh?"

Hesitation caused Frank to pause before answering. "You could say that."

"I know it's none of my business," Fletcher began, "but..."

Frank looked him in the eyes, waiting for him to continue.

Fletcher turned away and mumbled, "Never mind."

Frank began tentatively, "Fletcher, your mom and I were hot and cold for a long time. When we reconnected recently, we…" He stopped, unsure of how to best navigate the sensitive subject in an appropriate way.

Fletcher said dejectedly, "I understand if you can't tell me."

"I don't think I should be keeping secrets from you, Fletcher." Frank said thoughtfully. "You're a grown man now, and you deserve to know what's going on."

Fletcher turned to him expectantly, barely breathing as he waited for Frank to elaborate.

"I slept with your mom," Frank at last confessed, "during the time I was her bodyguard."
Frank noticed that Fletcher's face hadn't changed upon hearing this news. "You don't look surprised."

"I'm not surprised," Fletcher said forwardly, pinning Frank in place with his dark, knowing eyes. "I'm just . . . surprised to hear you say it."

"I'm surprised to hear myself say it," Frank admitted.

Fletcher turned inward for a while, then said with a sigh, "That does explain a lot. I always wondered why she stopped the plane just to kiss you like that."

Frank's heartbeat quickened at the mention of Rachel's spontaneous act of passion. "I'm sure it was a confusing time for you," he said sympathetically. The boy was silent. Frank looked around thoughtfully for a moment. "I'll bet you remember more about everything that happened ten years ago than the rest of us combined."

"Mom did talk about you behind your back a lot when you worked for her," Fletcher admitted. "She always seemed mad at you. But I know she was scared, and she still wanted you around."

Frank smiled sadly to himself.

Fletcher continued, "Auntie wanted you to stay, too."

At the mention of Nicki, Frank's blood froze.

Fletcher shifted uncomfortably before blurting, "Auntie was jealous of Mom."

Frank's chest tightened at the boy's cold words.

"Sometimes I think she wanted something bad to happen to Mom."

If only he knew the whole story, Frank thought. Frank had grappled with this secret for so long, thinking it was the caring and gentlemanly thing to do, just to take it to his grave. He couldn't tell Rachel or Fletcher the truth about Nicki. It would crush them. He would rather let them have their peace, believing a lie. And so he would go on this way, bearing the burden of the truth himself in silence.

"Jealousy can make people do some pretty shitty things," Frank agreed.

"I feel that," Fletcher sighed. "Can't say I haven't been jealous of other guys before."

Frank glanced at him in surprise, thankful for the change in topic. "There's no reason to be jealous of other guys, Fletcher. You're a smart, good looking guy yourself."

Fletcher shook his head slowly. "When there's a girl involved, sometimes it doesn't matter how smart or good looking you are. Sometimes she just wants to be with the other guy."

The emptiness in the boy's words struck a chord with Frank. "Do you have a girlfriend, Fletcher?"

Fletcher bit his lip. "It's complicated."

"It always is," Frank sympathized.

"It kind of sucks to be honest."

Frank laughed. "It does suck sometimes." He wasn't prepared for the boy's next question.

"You're divorced, right?"

Frank let out a heavy breath. "Yeah."

"Why did you divorce your ex?"

Both Rachel and Fletcher seemed to have a knack for putting him on the spot.

Frank replied to the heavy question with humor. "She made me go and see Titanic four times in the theater."

Fletcher chuckled dubiously. "For real."

Frank swallowed hard. "She was no longer honest with me about things. Big things."

"What made you want to marry her in the first place?"

There were many different ways in which Frank could have answered that question. But the simplest way seemed to hold the most truth.

"Sometimes we do things because we think it's what's expected of us."

Fletcher paused before saying, "I think that's why Mom behaves the way she does a lot of the time."

"Maybe," Frank consented.

Fletcher perked up then, his voice brightened with pride. "She writes her own songs, you know. A lot of them are really good, but she says she won't record them."

Frank was intrigued. "Is that right?"

"Yeah. She's written her own songs her whole life. I guess she got rejected a few times and she stopped sharing them after a while."

"Rejection can paralyze us," Frank agreed.

Fletcher's eyes told him he understood the feeling all too well.

After returning to the house from their time outside, Frank continued his reflection on the words he and Fletcher had exchanged. He had never presumed Rachel to be the type who feared rejection. She had always seemed to exude confidence in such a way that even he had been intimidated by her at times. Perhaps they were not so different from each other, fundamentally at least. Frank had the feeling that there was quite a lot they still hid from one another just beneath the surface.

Author's Note: The flashback that takes place following Nicki's funeral is a deleted scene from the film. Some of the dialogue I used was taken from the original Bodyguard script which can be found online.

Thank you again to everyone who has been following this story! I can't tell you how much your comments and encouragement have meant to me.

Xox, Mack.