Chapter 30: Compromise
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"I didn't know you were capable of compromising," he'd said with a knowing smile.
Her hand had slipped just a bit on her signature when her pen skated across the papers, owing all stray ink blots to the patient tap of his fingertips on her hip as his arm had curled around the small of her back.
She had been hesitant about purchasing the thirty acres of barren woods near the historic village of Coarsegold, but he had assured her that it would be the best for breaking ground. Her only requirements were that it be no more than five hours from L.A. and no less than 10,000 square feet. His only requirements were that it would be concealed by a highly forested area, and the interior would feature rustic decor. The home-building process had seemed a daunting feat, but Rachel learned that Frank could be equally as capable of convincing as she was. She had no reason not to trust his extensive knowledge of such matters, and so she had agreed to sign.
Rachel Marron was all too happy to sign something that wasn't an autographed photo.
There was something so immensely satisfying about seeing her signature resting directly above Frank Farmer's. On every page, the loop of her cursive 'R' had dipped below to merge with his capital 'F', and the ends of both their surnames had somehow tangled together in a blur of blue and black consonants.
It had been a whirlwind of joyful moments from the second they sat Fletcher down to tell him that they were moving in together. Rachel hadn't expected such a strong reaction from her son – one which was unquestionably in favor of their decision. He'd thrown his lanky arms around the both of them and hugged them for far too long.
They had moved into a discreetly located rental house about twelve miles off of Leona Valley, close enough that Frank could manage the sale of the house in Chatsworth and attend his therapy sessions, and that Rachel could have her doctor's appointments in Beverly Hills and be close to Fletcher. The rental had been surreptitiously signed to a 'Scott Pettigrew' so that neither of their names would be on any public listing that could compromise their whereabouts. The house was surrounded by acres of flat, wide fields, which Frank had put to good use in teaching Fletcher to shoot during almost all his visits.
In true Rachel Marron fashion, she had been able to move on from her miscarriage with impressive alacrity. Though Frank had encouraged her to come to therapy with him, she politely refused, and he hadn't bothered to ask her twice, knowing her stubbornness would best his good intentions. Not that she had planned it out, but every time he came home from one of his sessions, they just happened to make love. She told him she was just doing her part to help him heal.
It was during those tender hours following when they'd finally opened up to address their harsh exchange of words after New Year's Day. Only their physical connection could pave the way for the emotional release that they so desperately needed. What had started as a helpless habit had become a necessity in establishing an intimate bond. Rachel found Frank's openness fascinating – he had finally given her the chance to hear his reasons for his actions, and she had done the same for him. They were certainly not perfect people, but with increased communication, they were – sometimes – almost perfect together.
The perpetual haze of joy that had encompassed her life since moving in with him seemed to have no end in sight. Cohabitating with Frank Farmer had proved less of a challenge than she'd initially expected. He lived quite simply, especially now, in a rare time of his life where his salary was not dependent on having to protect someone else from getting killed. Despite having a partner whose wealth exceeded ninety percent of the population, he did not jump at the chance to dine on champagne and caviar every night, or swaddle himself in designer brands. Instead he wore his Carhartt jeans and crew neck T-shirts (never V-neck), and he insisted on cooking meals at home. (Rachel had made an honest attempt to cook for him, but he had tactfully reminded her that Carbon belonged on the periodic table and not on his dinner plate.)
She could tell it was not easy for him at first to live with someone else. Rachel surmised from his ingrained bachelor tendencies that even when Frank had lived with his ex-wife, they had been ships passing in the night more often than they were together. He was especially uncomfortable at times with how little she seemed to care for privacy in the confines of their home. He had gotten irrationally upset with her when she insinuated that he shouldn't have to close the door while using the bathroom now, and she had teased him mercilessly for weeks about it.
She had come to admire his idiosyncrasies – Lord knows, he had many. Though they had stayed together for that brief time at the cabin in Tahoe, it was easy to conceal the little habits and routines that defined a person's life while on a temporary trip. After living day to day with him, she had familiarized herself with his morning and evening rituals; she now knew what vitamins he took, and what brand of deodorant he preferred. She had finally discovered the source of his signature scent – a perfectly balanced combination of his shower gel and the laundry detergent he used. She learned of his little health-related weaknesses – that he used gum-sensitive toothpaste, and he was prone to heartburn if he ate too soon before lying down. He was overly obsessed with keeping his fingernails in immaculate condition, yet he had never plucked his eyebrows once in his life. Once he'd learned of Rachel's lack of opposition to facial hair, he had allowed the stubble on his jaw to grow in more fully, and before she knew it, her man had a beard.
It was strange to see him so relaxed, to watch him walk around with bare feet, to listen to him mutter things to himself as he worked around the house and adjusted everything to his liking. His tendency to spend an absurd amount of time fixing tiny details of the house would have been annoying to her if it weren't for the adorable way the corner of his tongue crept onto his lip when he was deep in concentration. When he wasn't so concentrated on improving their temporary living conditions, he was concentrated completely on her.
She heard him laugh so often now that she had categories for the different kinds of laughs he had – the faintly amused chuckle; the restrained, breathy laughter that followed an awkward moment; and the boisterous, boyish belly laugh he used only on occasions when she had made an absolute fool of herself or she had taken him by surprise with an irreverent joke that tickled his dark sense of humor. Then there was the notorious silent laugh he made with his eyes alone. She would have put more effort into categorizing the different looks he gave her, but such a project could have devastating consequences. She could not understand how it was possible for a man to say so much with only his eyes. The number of times he had caused her heart to drop just from one look was reprehensible. Sometimes catching his gaze was like missing the last step on a flight of stairs. And if she missed that last step, he was always ready to catch her.
They made love as if it were their full time job. In a way, it had become the most labor intensive part of their days. Having both removed themselves from society for those precious few weeks following the miscarriage, they had become all too happily isolated from the rest of the world, save for the occasional visit from Pettigrew or Fletcher.
Before she knew it, Rachel was standing in front of the bathroom mirror with her forehead in one hand and the unexpectedly heavy weight of two pink lines in the other. Frank's reaction took away any hint of doubt she might have held. He could have washed her hands with his tears as he confessed to her that his deepest desire was to father a child.
He could have fooled her for all the years she'd known him.
Two months after they had moved in together, they sat Fletcher down to tell him another piece of happy news. He hugged them even longer this time.
Rachel hadn't bargained on becoming pregnant so quickly again after turning forty. She supposed it was just one of those things – a serendipitous side-effect of not not trying. If it hadn't been for the fact that she had a heightened awareness of her body now, she would not have noticed any shift in symptoms, same as before. She considered herself blessed that pregnancy had done her a kindness in her advanced maternal age. With Fletcher, she had not been so lucky.
Pettigrew made his visits more regular – after all the rental was in his name – and he did his duty to assist with protective measures, being that Frank was technically not on duty. Though Rachel had to wonder if Frank wasn't falling back into old habits. He had insisted on installing security cameras and track locks despite the fact that they were not intending to stay in this house for more than a year at most. She considered it a small price to pay for him to have his peace of mind.
She resorted to tease him about his obsession with high level security, and he had teased her about her incessant fear of household pests. He found her shouting and stomping her feet like a manic toddler on more than one occasion, in an effort to expurgate the kitchen floor of carpenter ants. "If I threw some grapes under your feet right now, I could get free wine," he'd said amusedly, to which she responded, "We'll buy a wine press for the new house."
Life had gone suspiciously smoothly, perhaps a testament to how much turmoil they had been through over the last ten years apart, finally reconciled in mostly harmonious cohabitation. It was the tiniest threat of disquiet in the back of her mind following the news of her pregnancy which prompted Rachel to finally accompany Frank to a couples therapy session for PTSD. If she didn't say the diagnosis out loud, it wasn't as scary. Addressing things verbally was something Rachel often struggled with. Little did she know, that was all therapy entailed.
"Don't be nervous," Frank told her when he saw her fidgeting in the waiting room chair.
"I'm not nervous." She batted him away with her hand. The quiet room was awakened by the soft scrape of her bracelets as they slid to rest along her forearm.
Her feet protested with a lazy pace as Frank gently pushed her inside the small room and guided her into the sofa across from an older man with glasses. Her newly pregnant sense of smell was assaulted by the many scents of the room – an overpowering combination of carpet cleaner, lemongrass, and old books.
"Dr. Evers, this is Rachel Marron," Frank introduced them. Rachel squinted as the sunlight from the half-open blinds hit her eyes, and she reached through the shards of light to shake hands with Frank's counselor.
"Pleasure to meet you, Rachel."
She could sing live in front of tens of thousands of people without a single heart palpitation, but in that moment she felt more nervous than she ever had in her life.
Her bracelets slipped back down her arm as Frank settled into the sofa beside her, and her hand immediately sought out his warm, calloused grip.
"I hope this doesn't come off as imprudent," the counselor said, "but I have heard a lot about you from Frank."
She suppressed an irreverent grin, the errant urge to giggle a dead giveaway for her nerves. "I doubt he complains about anything else," she said.
Dr. Evers smiled good-naturedly at her. "On the contrary, he hasn't complained about you once."
Her heart skipped when Frank held her hand tighter.
"So, tell me about yourself."
Having answered the familiar question countless times over the course of her life, Rachel happily talked about her career and her hobbies, about Fletcher, and about how she came to know Frank. She hesitated before revealing that she was newly pregnant, to which Dr. Evers briefly glanced at Frank before congratulating her. She paused, realizing one important detail which may not have been obvious to an outsider. "Frank is the father," she clarified, causing a burst of much needed laughter to warm the room.
"I was hoping that was the case," Dr. Evers said jovially, "Although I have seen stranger scenarios in this office."
Rachel shook her head, still laughing and flushed. Her eyes met with Frank's for a sharp, sudden moment where her entire body refused to believe this man belonged to her. She looked down at her lap, barely able to swallow as that strange, new nervous feeling returned.
"Well, Rachel, one of the main goals we establish here in therapy is to help you live your life in a way where your trauma isn't holding you back. Now, you've talked a lot about yourself, and who you are, and what you've accomplished in your life. But what I'd like to ask you to talk about now is maybe some of the ways you feel you're being held back in your life. Are there any decisions you've struggled to make? Any feelings that you're having a hard time processing? I want to hear about those things. So, let's take it one step deeper."
Rachel froze.
Her mind immediately went to Nicki. And there it stayed, swirling like a violent whirlpool, stuck in the same vicious vortex, never sinking, never dissipating. Just lingering. Just circling around and around and around . . .
She wasn't sure how much time had gone by where she listened to the tick of the clock on the wall, the sound of car tires passing over gravel outside the window, the steady breathing of the two men in the room with her. She could feel Frank's fingers twitch ever so slightly where he still held her hand, and she couldn't seem to even summon the energy to shift in her place.
"I . . . I don't really know how to answer that question," she spoke tentatively, recalling the harsh words of her former therapist so many years ago. 'I don't know' isn't an answer.
She was surprised to not hear those words from Dr. Evers' mouth. "That's alright," he said gently. "It can be answered at another time. Maybe just something to think about."
She was afraid to look in Frank's direction, anticipating that she would find disappointment on his face.
But then Dr. Evers was speaking again. "These are things that might be difficult to talk about," he said, shuffling some notebooks around on his lap. "And by the way," he lifted a hand to gesture toward Frank, "if having him in the room is causing you to hesitate, we can do one-on-one counseling, too."
Rachel's ears burned as she shook her head. "No, no. It's not that." She looked at the ground again. "I guess I just never really thought about what might be holding me back before."
Dr. Evers again surprised her with his unusually patient way of speaking, "A lot of people don't. That's why counselors exist."
Rachel remained politely silent for the remainder of the session, watching as Frank exchanged insightful dialogue with the therapist about how he could cope with his struggles. If she had previously thought Frank's most vulnerable state had been while he was asleep, she discovered today that she was sorely mistaken. It was the most painful yet beautiful thing to hear him so openly and diplomatically discuss his weaknesses, his hopes, his intentions for the future.
Rachel left Dr. Evers' office feeling enlightened in a way she'd never thought possible. She was amazed that one simple, hour long conversation could have such a strong impact on her. As they walked through the parking lot, her eyes were opened to the clear, fragrant air of mid-spring, and a renewed sense of possibility lingered on the horizon.
When they entered the car together, Frank looked over at her and thanked her for coming.
Not knowing what to say, she simply nodded and looked down at her hands. Her bracelets danced around her wrist again.
"You're not obligated to go again, you know," he said, likely mistaking the reason for her silence.
She looked up to meet his eyes. "I want to go again."
His expression did not change, save for the most imperceptible shift in his brow. "Do you want to go by yourself next time?"
"I'm not sure yet," she admitted.
"Okay, well, you can think about it and let me know," he said slowly. She expected him to turn the key in the ignition, but he didn't. She sat in the car with him in silence for a few moments, listening to a siren in the distance.
"Rachel, if you do decide to continue with this, I just want you to know that my intention in bringing you here is to help you heal," he said softly. His voice broke slightly on the words that followed, "In the event it didn't work out between us . . . this isn't something I would want you to drop altogether. I'm not doing this because I want to somehow 'improve' you for my own personal gain. I'm choosing to be with you whether you continue to seek counseling or not." His deep blue eyes were intense with sincerity. She again could not fathom why she deserved such patience from a partner – her experience with all relationships up until this point had been quite the opposite. It was a strange adjustment.
"Thank you for telling me that," she whispered back to him.
He always managed to wait out the perfect lapse of time before he said the words, "I love you."
It still gave her a thrill to be able to respond in earnest real-life dialogue and not be reading a screenplay opposite another actor. "I love you, too."
She lifted her hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, and her bracelets caught his attention again. His solemn expression changed to one of cautious admiration, and she was arrested by that familiar, all-knowing, quarter-smile before he finally started the car.
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"Fletcher can't come for dinner tonight," Rachel announced as she walked into the kitchen.
Frank turned from the stove to look at her in concern. "Everything alright?"
She took a deep breath, strangely winded from the short walk through the hall. "Oh, yeah. He's just got a lot of studying for finals."
"He's a good kid, Rachel."
"Too good. I didn't know the meaning of the word 'study' at his age," she chuckled cheekily to herself as she stole a wooden spoonful of caramelized onions straight out of the pan Frank was holding.
"What?" She backed away slightly when she caught him looking her up and down. Her eyes came to rest at her bare feet on the tile. "Oh, I'm 'barefoot and pregnant,' is that it, Archie Bunker?"
"No, that's not what I was . . ." he trailed off, attempting to hide his face. He could tell that his secretive smile agonized her greatly.
"What then?" She snuck between his body and the kitchen counter, wrapping her arms around his waist.
"Nothing," he answered her softly, staring down at her beautiful face in quiet disbelief. "I'm just so happy."
She smirked lovingly up at him and lifted one hand to push a wayward lock of hair out of his forehead. "Oh, is that what that look is?"
Unable to resist, he leaned down and kissed her – a long, slow kiss of radical contentment.
When he finally broke away, he could barely bring himself to put proper distance between them. He lingered close enough to her face that he could see the undetectable shift in her serene black eyes. "I hope this lasts," he murmured, his voice weakened purely by her proximity.
She grinned wickedly. "What? Us hiding out in the country like a couple of fugitives?"
He laughed. "Okay, this isn't the 'country.' Not even close." He tipped her arm back when she tried to sneak another spoonful of dinner before he had served it. "And we're not hiding out. We're just living under the radar."
She chuckled and shook her head, boldly surpassing his grip to tap the wooden spoon against his bottom so that he released her from between his arms. "Whatever, Farmer."
He stopped cold after the hum of the stove fan finally dissipated, revealing the out-of-place sound of commotion outside.
"What is that?" he murmured, leaning toward the window where a line of cottonwood trees blocked his view.
"Come on, I'm starving. I'm eating for two, remember?"
He ignored her and moved into the hallway, following the sounds to the front door. His heart came to a stop at the same time his feet did.
Behind the thick glass of the long oval window on the door, he could see a small crowd had gathered. The frantic faces of strangers, the hovering placement of camera equipment, the flailing of arms and hands and notebooks blocking the front porch.
He could hear his blood pounding in his ears as he stalked the rest of the way to the front door, every footstep magnified with an exaggerated echo in the short, empty hallway.
"Just ignore them, Frank," Rachel called from the kitchen archway, her voice rivaling the echo of his footfalls.
His brow furrowed as he paused, just several feet from the door, hand twitching with the urge to throw it open in their faces.
"Frank, don't!" Rachel warned a final time before he forced open the front door.
Immediately, he was bombarded by a storm of camera flashes and eager questions. In the center of the crowd, perched on the highest porch step, stood a polished young man in a blue vest, clutching a notebook.
"We want to talk to Rachel. Is Rachel available?" The young man, who seemed to be the spokesperson for the group, spoke forwardly to Frank.
"I don't know who you're talking about," Frank lied, feigning disinterest.
"Rachel Marron," the man infused.
Frank shook his head, tamping down his anger. "You must have the wrong house."
He made to close the door on them, but their next question stopped him. "Can you tell us why Rachel left her house in Beverly Hills?"
"I told you, she doesn't live here," he said forcefully.
"How are you affiliated with Rachel?"
"I'm not."
The young man in the blue vest tilted his chin up smugly. "You were driving her around town earlier this afternoon."
Frank glared at the man, feeling his control slipping away with every second that passed. "What do you want?"
The man repeated in an infuriatingly casual voice, "We want to talk to Rachel Marron."
That was all it took. Frank stepped forward, grabbed the notebook out of the young man's skinny fingers, and tossed it with an aggressive arm off the side of the porch. "I'm not letting any one of you bastards talk to my pregnant girlfriend!" The small crowd fell silent as they bore witness to his overly combative reaction.
That was the moment Frank realized he had just unintentionally publicly outed Rachel Marron for being with child. He dropped his arms to his sides and mumbled flatly, "...Fuck."
Every person suddenly huddled closer on the porch, scrambling over each other to ask him questions, each of their voices attempting to rival the one before it.
"I'm not answering any of your goddamn questions!" Frank shouted, dangerously close to assaulting someone.
"Calm down, sir. If you could just tell us–"
"Don't tell me to calm down!" he bellowed, "You're trespassing! Get the hell off my property!" He shoved the blue vested pompous in the chest to prove his point, to which the others backed away slightly.
"Oh, so you're…" With a haughty expression, Blue Vest glanced down at his cell phone, "...Scott Pettigrew?"
"No. I am," the booming voice of Rachel's bodyguard sounded off from behind the crowd as he stepped out of his vehicle. "Now get your squirmy little asses off my fucking lawn."
All it took was for one person to notice Pettigrew was armed, and the rest all scattered away like mice in a rainstorm. Blue Vest shot Frank one last shifty look before snatching his discarded notebook from the hedges and hopping into his red Nissan Sentra to vacate the premises.
Pettigrew slowly climbed the porch steps to meet Frank at the top, a look of knowing dread beneath his bushy white eyebrows. "This the first incident?"
Frank nodded, still too angry to speak.
"She inside?"
"Yeah."
Pettigrew passed him through the front door while Frank stood stock-still in place, like a petrified tin soldier, in disbelief of what had just occurred.
And so it begins, he thought darkly to himself before turning to follow Scott inside the house. His fingers lingered faithfully on the deadbolt after he locked the door.