Chapter 48: Don't Tell Rachel
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Having to lie to Rachel Marron was an intimidating task.
But it was an innocent lie, one that would presumably be for her own good in the long run. Having to come up with a reason he needed both Fletcher and Crystal for an outing was not easy for Frank, but he managed to construct a story that involved him taking Fletcher to the indoor range for shooting practice, and he had decided to take Crystal along with them to get her used to being around guns.
Once Rachel realized such an outing could be used as a matchmaking opportunity, she was sold on giving up Crystal for the day.
Ricky drove their group along with Scott to a vintage jeweler about an hour outside of town. Having a young woman along this time made the trip not nearly as intimidating as the first time. Frank wasn't sure what it was about women that they seemed to know so much about precious stones without ever having worn a ring themselves. He felt somewhat foolish, especially since he'd gone through this entire process once before with Leah. But Leah had all but given him instructions on what she'd wanted in a ring. This time, he had nothing.
The second they walked in, an associate came to assist them.
"How can I help you folks today?" the woman asked.
Frank told her that they were here to look at engagement rings. With a friendly smile, the woman turned and congratulated Fletcher and Crystal on their engagement.
Frank had never seen two people blush so hard in his life.
"Actually," he interjected, using every ounce of control to maintain a straight face, "the ring is for someone I'm dating."
The woman, now stuttering in embarrassment, apologized profusely and escorted Frank over to the counter.
He considered it a shame he couldn't tell Rachel about the mishap. She would have been thrilled.
The shop was quite different than the first one he'd looked at with Fletcher. Here there were more one-of-a-kind pieces than the modern, more fashionable choices he was used to seeing. Frank began to question what might suit Rachel, being that she was something of a fashion icon. Would it put her image at a disadvantage if he were to bring her a ring that was popular back in the 1930's? Surely Oxana would have a meltdown if the jewelry didn't match with Rachel's carefully crafted aesthetic. Maybe Rachel would refuse to wear such a piece if it clashed with the rest of her ensemble. He began to feel overwhelmed again, just like he had at the last shop.
Fletcher and Crystal, on the other hand, were full of opinions. They timidly followed each other between the counters, remarking on which styles they found most appealing, explaining why they liked specific rings for certain qualities.
Observing them from a safe distance, Frank allowed them to flirt subtly with each other for a few merciful minutes before he interrupted. "Remember, the ring is for Rachel…"
They casually broke apart after his comment.
Frank smirked to himself, amused.
He continued browsing the selection, carrying little conversation with the associates who occasionally checked in on him. Crystal, bless her heart, thought she was being helpful by making romantic suggestions about how he should propose. "Maybe you should read her a poem!" she sighed. Even behind her glasses, he could see the stars dancing maniacally in her eyes.
Fletcher snickered.
"Absolutely not," Frank said severely, before remembering how fragile the young woman was. He cleared his throat and said more gently, "I'm just not a poetic person, it wouldn't be authentic."
Fletcher gave him a quick glance of understanding while Crystal quietly cowered off to another display. While Frank browsed another line of ring styles, he could feel Fletcher standing a little too closely behind him. He looked over his shoulder and caught Fletcher staring across the room at Crystal where she stood chatting with Scott.
The boy's eyes darted back to Frank, an expression of exaggerated innocence on his face. "What?"
Frank shook his head, smiled, and looked away.
"What about something like this?" Crystal asked from the other aisle. Fletcher and Frank both went over to inspect her find.
The ring was yellow gold, an elegant band with a unique sloping symmetry to it. It housed a pear-shaped center diamond with three smaller stones framing it on either side like flower petals. It was by far the most interesting looking ring from the selection that day, a bit larger than the ideal ring he'd imagined in his head, but there was something about it that drew him in.
"That was the first time today you actually smiled when you looked at a ring."
Frank looked over to see Crystal blinking at him from behind her glasses. As a credit to her observation, he asked the associate to bring the ring out of its case.
He held it experimentally. The diamond was by no means small, so he was surprised at how delicate it felt between his fingers. For some reason, the way the tiny stones on each side caught the light made him feel uncomfortably sentimental.
He offered the ring over for Fletcher to study. "I think it could be perfect with a few little adjustments," he said, smiling. Frank did not miss the pleased look on Crystal's face.
Feeling more confident than he'd felt in a while, Frank spent the rest of their time talking customizations with the jeweler.
Scott stood outside the store with Crystal, waiting for Ricky to come back with the car while Fletcher stayed behind with Frank at the counter.
"I'm glad we brought Crystal along this time," Frank said casually, watching Fletcher's face.
"Oh… yeah."
"You two seem to have a lot in common," Frank remarked.
"Yeah. She's… cool."
"Come on, Fletcher, you were barely eight years old when you noticed something going on between me and your mom," Frank murmured, facing the display so as to not make him uncomfortable.
Fletcher exhaled nervously. "I didn't know you were going to hire someone who was my age."
"I didn't plan it that way," Frank said with a smirk. He could see Fletcher's thumbs twiddling on the counter in his peripheral.
"I like her," the boy finally admitted. Frank felt strangely warmed by Fletcher's willingness to confide in him about his feelings. "Don't tell Mom," he whispered.
Frank laughed jovially. "Wouldn't dream of it."
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That night Rachel made every attempt to dig all of the details out of Frank about their outing at the 'shooting range' that day. He was strangely cryptic about what had happened, and it frustrated her more than usual.
"Did they at least flirt a little bit?" she asked, hopeful.
Frank didn't really have to answer her. His eyes alone said enough. Rachel put her hands together with glee and grinned. "My baby is gonna have his first real girlfriend!"
Frank smiled reluctantly. "Don't push them. Just let it happen."
"I know, I know." Rachel placed her hair clips onto her nightstand and let her soft black curls fall against her face. "I just know Crystal won't be able to resist my boy if she watched him shooting those guns today."
Frank threw her a significant glance. "I thought you didn't want Fletcher shooting guns?"
"It's different if you're at a range. Besides, there's nothing sexier than a man with perfect aim," she added seductively, placing a deep kiss on Frank's lips as she tugged him into bed.
His smile was uncharacteristically shy when she backed away.
"By the way," she murmured, clearing her throat slightly, "I got invited to perform at Christmastime again."
Frank groaned. "Not another Christmas concert."
"This one is different," she insisted. "No Brock Chutney. No Myra Dailey."
"You'll be too close to your due date by then, Rachel," he said gruffly. "Didn't you think about that?"
"I'll be fine," she waved him off.
"You know you're not supposed to fly that late in pregnancy," he warned.
Rachel smirked to herself, thinking of all the connections she had to get her a private jet in an emergency. "We celebrities have ways to get around."
He gave her a withering look. "Where is this concert?"
"Olympia Theater . . . Miami."
He blinked, his eyes somehow both affectionate and conflicted. The corner of her mouth turned up in a smile as she continued to stare at him, and slowly her fingers trailed along the side of his face.
"I was gonna have Crystal book the Fontainebleau," she said softly.
His expression became one of discriminate longing as he stared deeply into her eyes. He still said nothing.
"Is that okay?" she whispered, tucking her bottom lip beneath her teeth.
He gave her no warning signs before leaning down to take her lips within his own. Rachel smiled into the kiss, assuming she had his permission.
Hovering over her, Frank continued kissing her neck, then her collarbone, then her breast, then slowly, carefully, he brought his hands lovingly around her belly, kissing the stretched skin around her belly button.
"I'm huge," she said with a self-deprecating giggle as she tapped the top of her belly, knowing she had much further yet to go.
His smile when he looked up at her was downright devastating. "You're beautiful," he murmured back. She gasped lightly when she felt the flutter of fetal feet somewhere inside.
"She just moved when she heard your voice," Rachel whispered.
"She did?" His voice was full of wonder as he glided his fingers over her belly.
"You should sing to her," she encouraged.
"I can't sing," he resisted.
"Well, that's no problem because you have the best teacher in the world," Rachel teased, gesturing to herself.
He shook his head with a bashful smile, tapping his fingers nervously along the sides of her belly.
"I sing to her all of the time – she loves it," Rachel said.
"You have perfect pitch, of course she loves it when you sing."
"But she already loves your voice. She's been moving non-stop since you started talking."
Frank looked back and forth between Rachel's face and her belly in quiet disbelief.
"Come on, Farmer, you gotta know at least one baby song. What about 'Old MacDonald?' That's a country song."
He laughed.
She attempted to guide him through the first verse of lyrics when he took it upon himself to change them. "... and on his farm he had a gun. E-I-E-I-O. With a bang bang here and a bang bang there–"
She smacked his arm. "Stop it! No violence."
"Okay, uh . . . and on his farm he had a traveling salesman. E-I-E-I-O. With a knock knock here and a knock knock there. Here a knock, there a knock–"
"What the hell? You gotta do animal sounds!"
He shrugged innocently. "We aren't living in the country right now, so I was trying to put kind of a suburban twist on it."
"You are ridiculous."
He smirked and said to her belly, "Sorry, I can't sing. Hopefully you take after your mother."
Rachel laughed with mirth and told him to turn off the light. It was still so hard for her to imagine Frank as a father. Because God help her, when she tried to envision it, all she came up with was him standing in the middle of a pale pink nursery, juxtaposed like a motherfucking James Bond clone with his gun and his suspenders. The image made her want to laugh, want to cry, and want to swoon all at the same time.
But right now, he wasn't like that. When her eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness, her breath was taken away by the look of absolute peace on his face.
"I wish you were like this all the time," she whispered.
"Like what?" he asked.
"Carefree."
He blinked a few times, a tint of regret in his eyes. "Make it so it's just us all of the time." He took her hand in his.
"Maybe one day it will be," she said softly.
He looked like he wanted so desperately to believe her.
}0{
It seemed every time they finally had achieved some semblance of peace in their lives, another disaster occurred.
Over time, there seemed to be less headlines about Rachel's pregnancy and more headlines about Frank's past. The articles written were suspiciously full of personal information about him – where he grew up, his history with international security, the other principals he'd serviced. It was information that no one should have had access to. Intimate information – distressingly intimate. Frank had wanted to enlist help from a higher governmental power to find out where the information was being leaked from, but he didn't know if the enemy resided in some governmental branch where he'd held prior connections. It was all a royal mess, and he was beginning to unravel again.
The final straw was one particular headline brought to his attention by Liam Fitzgerald.
Ex Secret Service agent Frank Farmer: the reason Reagan was shot?
He tossed the newspaper onto the floor in shock, shaking wildly with panic. Fitzgerald attempted to calm him down, but his efforts were in vain. When Rachel found out about it, her attempts to comfort Frank were even less well-received.
Frank was beside himself. They didn't understand what it was like for him to have his deepest secrets suddenly thrust into the spotlight for all the world to see.
His mind in utter disarray, Frank did the only logical thing he could think to do. He went running back to the office of Dr. Theo Evers.
And he had a meltdown.
It wasn't easy to hear his therapist challenge him during a time of such turmoil, but Dr. Evers was not one to sugarcoat a situation. It was one of the things that Frank had appreciated him for – until it meant having to face his greatest fears.
"The damage is done, Frank," Dr. Evers stated, prodding one of the tabloid pages with a firm finger. "Even if you left this relationship today, you'd have just as much attention on you, if not more than Rachel."
"Did I… say I wanted to leave the relationship?" Frank asked, stunned.
"You said, 'I want out,'" Dr. Evers recited calmly.
Frank paused to breathe, realizing he'd spent the last five minutes in a frantic, unfiltered stream of consciousness. "How are they discovering these things about me?" he asked in agony, as if his therapist had the answers.
"That's above my pay grade, Frank. Did you talk to anyone you know in the FBI?"
Frank squared his hands upon both knees and gritted his teeth, shaking his head.
"What about the secret service?"
"I can't rely on old connections anymore. Anyone who worked with me before is a potential suspect."
There was a long pause during which Dr. Evers seemed to be examining his client's expression for any remaining hints of sanity.
"I've noticed you seem to be increasingly suspicious of those around you lately," he said carefully, "Do you have anyone you can fully trust right now?"
Frank thought for a moment. "Rachel. Fletcher."
"Is that it?"
"...You."
"I appreciate that, Frank, but you can't always come seeking asylum in this office when things get hard." Dr. Evers was cautious in segueing into his next sentence, "I want to revisit the panic attack you had in New York. You seemed to have implied that it stemmed from a paranoid episode of sorts."
Frank winced. "I hate that word."
"What word?"
"Paranoid."
"I'm using it in a clinical sense."
Frank threw his therapist a dark look. "I know."
Dr. Evers took a deep breath before asking a very strange question. "Let me ask you this: if you had to go use a public restroom, could you do it without being armed?"
Frank shook his head, knowing there was no circumstance which would change his answer.
Dr. Evers looked him square in the eye and said, "Pardon my French, but that shit's not normal."
Frank shifted uncomfortably, awaiting the man's next words with dread.
"We've talked extensively about your past, Frank. We've pinpointed things this might be stemming from. We talked about the girl you saved from the gang rape back in the 70's, we've talked about the incident with the man and the dog in West Virginia. We've talked about your mother, we've talked about Reagan, we've talked about Romania, we've talked about 9/11… have we missed something?"
It was too much – listening to a casual string of his own traumatic experiences so easily uttered by this man who seemed to have never suffered through a single traumatic event in his life.
Frank felt the floodgates open.
"It's me," he blurted forcefully. "In every situation, it's like I can't relax. I just have this… constant need to be looking over my shoulder. I can't untrain myself."
He did not like how quiet Dr. Evers was after hearing this revelation.
Frank was equally bothered by his therapist's suspicious change in subject. "How's your relationship with Rachel going?"
"It's good. I mean, I think it's good."
"Would she tell me it's good?"
Frank thought for a moment. "Yeah. I think so."
"Has she expressed concerns to you about your behavior?"
"A little."
"Can you give me specifics?"
"It's hard to give specifics," Frank muttered tersely. "She's kind of hot and cold. One minute she says she's attracted to it, then the next she's telling me I need to chill the fuck out."
Dr. Evers placed his notebook resolutely down onto the end table and stared straight at his patient without any barriers between them. "Frank, I think maybe it's time we start considering medication."
Frank shook his head. "She'll put up a fight."
Dr. Evers placed his hands in his lap and said in a disturbingly gentle voice, "I didn't mean for Rachel. I meant for you."
Frank felt like he'd just taken a blow to the chest.
}0{
Rachel wasn't easy to lie to. Even lying by omission was growing harder for Frank to do while he was around her. He wasn't obligated to tell her everything that he'd told Dr. Evers that day. So why did he feel like he was committing the greatest act of betrayal by not telling her?
He still could not reconcile it, having to hear that dirty word: medication. For years Frank had been going to therapy and not once had it been discussed. After his very first session he'd been given a printed form with all of the most commonly prescribed SSRI's and antidepressants, but he'd never taken the time to read it seriously. It would have been like reading the instructions on how to load a pistol. He already knew what to do, so why bother reading? Still, his photographic memory served him the familiar generic drug names like an ominous incantation: Escitalopram, Sertraline, Fluoxetine, Duloxetine, Venlafaxine.
He had been pacing the bedroom with the words echoing in his head when his shoe came into contact with a piece of paper peeking out from underneath the bed. He bent over to pick it up and recognized it as part of the printed database of clients from Rachel's seamstress all those weeks ago. He entertained a brief thought of having her revisit the list, but then what good would it do now? They'd encountered much worse scenarios in New York than they had in Chicago where it all began. Still, there was something that begged him not to let it go just yet.
Curiously, Frank turned the paper over and read through the incomplete list of names. As expected, none of them drew any kind of recognition, but one thing he did recognize was the business logo at the very bottom of the page.
Modern Bloom Alterations
His photographic memory was instantly swept free of the string of generic drug names and flooded with images of that very same picture – that ambiguous floral loop in pastel purple ink – all over the company's mailing ads. In his house. On Leah's desk.
Small business advertising.
The alterations shop had been one of Leah's clients.
Which meant she would have had access to the company's client database. Which meant she would have had access to every client's personal information. Which meant she had Rachel's personal information.
Frank's body thrummed with an overwhelming burst of anxious energy, hands shaking as he held the piece of paper, thinking of where to begin. He left the bedroom for the library and tore through the pile of papers strewn over Scott's desk. Finally he found the contact information for the young man who had first hacked into the database.
On his cell phone, Frank quickly dialed the hacker and requested for him to send, by email, all of the client information on Rachel Marron that had been housed in the database.
"When do you need it by?" the young man asked, slightly hassled.
"Now," Frank demanded, double and triple and quadruple clicking the Internet Explorer icon until a belated burst of windows opened on the computer screen.
Frank heard the man sigh on the other line. "Okay. Hold on."
Realizing he was not hooked up to the internet, Frank cursed and tapped the button to initiate the dial-up sequence.
"Is Mr. Pettigrew gonna pay me for this?" the hacker asked in annoyance as he listened to Frank's angry string of cuss words over the phone.
"Sure, kid." Frank smacked the side of the computer with his hand as the buzzing and bleeping sounds of the dial-up connection mocked his urgency.
Finally, the series of windows he'd opened all loaded in succession with the headline pages, which ironically all featured his and Rachel's faces. He suppressed the fire of rage in his chest and closed all of the windows except for one.
"Did you send it?" Frank asked, frantically typing in the domain for his email so that he could enter his password.
"One second…"
As soon as he logged into his account, the email appeared in bold font on the top of the queue: 'Per your request.'
Without a word of acknowledgment, Frank hung up the call and greedily clicked on the email.
It showed her name: Marron, Rachel at the top of the page. Below it was listed her personal information, Mailing Address: Phone Number: Measurements: Alteration History: Purchase History.
Under each page of her alteration history, there was a Notes section. Frank painstakingly read through each section, sifting through the dates of each alteration and the interaction that had occurred: "Client was difficult, insisted inseam was too short on several pieces"... "Client brought three rare vintage jackets in need of missing bead replacements"... "Client threatened to take business elsewhere after insisting the tailor gave her a dirty look"...
He kept skimming until he reached 1992, his pulse increasing with every line. Only one alteration had taken place that year, and under the notes section was just one sentence.
2-9-92, "Client brought in a perfectly split silk scarf; claims boyfriend cut it with a samurai blade during foreplay."
His heart was racing as he backed away from the computer screen in alarm. He felt nauseated and clammy all over – everything made sense now. The reason Leah had become so nasty to him during their relationship, seemingly overnight. Had she read the notes and put the pieces together, accidentally coming into the discovery of his secret relationship with Rachel – a relationship he had never bothered to disclose to his wife? Not only that, but now he had a possible source for the recent surge of personal information about him that had been leaked to the media.
Had Leah been plotting this all along? Was it just a coincidence? Was she behind every attack, even the ones in New York City? It made very little sense to Frank that she could have been that bitter about his relationship with Rachel. After all, he had never cheated – all of his interactions with Rachel had taken place either before he met Leah or after their divorce had been long since finalized. But this was as close as he'd come to having someone to blame for his misery since it had begun – and he'd be damned if he didn't do something about it.
But he didn't even know where to begin. His greatest temptation was to call her right then and there and accuse her on the spot. But no, he had to calibrate. He had to think over his attack, plan it carefully. And Rachel couldn't know about it.
He had to tell someone though. So that night he told Scott.
"I'll grant you the scarf thing was likely Leah… But the intrusion at The Plaza? The chocolate box? The ransacking at the Sheraton?" Scott looked doubtful in the dim light of the library desk lamp.
"We don't have any other leads at this point," Frank whispered, looking over his shoulder. "I'm going to confront Leah about it."
"Frank…" Scott seemed as if he were about to protest, but realized it was pointless. "How are you going to do that?"
"I haven't decided yet. But I need to find out from her myself." Frank grabbed all of the printed documents from the desk and started for the door. "Don't tell Rachel."