Aftermath by Tracy Brown Page A

were things that Frankie had never shared with anyone; how his father suffered from some type of mental illness that had gone undiagnosed for so long the family seemed to have just found a way to cope with it.
    Frankie looked at Gillian. “I told you that my father was crazy,” Frankie said, as if reading her mind. “He was the type to go off—just snap at any minute.”
    â€œYeah,” Gillian said, nodding. “You told me that he would sit down for dinner and smile, he’d tell your mom that it was delicious, and then he’d bug out and ask why she was looking at him like that. He accused her of poisoning his food.”
    Frankie nodded. “That wasn’t the half of it.” He stared ahead before looking at Gillian again. “He was like a psychopath.”
    Gillian felt like a psychologist. “You said that he used to bully everybody, and beat you.”
    Frankie looked at her in a way that made her stop speaking. “We were all scared of him.” He frowned. “But my brother was the most afraid because he was the little one, you know? He was a little kid, bony and frail, and my father used to tease him, call him Gimpy and shit like that.”
    Frankie had told Gillian that his father committed suicide one night as his brother and mother lay asleep. By then, Frankie had fled the home and was working for Gillian’s father, Doug Nobles. Frankie admitted to Gillian that he had felt no sorrow when his father died. He had only been relieved that he hadn’t taken the rest of the family with him.
    â€œAfter I left home, I would sneak in and see Steven all the time. He told me that Dad wasn’t beating them like he used to. I never knew if that was true or not, ’cuz I wasn’t seeing my mother. She was like a slave to my father, you feel me?”
    Gillian nodded, but truly had no idea what that kind of upbringing must have been like. Her father had doted on her from the moment she entered the world and her mother had been smothering, as opposed to distant and nonparticipatory. Her parents’ marriage had been a happy one and she had rarely heard her father raise his voice at her mother.
    Frankie continued. “I never knew what happened after I left. I got out and got away, but he probably bore the burden of it.”
    â€œYou feel guilty about that?” she asked.
    Frankie nodded. “Yeah, I do. I left. And Steven and my mother were left behind to deal with my father.”
    â€œDon’t blame yourself, Frankie.”
    He shrugged. “Nah,” he said, as if trying to shake off the feeling of guilt that so obviously haunted him. “It ain’t that. I did what I could to protect him. And I thought I did a good job.” He looked in her eyes. “Camille never understood why I took care of him; why I let him hang around in our kitchen and eat up our food, run up our bills.” He chuckled awkwardly. “I just wanted my little brother to feel like he had a place he could be…” Frankie seemed to lose the words he needed to convey the sense of comfort and safety he had wanted Steven to enjoy after years of being belittled and demeaned at the hands of their tyrannical father.
    â€œI understand,” Gillian said. “I know how you felt about Steven.” She couldn’t believe that Misa had killed him. “Frankie, I’m so sorry.” She shook her head, feeling helpless to ease his pain. “Where is she now—Camille’s sister?”
    â€œShe’ll be in court this afternoon,” Frankie said, moving forward in his seat as if he needed to say something. He paused and looked at Gillian. “I can’t let her get away with this.”
    Gillian wondered for a moment if Frankie was going to hurt his sister-in-law. She searched his eyes for the answer.
    Frankie was staring at the floor as if in a trance. “I have to break this to my mother somehow.” He pictured his