Snap Shots of a Life Unravelled

Frankie sat at her desk contemplating her future. Brandon had always said she would end up regretting her decision, but she had her mind made up. It was too late to go back now, and what did a 17 year old kid know about life and relationships any way?

Her eyes burned as she attempted to focus on the task at hand. It didn't matter what turmoil was currently raging inside of her she had things to do. Maybe Brandon was right. Maybe she was making a mistake, but it was her mistake to make. She so desperately wanted everything to go back to the way it was before the betrayal. There was a time when all had been right with the world, but now...

Part of Frankie knew that she was being unreasonable. It had happened during a time when she wasn't completely sure that there was even going to be a Frankie and Oskar any more, but she couldn't help but feel as if she had been tricked some how. She was committed to starting her life over again. It had to be done. He wasn't going to turn his back on his own child, and she couldn't respect him if he did.

His child would and should be his number one priority now. It was sad how Lacey had never found it important enough while she was alive to let him know that he had a child, because that she could have handled. If Lacey were alive she could have dealt with the child, but not now that staying in Oskar's life meant that she would have to be a mother to a 10 year old girl. She was not ready for that. She couldn't fill the mother sized void that Lacey's passing had left.

The truth of the matter was that Frankie had not expected Oskar to have found someone else while she had taken some time away from her family to figure out what she had wanted from life. It turned out that she had been wrong. It took all of 2 months for Oskar to replace her, but when she had been ready to come back he had been waiting with open arms. Lacey had been a fling a careless indiscretion. He had insisted that she had not meant anything to him. He had been drunk and lonely and she had filled a hole that Frankie had left when she had decided to abandon them.

What Oskar had failed to understand was that it would have hurt less if Lacey had meant something to him. If what he had felt for Lacey had been something real then at least he had risked their life for something that was worth the risk. The fact that she had been inconsequential had meant that he had jeopardized their love for nothing. That hurt more than anything in the world.

Their 17 year old son understood it, why couldn't he? Frankie's knees creaked as she rose from her chair. She felt ancient. She surveyed herself critically in the mirror in her study and frowned at a few strands of gray that had not been their previously.

Oskar was waiting for her to fold. He was so arrogant when he told her that he knew that she would come crawling back to him. She had done so before hadn't she? She couldn't live without him. He was going to find out just how wrong he was. For once Frankie was going to live life without a safety net named Oskar and for once she wasn't afraid of the consequences. Maybe she had been wrong to come back when she had walked away from their life all those years ago.

She could tell herself that she had come back because of Brandon, but the truth was that she had come back because she was scared of starting over again at 43. And now she was going to start life over at 53. Frankie let out a snort of derision. She knew that she was being a hippocrite of the highest order when she spent her entire professional life counseling women to not settle for less than they were worth, only to herself remain trapped in a loveless marriage. Was it loveless, or had she just floated away from the tether of complacency that had been Oskar?

In any event, Frankie was ready to leave it all behind. She let out an audible sigh as she picked up the phone on her antique desk and dialed.

"Hello, Oskar we need to talk."