She’d tried that story out on IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer.com. And while it had been satisfying to get anonymous encouragement for her decision, it was crap. Joshua wasn’t abusive. He was cold sometimes. They didn’t, in the end, see eye to eye on many things. A fundamental lack of compatibility that seemed exciting when she was twenty-four but wasn’t good in the long run. And he hadn’t understood what the postpartum depression was or the more general depression she’d had before that. How it alienated her from her children. How she never felt about them as she should’ve. But he was a good man. A good father. That most of all. Why else would she have left her children with him? Who else could she trust?
The truth was that there wasn’t any reason Kate could offer up that could explain her behavior to anyone, even herself. Make it acceptable, wipe away what she’d done. And what was the point of trying anyway? If she went back, it wasn’t going to be for her. It was going to be for the girls, for Joshua. She had to leave herself out of the equation.
But why was she even thinking about going back?
That had everything to do with Franny Maycombe.
The Triple-Tenner You’ve Never Heard Of
by TED BORENSTEIN
Special to VANITY FAIR
Published on OCTOBER 29
I finally caught up with Franny. She was elusive at first, reluctant to go on the record. She’d caused enough trouble, she said, she wasn’t the story, and besides, she’d signed an agreement with the producers of a documentary, giving them exclusivity. But that movie wasn’t going to be out for at least a year, and I could sense that she had some hesitation about the project. She’d talk to me on background, but I couldn’t get her to commit. This happens sometimes in long-form journalism. You can spend a lot of time mining a story that doesn’t work out. You have to learn to roll with the punches. Besides, perhaps I’d written enough about Triple Ten, and it was time to move on.
Then Franny calls.
“I’m ready to do it,” she says. “Go on the record.”
She sounds breathless, as if she’s run to the phone to catch the call, though she’s the one who called me.
I ask her if she’s sure. She is, she says. Then what changed her mind?
“Don’t you want to talk to me?”
I assure her that I do but remind her about her contract.
“Don’t worry about that,” she says. “I just have one condition.”
She tells me what it is, and we set up a time and place to meet.
We meet two days later at Joshua Ring’s house. She answers the door in a tan skirt and crisp white blouse, something she describes as “interview clothing.” She’s bubbly, almost dancing on her toes. This is in contrast to our previous meetings, where her tone was more marked and cautious.
Joshua Ring is here, too, but Franny’s in charge. She shows me around the house, a typical suburban living room, dining room, kitchen. As in the other Triple Ten houses I’ve been in, there are photographs of the lost on the mantel—Joshua’s wife, Kaitlyn. And there’s a picture of Franny there, too, taken with her half sisters, two cute girls under ten.
“We never took a picture together,” Franny says as she pauses to gaze at the picture of Kaitlyn on her wedding day. “Me and . . . Kaitlyn. I’m not sure why.”
“She didn’t like having her picture taken,” Joshua says. “I’m not surprised.”
“I’m not a picture taker, either,” Franny says, then breaks into a funny impersonation of a young woman taking a series of selfies. “So silly.”
“Rather,” Joshua says, smiling. He’s a slightly formal man. I suspect he was baffled after his wife died, as so many of the newly single fathers in his situation were. In my experience, the women always seem sadder but more in control—a stereotype, I know, but a truth I’ve observed.
Franny touches his arm. “Shall we sit?”
We move to the couch in the living room. Franny waits for Joshua to take a seat, then sits next to him. Close enough that I note it. Is this what Franny wants me to see? That she’s stepped into her mother’s shoes? Then Franny leans away from Joshua, and I banish the thought. Franny does seem different, though, from our earlier conversations. As if she’s grown up overnight.
We discuss many things. How Joshua learned about Franny, how he’d processed the news. How helpful it had been to have Franny around since then, helping with the girls, distracting the family from their grief. That a part of Kaitlyn lives on in her and how she fits into the family.
Franny speaks very little. When the girls come in to ask for snacks, she leaves to attend to their needs.
Joshua watches her walk out of the room. “She’s great with them, don’t you think?” I agree. “She’s so natural. Almost as if . . .” He trails off. I try to prompt an answer. “Nothing, nothing. I’m a bit nervous today, is all.”
What did he have to be nervous about?
“This interview, for one.”
Franny comes back and sits closer to Joshua. She’s licking something sticky from her fingers. She doesn’t seem nervous. She seems, if I had to use a word to summarize her, triumphant.
She pats Joshua on the knee. “Did you want to tell him or should I?”
“That’s a lady’s prerogative, I think.”
Franny turns to me as she takes Joshua’s hand in hers.
“It’s all a bit sudden, but . . . we’re getting married.”
27
NEW ROUTINE
CECILY
The days flip by after the incident with Teo and the police.
When I got back downstairs from making sure the kids were okay, Teo had gone. He responded to my text asking him if he was okay with
