Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

crumbs until there was a big pile between them. And then she would probably tell it all, because she had never been able to keep a secret from Mattie. But she had never held a secret so damning.
I might lose the one friendship I cherish most.
    That night she lay alone in the little white bedroom, imagining Mattie’s questions.
How did it get to this point?
She explained and reexplained it in her head, but it all sounded wrong.
    Because it just did, Mattie. Because some things are inevitable.

CHAPTER 11

    “ W hen did it start?”
    Mattie was sitting up in her bed. For the past few minutes, she had calmly questioned Mamah. Did Edwin know? Did Frank’s wife know? Except for sprigs of frizzy gold hair escaping from barrettes at the sides of her head, she was the picture of composure.
    Mattie didn’t shock easily. Lightning had hit her so often that by the time she was ten, she’d grown impervious to surprise. Her mother had died when she was two. Then a brother and sister died, leaving her with one brother, a stepmother, and a father who seemed to shock as little as she did. Mamah had spent a good part of her college career trying to get a rise out of her roommate.
    She had no desire to do that now. She paced along one wall of the bedroom, framing and reframing the story. “Our friendship just evolved. He would come over to discuss the plans, and we would end up someplace else entirely, talking about anything. He’s passionate about so many things—education, literature, architecture, music. He loves Bach.”
    “Of course.” Mattie’s pale eyelashes blinked.
    “He was easy to talk to, and he opened up. His father had died a couple of weeks before Frank started building our house. He mentioned the death one day in passing, though he didn’t seem upset about it. They weren’t close, because his father had left the family when Frank was about six or seven. I think his father’s passing made him reflective, though, because he talked a great deal to me after that.”
    “About…”
    “About his early years, summers, actually, on his uncle’s farm in southwestern Wisconsin. How he learned to love the prairie and hills there. How he decided to be an architect. And he talked about his marriage to Catherine. It has been bad for a very long time. They simply grew apart—she’s immersed in the children, and he in his work. Well, and so it went. I told him about myself, too.”
    Mamah continued to pace, reliving aloud the day she had brought out the box some five years earlier. When she looked at Mattie, she saw her wince.
    “You seduced him with little German readers?”
    “No, no, it was another two years before…” Mamah collapsed in the chair and buried her face in the sheets at the edge of the bed. “Oh my Lord, Mattie, what a mess I’m in.”
    “Whew.” Mattie whistled. “You are.”
    “It was so easy to fall into,” Mamah said, shaking her head. “Frank has an immense soul. He’s so…” She smiled to herself. “He’s incredibly gentle. Yet very manly and gallant. Some people think he’s a colossal egoist, but he’s brilliant, and he hates false modesty. With me, though, he’s really very humble. And unpretentious.” Mamah searched her friend’s impassive features. Nothing. “He’s a visionary, Mattie, and he’s going to be famous someday for developing a true American architecture. He refuses to put up junk he hates, no matter how rich you are. He chooses clients as much as they choose him.”
    Mattie raised her eyebrows. “Ah, I see how it works,” she said. “He makes you feel as if you’re brilliant for hiring him.”
    “It’s not flattery, Mattie. He finds out who you are, the way any good architect does. Your habits and your tastes. He takes you on, and then he teaches you. It’s a process. Pretty soon you start to see the world through new eyes.”
    Mattie looked skeptical.
    “I know it all sounds like a lot of nonsense to you, but the truth is, he shows you how much better