Between the Times - 8. Frank

Cole had vanished. And considering how huge the compound was, you didn't immediately took that word in your mouth. But the boy hadn't shown up for lunch nor dinner, and by now Sebastian had meekly confessed that they'd had a fight.

Frank pinched the root of his nose and thought. They were all looking for him, except Henry, who was watching the other kids. Huck had not been very useful as a sniffer dog, because of course the boy's scent was everywhere, and now that the sun was almost completely down, the anxiety was growing.

Alice's voice was wafted in on the light breeze, probably talking to Sarah or Ma on the phone.

Sebastian hadn't wanted to say what they had been arguing about, but maybe that would come now with the darkness. Whether it would say anything about where Cole was holed up was another question, of course.

"Hey Frank..." Matt suddenly spoke up behind him. "Pa and I'll take the pickup and head out back. In all these hours, even a little boy can make good distance."

"Okay."

"Alice has called all the neighbors by now. Great Mother, what a disaster." Matt ran his hand through his hair, but more annoyed than concerned. "Oh, and here." He handed Frank a flashlight.

"Thanks. Did anyone go to the pond again?"

"Gaspar, Sawyer, and Patrick, I think."

They nodded to each other, then Matt trudged off.

Frank cursed softly. Britney had wanted to get rid of her son as soon as possible and certainly wouldn't even shrug if something happened to him, but he was family, he belonged with everyone here.

Cole Franklin. Little Frank.

Goosebumps spread over Frank's arms and he regretted not putting on something long-sleeved in the meantime, but that was really secondary now. Again he mentally went through all the possible places where a child could hide.

In the end, he just trudged off, searched a shed for what was probably the tenth time, and wished- also for the umpteenth time- that Cole had just gone into the tree house. But the boy was smarter than that.

As he passed the stable that had once belonged to the sheep and was now inhabited by the strange mini-pigs, it flashed through his mind that Chris had said earlier that the pigs had been quieter than usual today. Something about the thought nagged at him until he remembered that Sebastian and Cole in particular loved the mini pigs.

Frank, for his part, couldn't fancy them unless they were on his plate ready to be eaten, but fortunately the boys hadn't yet grasped the connection. Accordingly, he hesitated for a while before entering the stable; after all, workers had been in and out of here all day, so Cole should have been noticed.

At first, the smell of manure was overwhelming, and in the little light from the flashlight, the rustling and grunting seemed to come from everywhere, even though there were only a dozen pigs living here, and some of them were still tiny piglets.

But one of the sounds sounded more like a human sob than the squeal of a piglet.

"Cole?"

Over the soft grunts, Frank thought he heard something like a hiccup.

"Cole? It's Uncle Frank." Slowly he walked down the center aisle of the converted pen, shining his light thoroughly into all the corners.

Again the sound that was too human.

"Cole, please. We're worried."

"Go away," came a feeble voice from the far corner.

"It's dark outside and you've been hiding for hours..."

"Go away!" Now it was almost a screech, making the pigs squeal and grunt in fright, but still rather dull considering what Frank was used to from the boys.

Frank strode past a compartment where a sow lay nursing her piglets, emitting a presumably warning grunt in his direction. The last compartment had a flap leading outside, and the straw lying there was smeared with mud. In the corner lay a half-tattered bale of hay- and snuggled in there sat Cole, one of the ridiculously tiny piglets in his lap.

Cole was basically pretty muddy too, and had obvious tear marks on his face, but the piglet in his arms seemed to be enjoying the cuddles from him, if not sleeping. "Go away..." It was just a helpless sob.

And Frank sighed. How Cole had managed to hide here from the workers was a mystery to him, but the question could wait. "We're worried about you. Come out of there now. You're dirty and probably hungry and-"

"No."

"Sebastian told me you two had a fight..." He left the sentence like that, but Cole just sobbed, so he added: "Will you tell me what it was about?"

"No. Go away." Cole hugged the poor piglet to him.

"Cole. I must weigh four times as much as you do, so I have no problem carrying you out of here, and then I don't care how much you scream and fidget." He didn't mean to sound so stern, but there were a lot of people busy looking for the boy.

Well, Cole really started crying now and the piglet licked his face excitedly. Then he turned and pressed further into the hay and Frank could only see his back.

But before he climbed into the compartment and got the muddy boy out of there, he pulled out his phone and texted Alice that he had found him. Then he climbed over the low metal rail and was greeted by loud grunts and squeals from the other mini-pigs present- or driven away, what did he know about pigs.

"Cole..." In a first gentle attempt, he put his hand on his back, but Cole literally curled up around his piglet. Suppressing a sigh, Frank sat down on the hay bale, which slumped noticeably under his weight.

"No... go away. Please." Cole sobbed softly. "You don't care about me anyway."

Stunned, Frank's mouth dropped open. "Excuse me?"

"You're my father, but you don't care about me one bit."

The words echoed in Frank's head as if it were an empty cave. It took him a moment to really comprehend them, and then another moment before he managed to form new words himself. "Who exactly said that?"

"S-S-Sebastian. Aunt Sarah said my mother didn't want me and gave me to you, but you don't care about me at all."

Oh Great Mother...

"Whatever Aunt Sarah said to Sebastian, he's got some things mixed up," Frank said softly, putting again his hand reassuringly on Cole's back and leaving it there this time. "Because I'm definitely not your father. Your mother is my older sister, and I'm certainly not going to make her a baby. And I do care about you, a lot. I would have taken you in as a ward, like your mother actually wanted, but that was difficult at the time, so Aunt Alice took over," he explained slowly.

"But my name is like yours!"

It must have been getting too much for the piglet now, because it squirmed out of Cole's arms, squealing, and made off.

"Franklin? Oh, I guess your mother couldn't think of anything better, because Cole was my suggestion. And by the way, both of my grandfathers, that is, your great-grandfathers, were named Frank. You might say it runs in the family." He added a half-hearted chuckle and began rubbing Cole's back.

"Then who's my father?" Cole desperately wanted to know, and Frank, who had been imagining such a conversation for many years, screwed up his face, glad the boy didn't see it.

"Your father is dead."

Startled, Cole sucked in a breath. "What was his name?"

"Flynn."

And he wasn't a very nice person, I'm afraid. Well, neither is your mother...

"Flynn..." Mumbling the name, Cole turned to Frank now, and looked up at him at last. He might have Britney's curls, but they were light brown like Flynn's, and his face clearly bore his features. And as Henry had noted with a shudder, Cole sometimes pursed his mouth in exactly the same way when he was upset.

"You look like him," Frank whispered, and swallowed, but the hoarse words were already out.

For a moment Cole seemed surprised, maybe even pleased, but then he frowned. "Why are you so sad?"

"Because..."

Frank saw Flynn's sneering face in front of him again as he taunted Frank. He pushed him off and saw the sneer turn to surprise as he found no footing in his slippers on the edge of the stairs. He heard the rumble as the body fell down the stairs and the crack as bones broke. Wondered again why no one else seemed to hear it. Saw the twisted body lying motionless at the foot of the stairs, a slipper resting a few steps above.

"Because... because I'm incredibly sorry you can't grow up with your parents," Frank finally choked out. The old images made his eyes burn, the guilt burn in his chest.

Cole's dark eyes looked at him and he imagined he saw understanding in them. But maybe it was just the innocence of a child who didn't yet grasp the big picture. "My mother wanted you to raise me...?"

Nodding, Frank swallowed the lump in his throat. Saw Britney in front of him for a moment, lying in her hospital bed, pale and exhausted and red-eyed, staring full of rejection at the baby in the bed beside her.

"Then... could you... would you... um..." Cole stammered, but he seemed to know very well what he wanted to say. "Would you like to be my pa?" Hope shone in his eyes.

Completely taken off guard, albeit in a good way, Frank stared at him. Like when Dimmi had first called him Papa, his heart overflowed all the way up to his eyes. "I'd love to."

Cole raised a small piglet-and-mud-smeared hand and wiped away a tear. "Don't cry." Then he hugged Frank and slid onto his lap.

And Frank wrapped his arms around the skinny boy, crying out for the first time all the guilt that had been haunting him since he'd accidentally killed Flynn.