The Trouble With Mistakes: Frances Kensington I

By Abby J Williamson

The trouble with mistakes is they never really go away, no matter how much you wish they would. And train wrecks like Frances Kensington always make the front page...
Frances is a teenage heiress with a past. As she struggles to come to terms with an accident she was involved with last summer—an accident that ended with the death of a classmate—Frances tries her best to stay out of trouble. The only problem is trouble seems to follow her where ever she goes. While her parents are oblivious, Frances battles guilt, friend troubles, a new relationship, and mysterious threats from someone who won't let her forget what she did. If only forgetting her mistakes were as easy as making them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543930238

Book preview

Mistakes

Prologue

Everything is happening around me in slow motion. The lights flash and swirl in an agonizingly slow rotation. The never-ending wail of emergency sirens pierce my ear drums as I sit there in a daze. But watching the chaos unfold around me doesn’t do terrible things to my stomach or make my heart ache. No. The worst of it is watching the paramedics lift her mangled body from the tracks. Emergency responders try to shield my view, but I still see her. I see the aftermath of what I’ve done.

Voices from somewhere far away yell my name, pulling me back to the people surrounding me. Nameless officers and paramedics crowd me—I doubt I’ll remember their faces when I think back to this night. Their questions echo around my mind, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t have the strength to force the words out, and I doubt I could stomach the answers even if I did.

The blood is too fresh on the tracks. The train whistle still rings in my ears.

People continue to shuffle in and out of my blurring sight, their bodies moving ever so slowly. But I just sit there in shock as the world begins to tilt on its axis. It won’t be long until the whole world simply falls out from beneath my feet. I can’t stop the flashes of a train barreling down the tracks—the scene replays over and over in my mind like a nightmare I can’t escape. Somewhere deep inside me, I know this isn’t just a nightmare. A part of me knows that everything happening around me is real.

This isn’t how this night was supposed to go. I don’t even know how I ended up here when I should be at a party. We were never supposed to be out on the tracks…. Now she’s dead.

And it’s all my fault.

Chapter 1

Almost 1 Year Later

My life has become nothing more than a constant stream of poor choices and mistakes. I try to be a good girl, I really do, but it appears that the powers that be in the universe have it out for me. No matter what I do, my decisions always seem to go bad. I kissed the wrong boy. I picked a fight with the wrong girl. I made a terrible mistake. One I will have to live with for the rest of my life.

Fortunately, my parents have the money to send me to therapy in the hopes it will help me cope with the aftermath of my mistakes. Lucky me. I just don’t know whom therapy is really benefitting at this point—me or my parents.

So, Frances… The woman with the perfect hair and the horn-rimmed glasses leans forward in her chair. Her golden eyes stare me down, but I don’t really try too hard to hide my irritation as I stare right back.

I prefer Frankie, I correct her, turning my eyes to my nails as if I could care less about this whole ordeal.

How are you? Her easy smile doesn’t fool me. Though it may look genuine—her voice gentle and inviting—as a shrink it’s her job to act like she really cares about how I’m doing. I have a growing suspicion she doesn’t. She must like the gossip about the troubles of a dreadfully troubled teenaged heiress.

The same as the last time you asked me, I drawl in a bored tone.

I expect more from you, Frances, she sighs and adjusts her glasses. She scribbles something down on her clipboard that seems to be a permanent fixture found in the hands of all therapists. We do see each other once a week and it would be nice if we were able to spend our time discussing new topics other than going through the same tired routine, she eyes me skeptically. You give me the same answers every week which doesn’t allow me a lot of room to help you. Your parents are concerned that you are unhappy, Frances, and I have very little to share with them on this matter. Are you unhappy?

Aren’t there patient confidentiality rules about sharing information? I muse.

She disregards my attempt to not answer her question by giving me a hard look. I let out a dramatic sigh. You must understand that I am a deeply hopeless person. All of our stars are already aligned so who am I to intervene with fate? I give her an innocent smile.

Do you think the accident was fate?

My smile drops before I can think to hide my reaction, her words making my body tense.

I lean forward, my voice hard and slow. Let me make myself clear. I try to make my expression as cold as my mother’s when she’s angry with me. I should be able to imitate her by now, seeing as icy glare is the only expression my mother seems capable of making these days.

What happened eleven months ago on those tracks— I pause to let my words sink in. To give me time to choke out the next ones. "—Should have never happened."

I stand abruptly, my patience completely worn thin. I’m not going to sit here and listen to her talk about a part of my past she wasn’t even around for. Snatching my purse from the couch, I storm toward the door with every intention of not looking back.

Frances, we’re not done here, Genevieve calls after me.

Yes, we are. The door slams behind me, but once I’m in the hallway, I freeze. My hands shake at my sides with my breathing coming and going in short huffs, so I let myself stand there, trying to pull back the anger coursing through me. I don’t want to think about the accident. I don’t want to remember what happened that night.

There is only one place I want to be, and it certainly isn’t therapy with Genevieve. Going home is an unlikely choice because being around my family is always an unappealing option. I don’t want any lingering looks of pity, or be forced to endure my parents’ curious eyes following me with their inquiries about my latest therapy session. Besides, I’m not supposed to be home for at least another hour.

Despite my attempts to take slow even breaths, my rather uncontrolled anger issues prevent me from calming down in the elevator. When I shove through the elaborate glass doors of the business building I’m still fuming. Bypassing the line of sleek black cars waiting to take important people to important places, I start to feel like I can breathe again walking down the sidewalk. All the air had been sucked from the room as soon as she mentioned the accident. I spend every moment of my life trying to forget what I saw that night—trying to forget what I did—and that woman talks about the accident as if it was nothing.

I can feel my hands clench at my sides as I quicken my pace. I need to clear my head before I go home. I can’t be upset when I walk through those doors and back into my family’s perfectly structured world. No one can know that I still have nightmares about that night. They can’t know that a part of me is still stuck there on those tracks with a train barreling down on me. If anyone were to find out how messed up I still am over the accident, my life would become ten times more complicated, and I frankly don’t have the patience or energy for that.

I rush through the city toward the one place I can go to be alone. After the accident, all I needed was a place to hide, and after a particularly terrible day at therapy I found The Gift. The small art gallery not only gave me an escape, but opened my eyes to the beauty hidden inside. Every piece of art had been given to another as a gift, and then donated to the gallery years and years later. A part of why I love this place so much is because each stunning piece has a story—secret histories that make them so remarkable.

When I find the old brick building, I don’t bother stopping by the front desk. I come here enough for the elderly curator to easily recognize me. He gives me a small nod before going back to his paper, and I continue to a small exhibit room near the back of the gallery where my favorite painting hangs. The panic I had experienced earlier begins to ebb away once I set eyes on the golden frame. The title card beneath the painting reads Girl Waits for Train. I try to look past the irony in the fact that I can be so obsessed with a painting that brings me equal amounts of comfort and pain.

I sink to the bench that’s conveniently tucked behind a pillar, giving me a little privacy from the rest of the room—some space so that I can admire the painting and think in peace. The painting had been donated by an old man after his wife passed some years ago. He had the painting commissioned as a wedding gift for his young wife. The piece of art depicts one of the most important days of his life—the day he met his future bride while waiting for a train. As the tale goes, she had left her family when they did not approve of her decision to become a dancer, so she packed up and boarded a train. Little did she know that one train would change her entire life.

Sitting with my back against the pillar, my mind begins to wander to the uncertainties of my life. I come here to think, but mostly I come to hide from my family and all the expectations that come with the life of an American heiress. It’s kind of funny when I can have practically anything in the world, but the one thing I truly desire is quiet.

Quiet and to be able to fix what happened a year ago, but that will never happen. I can’t even pretend that anything I do would ever make the accident better. Some mistakes can’t be fixed. Some mistakes can’t be swept under the rug and forgotten, and for someone who can’t afford to make mistakes, I certainly make a lot of them. One stupid decision leads to a simple mistake, which is then blown completely out of proportion because of who I am.

I doubt anyone really knows how much energy my family puts into appearing effortless and perfect. The Kensington family is no exception to the natural flawlessness that all wealthy families appear to have. Actually, the only exception seems to be me. I am hardly the pristine heiress my family expects me to be, but it’s not like I actively seek out trouble. I wear the dresses my mother approves, and I put on dazzling smiles to charm the old men who invest in my family’s diamond company. Pity no one can see past the charming smile to see the chaos underneath.

I’m still for a moment soaking up the details of my painting in the blessed quiet. Before I can stop myself, my mind drifts back to the accident. The one thing I absolutely wish I could forget, but never will. It’s like my mind likes to dwell there in that dark place, reliving that moment over and over.

They say the impact killed her instantly. I was told she didn’t suffer, yet I find that hard to believe considering I saw her body when they pulled her from the tracks. One moment she was standing there stumbling onto the tracks, the next the train was speeding by and she was gone. She was gone, and I was left lying there in the gravel screaming her name and praying that when the train finally passed she would be just on the other side of the tracks.

Only she wasn’t.

I’m frozen in front of the portrait unable to make myself move, and stuck too far in the past staring at those tracks to notice anything around me. The panic rises inside me, worse than it was in Genevieve’s office. A train whistle rings in my ears, dragging me down as a flash of light crosses my vision.

I’m brought back from the depths of my mind with a jolt as I realize the light wasn’t a part of my memory. Whipping around to find the source, I see a boy about my age. He stands partially hidden behind a pillar further down from me, a camera in his hands.

Did you just take a picture of me? My voice sounds more strained and angry than I intended it to be, but a part of me is still caught by the memory.

The boy simply shrugs but doesn’t look sorry for startling me. He has a small smile in the corner of his mouth. Yeah, I did. You looked so lost in…

You need to delete it! I jump to my feet and move toward him, which only makes his smile wider. It’s rather infuriating. Now! I go to reach for the camera but he easily moves it out of my reach.

Whoa, hey look it’s alright. He holds one hand up in front of me so I stop reaching. See, I’m deleting it. I stand there watching him carefully as he pushes some buttons and the picture vanishes to reveal a blank screen.

All better, he gives me a half smile again, and I swear I can feel actual butterflies frantically flapping about in my stomach. Sadly, my view of the world is too cynical at the moment to be so easily taken by a few poor butterflies.

I take a small step back, and give him a sideways look. I’m not really sure what to think of him and his charming looks. He’s slightly taller than I am, with dark wavy hair and deep brown eyes. And that adorable grin.

When he keeps staring at me, I remember that societal norms suggest I say something to not appear rude. It would have been better had a stranger not taken a picture of me at all. Too bad I don’t really care about appearing rude.

He doesn’t seem to be bothered by my tone. He holds his hand out. Well, in that case, I’m Noah.

I eye him suspiciously, but take his hand in mine. Frankie.

Now we’re friends. He gives me a slow, easy grin and all I can think is Oh shit. A hesitant smile creeps to my own lips as he lets go of my hand. I don’t need more complications in my life, and he looks like he could be the start of a big one.

Then again, I’ve never shied away from complications before.

I’m not sure simply knowing my name automatically makes us friends. More like acquaintances who occasionally wave and say hello as we pass on the street, I remark.

What a sad existence that would be.

I raise an eyebrow at him. How so?

Well…. He puts the cap over his camera’s lens and slings it around his neck. Acquaintances most likely wouldn’t ask each other about their reasons for visiting such a lovely establishment. He spreads his arms wide indicating the otherwise vacant gallery.

And surely acquaintances would never admit to a secret rendezvous with a lover. I walk slowly away toward a Greek sculpture of a nude man shooting a bow and arrow.

Acquaintances would never discuss something so scandalous, he scoffs. Noah skips to the other side of the naked man and peeks at me around the sculpture’s voluptuous backside. I bet the story behind the statue is an intriguing one, considering someone must have thought a fully exposed man of stone would make a wonderful gift.

But I must say, Noah goes on. What better place to meet than by the only scandalous statue in the place.

I stroll around to the other side and gaze expectantly toward the small gallery’s entrance. I do fear he won’t show though, I sigh sadly. I’m afraid that our families don’t approve of our choices.

Noah comes up behind me then. This is turning out to be a star-crossed lovers’ story. I’m not a big fan of tragedies myself, but if that’s what you’re into by all means continue to wait for your British lover.

He’s French, I correct him as he walks away.

I watch as he stops dead in his tracks and spins to face me again. That’s even worse! he calls out.

Following him toward the front entrance, I speculate, I don’t think we are good enough acquaintances for you to be commenting on my love life.

Noah dances around me and holds the front door open like a gentleman. I’m just simply stating a fact, he says trying to be serious but he can’t keep the silly grin off his face. The only thing worse than a secret French lover is an American bad boy you just met. He winks at me and hops down the stairs to the sidewalk, spinning to face me at the bottom.

Oh, you’re a bad boy? I laugh, leaning against the stairway railing.

The baddest.

Then I’m afraid this won’t work, I sigh, the mischief in me trickling away. As much as I like this boy, I doubt we’ll ever see each other again. A small silence hangs in the air before Noah takes a few steps up so he stands eye to eye with me on the stairs.

And why is that? he asks coyly. His soft lips lift in one corner.

I’m afraid that I am far more trouble than I’m worth, I tell him bluntly. And two trouble makers will never make it together. Better to crush his hopes right away than string him along. He has no idea what a mess I really am. He’s quiet for a moment, and I give him one last smile before brushing past him. Making my way down the sidewalk, I imagine what it would be like to live in a world where I could have normal relationships with normal boys and have normal teenage problems.

Frankie! I turn around to see Noah staring back at me with his hands in his pockets. You seem like the good kind of trouble. He flashes one last brilliant grin before spinning on his heels and walking away. The smile that creeps onto my lips is genuine as I think to myself that he doesn’t have a clue who I am.

Or the fact that I am definitely not the good kind of trouble.

Chapter 2

I don’t even have both feet through the front door before I hear my mother calling for me. A graceful woman steps into the entryway trying to put in dangling earrings with a clutch under one arm. I eye her enviously, but that envy quickly vanishes.

Where have you been? she barks at me. I strongly admire my mother for her bluntness. She knows what she wants, and she certainly doesn’t waste any time getting to the point. Unfortunately, her directness doesn’t help when I have secrets to hide—like how I skipped out on the last thirty minutes of therapy.

I was out, is all I’m willing to tell her. I try to dart past her toward the stairs, hoping that if I make it to the second floor I can sneak away to my room. I strongly want to avoid whatever event has my mother all dressed up tonight. She doesn’t suffer through the pain of one-hundred-percent genuine diamond earrings that weigh too much for one poor ear lobe, for a simple evening out. No, something important has my mother all fancied up. I can only hope this isn’t a family affair.

Unfortunately, I’m not quick enough.

Stop right there, my mother scolds before I’m three steps up. I roll my eyes and lean against the banister. I find that in these kinds of situations a silent protest is usually the safest route to take.

She turns from the mirror and skeptically eyes me on the stairs. Genevieve called. My insides squirm.

Fantastic.

She said you were rather upset and ran out early. I wish you would stay for your full session, we pay a fortune for her services, she adds under her breath.

Something tells me we can afford her Mother, I moan tipping myself over the banister and contemplate jumping. Leave it to my mother to complain about paying someone for services not provided. It’s not like she’s too concerned about why I was upset and ran out early.

Well, go get dressed, we need to leave soon. She absently waves a hand in my direction dismissing me.

I perk up a little as I creep further up the stairs. Why, where are we going? Apparently, this evening is a family affair after all.

My mother sighs and turns to face me again. Frances, I told you about this. We are having dinner with someone very important to go over plans for the annual gala.

Who is so important that I need to be present for this no doubt horrendous dinner party?

Your grandmother.

I think I just got the chills, I mock, knowing just how much my mother loves spending time with her mother-in-law.

Don’t be sassy, Frances, she huffs.

I would never, I feign offense.

Go change! she orders. I bolt the rest of the way up the stairs and am around the corner before she can call me back.

I can’t imagine this dinner going smoothly, yet there is no way for me to avoid it. Going down the long hallway to my room, I picture all sorts of scenarios for this evening. My awful older brother will probably have his latest tramp hanging all over him. My perfect older sister will most likely look way too skinny as she prepares for her European tour with the college ballet company—something my parents won’t notice, but I will. And of course, there will be my grandmother who insists on being called Lady Elaine; something about the title reminding her of her glorious years in England. My grandmother being the ever-perfect English lady doesn’t prevent her from having a rather blunt and promiscuous dark sense of humor however.

And then, there is me…

I push my heavy door open and make sure to lock it behind me. If only I could lock up all my mistakes in this room when we leave tonight. Maybe then no one would bring up the nightmare I’ve been running from for nearly a year. I highly doubt my brother will pass up the chance to shame me though, so the hope that perhaps I can survive this dinner unscathed is short lived. I have no doubt this will be a night of off-hand compliments from my parents and snide comments from my brother mixed in with the occasional snarky remark from my grandmother. I actually really like the old woman. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy watching someone put my overly righteous family members in their places occasionally.

Meticulously moving through the formal articles of clothing in my closet, I settle for a short black dress with white lace sleeves. Something classy to satisfy my mother, as opposed to my often more scandalous choices. Selecting a pair of white stilettos off a shelf, I slink to the bathroom to fix the rest of me.

After roughly pulling a brush through my blonde tangles, I set the brush down and knock a small clutch to the floor. A clear packet with three capsules slides out as I pick it up. I pause for a moment, eyeing the little pouch. A school acquaintance had provided me with some new material on the last day of school as we were walking out the front gates. I haven’t been able to