Work Text:
Frank gives Mel the key on a Tuesday night, which is probably why he thinks he can get away with pretending it isn't a significant thing.
After dinner, after homework, after Penny has fought like a negotiator for an additional 20 minutes of TV before bed and Tanner has offered not 1, but 2 reminders that he has a science quiz in the morning even though he can recite the entire chapter backward, the house has fallen into that mundane weekday groove Mel finds herself getting worryingly accustomed to. It's the one where Frank loads the dishwasher while Tanner spreads yet another trail of pencils across the kitchen table and Penny, sprawled out on the living room floor beneath stashes of markers declaring she's coloring quietly, is all but humming 'Real Gone' from The Cars soundtrack at full volume.
Mel's drying the last of the plates when Frank opens the junk drawer.
She knows that drawer now. It's where the tape lives, a tape measure, along with batteries, takeout menus, a screwdriver, three loose crayons, cough drops, a flashlight, and at least two mystery keys that Frank insists are important even though he has no idea what they open. He digs around for a second, then shuts the drawer with his hip and turns toward her with something small held between his fingers.
“Here,” he says.
Mel looks down, it's a key.
For a moment, she doesn't move. Her hand stays on the dish towel. Her first instinct is to make a joke because that's easier than letting her chest do whatever It's currently trying to do.
“What’s this?”
Frank gives her a look. “A key.”
“That's incredibly ...helpful.”
“To the house.”
She blinks once. “I gathered.”
“It’s practical,” he says, immediately, like he's rehearsed the explanation and wants to get ahead of her face. “You’re here a lot. Sometimes you get here before I do. Sometimes Abby drops the kids off and I’m still stuck at work. Sometimes you bring things over and stand outside like a delivery person when you shouldn’t have to. It just makes sense.”
Mel looks at him.
Frank continues, because silence makes him nervous when the silence belongs to her. “It’s not a big thing or anything.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“You looked like you were about to.”
“I looked?”
“You're having this look about it right now.”
“I mean, I have many looks. I hope at least...”
“This was one of them.”
She sets the plate down carefully. “Frank.”
His expression softens a little, but he still holds the key between them as if It's nothing more than a convenient piece of metal. “Take it Mel, please.”
She studies his face. He's trying for casual and landing somewhere just left of it. His shoulders are too still, his eyes are too careful and there's a gentleness in the offer that makes the practical excuse feel both true and incomplete.
Mel takes the key, it's still warm from his hand. “Okay,” she says.
Frank exhales, almost too subtly to notice. “Okay.”
For three seconds, It's quiet, then Tanner looks up from the kitchen table. “Wait,” he says. “Did you just give Mel a key?”
Frank’s eyes close briefly, because he knows his kids well enough to know as to what comes next.
Mel turns her head slowly toward Tanner.
Tanner's staring at them with the sharp, fascinated attention of a 10 year old who's realized something adult and emotionally loaded has happened in front of him. Penny, sensing drama the way some animals sense weather changes, shoots upright from the living room floor.
“What key?” she calls.
“Nothing Pen,” Frank says.
Tanner points at Mel’s hand. “That key.”
Penny comes running into the kitchen with a marker still uncapped in one hand. “Mel got a key?”
Frank points at the marker. “Cap that before you get purple on the wall.”
Penny ignores this completely, bypassing him with all the authority of a 6 year old. “Mel got a key?”
Mel looks down at the key, then back at Penny. “Apparently.”
Penny gasps.
It's not a small gasp, it's a full bodied, theatrical gasp, the kind that belongs in a courtroom drama or at the end of a soap opera. Tanner leans back in his chair, grinning now, with all the preteen delight in the world.
“Oh my God,” Tanner says.
Frank gives him a warning look. “No.”
Tanner’s grin widens. “This is huge.”
“It's not huge.”
“It’s kinda huge.”
“It's practical.”
Penny clasps both hands over her heart, the marker still uncapped and now dangerously close to her shirt. “Are you getting married?”
Frank coughs in surprise. “What?”
Mel presses her lips together so hard her face almost hurts.
Tanner immediately points at Penny. “That’s not how engagement works.”
Penny frowns. “How do you know?”
“Because people get rings, not keys.”
“Maybe grown ups do keys first.”
Frank rubs a hand down his face. “Nobody's getting engaged.”
Penny’s face falls for half a second. “Not even a little?”
“There's no ‘a little’ engaged,” Frank says.
Tanner tilts his head. “I mean, technically, if you give someone a key, that’s like level one.”
Frank turns on him. “There aren't levels.”
“There are totally levels dad. I mean there is in video games so why wouldn't there be some in life too?”
Mel finally loses the fight and laughs.
Frank looks at her with betrayed affection. “You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.
“You aren't.”
“No, I'm not.”
Penny moves closer to Mel and peers at the key like it might sparkle. “Does this mean you can come over whenever you want?”
Frank says, “Within reason.”
Penny says, “So ... yes.”
“Within reason,” Frank repeats.
Tanner taps his pencil against his notebook. “Does she get her own drawer now?”
Mel freezes while Frank doesn't.
Without even looking up, he says, “She’s been having a drawer.”
The silence that follows is immediate and enormous.
Mel turns her head toward him just as Frank realizes what he's said half a second too late.
Penny’s eyes go wide enough to cause genuine alarm just as Tanner’s pencil drops onto the table.
“She has a drawer?!” Tanner asks, delighted.
Frank’s jaw tightens. “For practical reasons.”
“Everything's practical reasons with you,” Tanner says.
“It's-”
“What drawer?” Penny asks practically yelling.
Frank says nothing.
Penny grabs Mel’s free hand and starts tugging. “Show me. Show me the drawer.”
“There's no need to show anyone the drawer,” Frank says.
“There's absolutely a need,” Tanner says, already standing.
Mel looks at Frank, amused and touched in equal measure. “I have a drawer?”
“You know you have a drawer.”
“I know there’s a drawer with my sweater in it.”
“And your socks.”
“My socks?”
“And the hair ties you keep leaving here.”
“I've left, at best, one hair tie here.”
“You leave them everywhere. Among some other pieces of clothing.” She sees it in his face what he isn't saying. On the days where intimacy seems to get the best of them, she could see some of her things ending up among his things the way some of his boxer briefs and shirts have ended up amongst her own laundry.
Penny lets out another gasp. “She has socks here?”
Tanner places both hands on the table, leaning forward like a detective. “How long has this been going on?”
Frank points at him. “Don't make this weird.”
“You made it weird by hiding the drawer.”
“I didn't hide the drawer.”
“You didn’t announce the drawer.”
“Why would I announce a drawer?”
Penny looks up at Mel with complete seriousness. “Mel, are you moving in?”
Frank makes a strangled sound. “Penny.”
“What? I’m just asking.”
Mel looks down at Penny’s hopeful face, at Tanner’s expectant grin, at Frank’s expression of a man who's lost control of his kitchen and possibly his future. Her heart does something soft and dangerous.
“I’m not moving in,” she says gently.
Penny’s shoulders drop.
Mel squeezes her hand. “But I like being here.”
Penny studies her for a second. “A lot?”
Mel glances at Frank.
His expression has gone quiet, the humor still there but softened around the edges.
“A lot,” Mel says.
Penny accepts this with a nod, as if she can work with it. “Okay. But you have a key now, so that’s basically step one.”
Frank mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
Tanner sits back down, looking far too pleased with himself. “I called it. Levels.”
“There are no levels,” Frank says.
“Drawer, key, moving in, wedding,” Tanner lists.
Penny jumps in. “Baby.”
The kitchen goes silent again.
Frank stares at his daughter.
Mel’s fingers tighten around the key.
Penny looks between all of them. “What? Babies come after weddings sometimes.”
Tanner, with the grim confidence of an older sibling, says, “You skipped like five levels.”
Penny shrugs. “I like babies.”
Frank reaches over and gently takes the marker from her hand, capping it with more force than necessary. “Go finish coloring.”
“But—”
“Penny.”
She sighs dramatically. “Fine.”
She turns to leave, then spins back around and points at Mel. “Don’t lose the key.”
Mel lifts it. “I won’t.”
Penny smiles, satisfied. “Good. Because you live here now... kinda.” Then she runs back to the living room.
Tanner stares after her, then looks at Frank. “She’s not wrong.”
Frank points toward the table. “Science quiz.”
Tanner sits immediately. “Right.”
Mel looks at the key in her palm for another second before slipping it onto her key ring. It clicks into place beside her apartment key, her car key, the little loyalty tag from the grocery store she always forgets to use. And while one could argue that it's such a small sound, such an ordinary sound, the meaning behind it isn't lost to anyone.
Frank hears it anyway.
His eyes flick to her keys, then back to her face. “Practical,” he says softly.
Mel smiles. “Very practical.”
But neither of them believes that is all It's.
The rest of the evening carries on with the charged, ridiculous energy of kids who've discovered adult romance and intend to be absolutely insufferable about it. Tanner asks if Mel’s drawer is in the guest room or Frank’s room, and Frank tells him that he's one more question away from reviewing science flashcards for the next hour. Penny asks whether Mel’s key works on the front door and the back door, then looks deeply disappointed when Frank explains it only works on the front door because the back door has a different lock.
“That feels less romantic,” Penny says.
“It's a key,” Frank says.
“It's a symbol,” Tanner replies without looking up from his notes.
Frank looks at Mel. “Do you see what you’ve done?”
“What I’ve done?”
“You accepted the key.”
“You offered the key.”
“Again. Practical reasons.”
“Of course.”
She says it with a smile, and his mouth curves despite himself.
Later, after Tanner finishes studying and Penny’s coloring has evolved into an elaborate drawing of what appears to be the whole family standing in front of a house with a giant key floating above them, they migrate to the living room. Penny insists on showing Mel every detail.
“This is me,” she says, pointing to a small figure with wild hair and a purple dress. “This is Tanner. I made him taller because he gets mad when I make him short.”
“I don't,” Tanner says from the couch.
“You do.”
“I get mad when you make me look like a potato.”
“You're shaped like that in my art style.”
Frank coughs into his hand to hide a laugh.
Penny continues. “This is Dad. This is you. You’re holding the key.”
Mel looks at the drawing.
In Penny’s picture, Mel's standing very close to Frank. Their stick figure hands are touching just as Tanner and Penny are on either side of them. The house behind them's enormous, all windows and crooked roof lines, with smoke coming out of the chimney even though Frank’s house doesn't have a fireplace. Above the house is the key, yellow and oversized, like a sun.
Mel’s throat tightens.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
Penny beams. “You can have it.”
Frank’s expression softens so much Mel has to look away for a second.
Tanner glances at the picture and says, “Why's the key bigger than Dad?”
“Because it’s important,” Penny says.
Frank exhales slowly. “Okay, bedtime.”
Both kids groan.
“It’s not even late,” Tanner says.
“It's late enough.”
Penny clutches the drawing to her chest. “Can Mel tuck us in?”
Frank looks at Mel.
There's the exit again. The quiet permission to say no, to keep a boundary, to not be pulled farther into the center of his children’s world unless she chooses it.
Mel chooses it.
“Yeah,” she says. “I can tuck you in.”
Penny cheers. Tanner tries to pretend he doesn't care, but he moves slower than usual on the stairs, like he's making sure she follows.
Bedtime at Frank’s house isn't simple, but It's familiar now. Tanner brushes his teeth with the weary disdain of a boy who thinks brushing is just an individual form of torture. Penny searches for a stuffed animal for four minutes and finally finds it under her pillow. Frank's in the hall, arms crossed, directing traffic like he's done this a hundred times and still loses to one 6 year old in pajamas every. Single. Time.
Mel tucks Penny in first.
Penny arranges herself under the blankets, then immediately sits back up. “Wait. I need water.”
Frank, from the doorway, lifts the cup already on her nightstand. “You have water.”
“Oh.”
Mel smiles and pulls the blanket up around her. “Anything else?”
Penny studies her face.
It's a look Mel recognizes now. Penny does this when she's about to ask something that seems casual to her and devastating to everyone else.
“Mel?”
“Yeah?”
“If you have a key, does that mean you’re family?”
Frank goes still in the doorway.
Mel sits carefully on the edge of Penny’s bed. “I think family can mean a lot of things.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Tanner, from his room across the hall, calls, “It really isn’t.”
Frank warns, “Tanner," with a general look toward his room.
Mel takes Penny’s hand. “It means I care about you, alot. It means your dad trusts me, and it also means I’m allowed to be here when I need to be here.”
Penny thinks about this. “That sounds like family.”
Mel’s chest aches, Frank looks down at the floor.
“Yeah,” Mel says quietly. “It kinda does.”
Penny smiles, sleepy and satisfied. Then, because she's Penny and emotional depth rarely lasts longer than 6 seconds before curiosity returns, she asks, “Would you ever have a kid with my dad?”
Frank chokes.
Tanner appears in his doorway so fast It's almost supernatural. “Penny, dude.”
Penny looks offended. “What?”
Frank’s voice's strangled. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because having a baby brother or sister would be so cool.”
Tanner squints. “You already have me.”
“But you’re not a baby.”
“Thank God.”
Penny turns back to Mel. “A baby would be little and cute and I could teach them things.”
Tanner leans against his doorway. “You would teach them how to scam people out of extra TV time.”
“That’s a useful skill.”
Frank rubs both hands over his face. “This family needs boundaries.”
Mel can't help it but she laughs, and it comes out breathless because the question has landed somewhere deep, somewhere she hasn't let herself look directly at for too long.
Penny's watching her with open curiosity, no pressure, no understanding of how large the question is. To Penny, a baby's a hypothetical joy, a future playmate, a new person to love. She's oblivious to the complex adult sum of years, timing, fear, lust, loss, wealth, employment, flesh and blood falling away from one another and frankly the grotesque exposure stated in desiring at all.
Mel touches a piece of hair off Penny’s forehead. "Honestly," she begins, more for herself then Penny, "I don’t know."
Penny blinks. “You don’t?”
Mel shakes her head. “No.”
“But maybe?”
Frank looks at Mel then.
She feels it, but she keeps her eyes on Penny. “Maybe,” Mel says.
Penny smiles like that's enough. “That's cool with me.”
Tanner makes a noise. “That's not how adults decide things.”
Penny shrugs. “Yea well... maybe's better than no.”
Frank points at Tanner’s room. “Bed.”
Tanner looks like he wants to stay, but Frank’s face conveys not to push it, because he lifts both hands and backs into his room. “Fine. But for the record, I asked about a drawer and she jumped to a baby, so I’m the normal one.”
“Bed,” Frank repeats.
Mel kisses Penny’s forehead before she can overthink it. “Goodnight Pen.”
Penny grins. “Goodnight, Mel. Don’t forget your key.”
“I won’t.”
When Mel steps into the hallway, Frank's waiting, his expression unreadable in the soft yellow light. Tanner's already in bed when she and Frank stop by his room. He has his book open, though he's clearly not reading it.
“Night,” he says.
“Night,” Frank answers.
Mel leans against the doorway. “Good luck on your quiz tomorrow.”
Tanner looks up, his face softening in a way he would probably deny. “Thanks.”
Then, because he can't help himself, he adds, “Congrats on the key.”
Frank says, “Get some sleep man.”
Mel smiles. “Thank you.”
Tanner grins into his book just as Frank shuts his door halfway.
For a few minutes, they move through the house in silence, turning off lights, clearing cups, locking the door. Mel notices the key in her pocket with every step, because it feels heavier now, not bad of course, just present.
In the kitchen, she picks up Penny’s drawing from the counter. Frank stands beside her and looks at it. The big yellow key floats over the house.
Frank lets out a long breath. “I’m sorry.”
Mel glances at him. “For what?”
“The interrogation.”
“They’re kids Frank, it's okay. I'm sure I was much worse at that age..”
“Yea, but they’re relentless sometimes.”
“It's honestly okay," she says, picking up Penny's forgotten sweater, "they’re your kids.”
“Exactly.”
She smiles, but he doesn't quite smile back.
The quiet changes then. It loses the playfulness of the evening and becomes something much more honest just as Frank takes the sweater gently from her and sets it aside to wash.
“She shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that,” he says.
“She’s six. Have you met a 6 year old?”
“She still put you on the spot.”
“Frank.”
He looks at her.
“She asked a question.”
“A very big question however.”
“Yeah,” Mel says softly. “It was.”
The room stills around them.
Frank leans back against the counter, arms crossed loosely now. He looks tired, but not the way he looks after work. This is a different kind of tired, the kind that comes from standing at the edge of something you've wanted but not planned on saying or frankly put, haen't even thought to bring to the forefront.
Mel rests her hip against the opposite counter. The kitchen light's warm above them, the dishwasher hums softly and somewhere upstairs, Penny coughs once and then goes quiet again. Tanner’s floor creaks as he shifts in bed.
Frank looks toward the stairs automatically.
“She’s fine,” Mel says.
“I know.”
“You always listen.”
“So do you.”
She shrugs. “Force of habit I suppose.”
His gaze returns to her. For a while, neither of them speaks.
Then Frank says, “I’ve thought about it.”
Mel’s breath catches, barely.
He doesn't look away. “Not because of tonight, I promise you. Penny wasn't the catalyst for the thought.”
She holds the edge of the counter lightly. “You have?”
“Yeah.”
She swallows. “About having another kid?”
“With you, yes,” he says.
The words are quiet. They're plain but incredibly devastating.
Mel looks down at her hands because looking at him suddenly feels like too much. Her key ring's on the counter beside her, the new key still bright against the older ones.
Frank’s voice stays gentle. “I didn’t bring it up because ... well, I wasn’t trying to rush you into something. Or make assumptions. Or make you feel like being with me comes with some kind of checklist. But I'd be lying to you if I told you I've never thought about it.”
“Oh,” is all she could manage for the time being.
“And I already have Tanner and Penny.”
“I know that too.”
“I mean yea, but, yea that matters of course.”
“It does.”
“I love them more than anything. But it also means my life isn't blank. There's, he lets out a breath as if cataloging everything necessary, "schedules and custody arrangements and school projects and fevers and arguments over vegetables and someone always needing shoes five minutes before we leave.”
Mel smiles faintly. “You’re really selling it.”
His mouth curves, but his eyes remain serious. “I mean it. Loving me means loving a life that’s already in motion.”
“I know, Frank.”
“I know you know.” He pauses. “But a baby would be different.”
The word sits between them.
A baby.
Not Penny’s bright, easy idea of a cute little sibling to teach things to. Not Tanner’s embarrassed horror. Not an abstract future, but a real baby, their baby. A person who would have Frank’s eyes or Mel’s stubbornness or both. A tiny, drooling person who'd make Penny a big sister and Tanner older than he already thinks he is. A person who would bind them in a way even a key doesn't.
Mel breathes out slowly. “I’ve thought about it too if you want complete honesty.”
Frank’s face changes. It's small, but she sees it. The surprise, the hope he tries to temper before it shows too much.
“You have?”
She nods. “Not in a plan the nursery way. Just...” She searches for the right words. “Sometimes I’ll be here, and uhh, Penny'll fall asleep on me, or Tanner'll tell me something like he’s testing whether I’ll remember it later, and I think about what it would be like. Not replacing anything or anybody, I swear and not changing what this already is but just adding to it I suppose.”
Frank watches her carefully.
“And sometimes,” she continues, quieter, “I think about what it would be like to have that with you. To see you with a baby that was ours. To see the kids with them. To have a piece of us running around someday. I don't let myself think too much or too far ahead because... well, it's not like we've ever spoken about it but I have thought of it...”
His jaw tightens, emotion moving through him before he can hide it.
“Mel.”
“It scares me,” she admits.
He nods immediately. “Yeah.”
“A lot.”
“Me too.”
That steadies her more than reassurance would've.
Frank uncrosses his arms and steps closer, slowly enough that she has room to breathe. “What part scares you?”
She laughs softly, without humor. “All of it?”
“That’s fair.”
“My age. Timing. Work. What it would do to us. What it would do to the kids. Whether I’d be ... good at it. Whether wanting it would be considered selfish. Whether not knowing for sure means I shouldn’t even think about it.”
Frank’s expression gentles. “Not knowing for sure means you’re taking it seriously.”
Mel looks at him.
He comes to stand in front of her, close but not crowding. “I don’t need an answer tonight.”
“Ok.”
“I don’t even need an answer soon.”
“Ok.”
“I just need you to know that if that’s something you wanted, I wouldn’t hear it as pressure.”
Her eyes sting unexpectedly.
“And if it’s something you didn’t want,” he adds, “I wouldn’t hear that as rejection.”
That's what gets her. Mel looks away, pressing her lips together. Frank waits, because he's good at waiting when it matters.
“I don’t want to lose what we have,” she says.
“Mel, you won’t. I promise you, baby, I'm not going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he admits. “I can't absolutely for a certain tell you that I'll be here forever, but as of right now, you're kinda stuck with me."
She can't help but laugh shyly to that.
"Hey," he says, bringing her chin up, "What I know for certain is I don’t want a future that costs us the present.”
She looks back at him.
His voice lowers. “I love you. I love Tanner and Penny. I love what this house feels like when you’re in it. If someday there’s another kid in that picture, I’d be grateful. If there isn’t, I’m still grateful.”
Mel exhales unsteadily.
Frank reaches for her hand. “But again, If we're being 1000% honest, I've thought about it. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t.”
Her fingers close around his. “What do you picture?”
He gives a small, almost embarrassed laugh. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
His thumb moves over her knuckles. “I picture chaos.”
She laughs, and this time It's real.
“I picture Penny trying to name the baby something insane,” he says. “Probably after a cartoon.”
“Dash.”
“Absolutely Dash.”
“Or Lightning McQueen, mind you, just one word.”
“God help us.” Mel smiles.
“I picture Tanner pretending he’s too old to care,” Frank continues, “and then being the first one to check if the baby's breathing when they’re asleep.”
“That sounds like him.”
“I picture you on the couch with a baby on your chest, telling me you’re fine even though you haven’t slept in two days.”
“Rude.”
“Tell me that wouldn't be accurate.”
She looks up at him and smiles. “Unfortunately.”
He smiles, but it softens quickly. “I picture being terrified.”
Mel’s chest tightens.
Frank looks down at their hands. “I was terrified with Tanner. Terrified with Penny. You’d think the second time would be easier, but it wasn’t. It was just familiar fear. A baby's small and loud and impossible, and they need everything, and they make you realize how little control you actually have.”
Mel nods.
“But I also picture loving them,” he says. “Immediately. Completely. I picture loving you through it. I picture doing it together.”
Her eyes sting again, and this time she doesn't look away. “I think I want that,” she says.
Frank stills.
She squeezes his hand before he can say anything. “Not tonight. Not this second. Not as some immediate plan. But I think... someday. Maybe. I think I want the possibility.”
His face softens with such open tenderness that it almost undoes her.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“That’s all?”
“What else do you need me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
He steps closer and lifts their joined hands, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Then we keep talking about it. We don’t rush. We don’t let a 6 year old set our timeline.”
Mel laughs through the tightness in her throat. “I'm okay with that.”
“We figure out what makes sense. We talk about what scares us. We talk about what we want. We make room for maybe.”
“Make room for maybe,” she repeats softly.
“Yeah.”
She looks past him to Penny’s drawing on the counter, the four of them standing under the enormous yellow key. No baby in the picture yet. No certainty. No promise beyond the one already made by presence, by trust, by the key now resting with hers.
Still, Mel can imagine it.
A smaller figure added between Penny and Tanner. Frank holding a diaper bag instead of a coffee. Penny declaring herself in charge. Tanner rolling his eyes while secretly memorizing every bottle measurement. Mel exhausted and scared and loved with Frank beside her, steady even when he's afraid.
The image frightens her.
It also warms her.
Frank seems to read both things on her face. He reaches up and touches her cheek, his palm warm and careful.
“Hey,” he says. “No decisions tonight.”
She leans into his hand. “No decisions tonight.”
“Except one.”
Her eyebrows lift. “What?”
He nods toward her pocket. “You keeping the key?”
Mel smiles. “Yes,” she says. “I’m keeping the key.”
His smile's quiet and relieved. “Good.”
She steps into him then, wrapping her arms around his waist. He holds her immediately, one arm around her back, one hand cradling the back of her head. For a long moment, they stand together in the kitchen, surrounded by the remains of an ordinary evening that has somehow cracked open into the future.
Upstairs, Penny calls out sleepily, “Dad?”
Frank closes his eyes. “Of course.”
Mel laughs softly against his chest.
He kisses the top of her head before letting go. “I’ll go.”
But Mel catches his hand.
“We’ll go,” she says.
Frank looks at her, and something in his face settles.
Together, they walk toward the stairs.