Chapter 6: "Frank"
Fiona ran upstairs and buried her head in the blanket, using the pillows and covers to muffle her sobs. Outside her door, Lip leaned against the wall with a beer in hand, listening to the muffled cries inside.
"Fuck! Frank!" Lip cursed after taking a swig from the bottle, then stormed out of the house.
By the time Frank woke up, the morning sun had already risen.
"Ugh…" He clutched his throbbing head and sat up from the couch, still groggy and disoriented.
He had just relived over fifty years of Frank Gallagher's memories in a single night. Even though the memories flashed by like a movie montage, the mental toll was immense.
"Dad!" Debbie, holding baby Liam in her arms, spotted Frank awake as she came downstairs and ran toward him.
"Oh, Debbie, get me a beer," Frank muttered, rubbing his temple like he was nursing a hangover. His tone was indifferent, nothing like the warmth he showed her the day before.
Debbie froze mid-run, her body suddenly stiff.
"Looks like Frank's memories are back. I knew it—scum will always be scum. Debbie, don't bother with him," Lip said as he came downstairs, shooting Frank a disgusted glare.
"Wait…" Frank caught himself.
He wasn't even a drinker—never had been. That line just slipped out of his mouth, like muscle memory. It was something the old Frank would say, so ingrained in the body's habits that it bypassed his own awareness.
Mornings in the Gallagher house were always hectic. With so many kids needing to get to school, breakfast and lunch prep turned the place into a whirlwind.
Everyone was too busy to pay attention to Frank's return to his former self. They mentioned it briefly, but nobody invited him to the breakfast table. It was like he had become invisible again.
Still, Debbie quietly placed a beer in front of him, taken from the fridge.
"Sorry about earlier. I was half-asleep, Debbie," Frank said softly, patting her head.
"Your memories came back?" she asked.
"Some of them," Frank nodded.
"Debbie!" Fiona called from across the room, and Debbie quickly ran back to the table.
"Congrats on getting your memory back," Fiona said as she walked over and set a plate in front of him—two fried eggs and two triangular pieces of toast.
Frank blinked in surprise. In all the memories he'd recovered, Fiona had never once served him breakfast. Every time, he had shamelessly stolen food from the kids' plates. This felt… different.
"Fiona…" he said, still processing it.
"The kids need to get to school!" she called out, clapping her hands to usher them out the door.
As they filed out, she turned to Frank with Liam in her arms. "By the way, I'm never paying back your disability check."
Frank didn't argue—he understood why.
Now that his memories were back, Fiona no longer trusted him with Liam. For all she knew, the old Frank might just take the baby out to beg for money. She'd rather bring Liam with her than leave him behind.
After Fiona left, the house fell into silence. Frank was alone.
He sat there, rubbing his temples, trying to sort through the avalanche of memories he'd recovered in his dreams.
Frank Gallagher… a complete degenerate. Promiscuous, alcoholic, a junkie. The very definition of a trainwreck.
Frank's record was a laundry list of offenses: breaking and entering, chronic alcoholism, public disturbances, urinating and defecating in public spaces, inciting chaos, squatting on other people's property, disrupting families—and a few DUIs, despite not even owning a car.
From what Frank could recall, he hadn't always been like this. In fact, the original Frank seemed to have had real potential. He once attended college—Northwestern University, no less. One of the most prestigious private universities in the world, on par with Harvard and MIT, with several programs ranked first in the U.S.
Admission to a school of that caliber wasn't easy, especially decades ago when only the best and brightest got in. If nothing had gone wrong, Frank would've graduated with honors and gone on to become a well-respected member of society.
But everything changed in his senior year, just before graduation—when he met her, the woman who would become the mother of Fiona and the others.
After dropping out, Frank never found work. He spiraled fast, becoming a full-blown alcoholic, drug addict, and professional manipulator, always skirting the edges of legality.
Take his disability checks, for example. He secured them through a legal loophole—after a so-called "workplace accident," he was declared permanently disabled and unable to work. That level of disability usually required a missing limb or something equally severe. Frank, however, was perfectly fine—he hadn't even worked that job for more than three days.
America's welfare system isn't the worst, and Frank, with his white skin, knew how to work it to his advantage. With a fraudulent disability rating, he managed to collect enough monthly benefits to stay drunk and high every single day.
Frank was now over fifty and, in all that time, had worked less than a week—total.
The rest of his life had been spent either drinking, getting high, or on his way to do one or the other. He'd pass out wherever he could, living a life not far removed from that of a homeless man.
But what was worse than all of that was Frank's total absence of fatherly responsibility.
Most men, no matter how flawed, tend to change once they have children. They grow up. They try. They fight to be better.
But not Frank.
Having kids didn't change him. If anything, it made him worse. He did things no decent human being—no parent—should ever do.
Like what happened that time he mentioned in his sleep, when he mistook Debbie for a young Fiona.
It wasn't just Fiona and Lip back then—there was also Ian. Frank had left all three of them, just children, alone in a public park so he could score drugs. He got high, lost track of time, and forgot they were even there.
And it had been winter.
Fiona was only about six years old. Lip and Ian were still infants.
Frank hadn't even gone looking for them. It was Fiona, clutching her baby brothers, who found him.
And his first words to her?
Not "Are you okay?"
Not "Where are your brothers?"
Not "I'm sorry."
He asked if she had any money on her.
That moment was seared into Frank's memory. It haunted him.
Most of Frank's life had passed by in a blur—his memories jumbled and patchy. But that night, that mistake, was crystal clear.
Because deep down, somewhere beneath all the rot and self-deception, Frank Gallagher knew he had failed his children.