Once Upon a Friendship

She wanted to tell Marie about Liam’s despondency regarding his father that morning. But why put a damper on her friend’s joy? Especially since the only evidence she had that anything was wrong was her own sense of foreboding...

Still, she couldn’t help but ponder the practical ramifications of their new responsibility while she drove the two of them home. Parking in her reserved spot in the small lot behind the building—parking was going to be a problem if, in the future, they rented to too many young, two-car families—she put a smile on her face as she followed Marie out of the car.

“Let’s go in the front door,” Marie said, her grin bubbling over as Gabrielle pulled out her key and turned toward the private back entrance off the parking lot. “Let’s be like landlords checking up on our business tenant...”

Even at thirty, Marie had a playful, girly streak. It was one of the things Gabrielle loved about her. “You are the business tenant,” she reminded her on a laugh.

They were in partnership, she and Marie and Liam. A legally binding arrangement that kept the three of them together. Solidifying their odd little family into the future. More than the building, the investment, the asset, it was that fact that put the smile on Gabrielle’s face.

* * *

“WHAT’S TAKING THEM so long?”

“They’re coming around the front.”

“Janice, watch your mother, she’s at it again.”

Standing behind the counter of Marie’s quickly decorated coffee shop, Liam turned when he heard Grace speaking to Janice in the cacophony of voices around him.

Janice’s mother Clara, a ninety-five-year-old woman who lived with her seventy-three-year-old daughter in apartment 491, was picking up the chocolate Hershey’s Kisses that Grace had had a couple of women spreading around the tables. Clara was stashing them away in the covered compartment beneath the seat of her walker. The old woman was known for her stealing. Most often involving chocolate.

Marie was known for buying chocolate and purposely leaving it lying around just to watch the elderly woman’s joy as she found it. Grace, an eighty-year-old resident who baked every morning for Marie and was the organizer of all functions among the residents of the building, was still tying balloons to chairs. Knowing everyone well from his years of visiting the girls, Liam had known just whom to seek out in planning the homecoming that was to have been in lieu of dessert after the fancy lunch that was supposed to have happened that day.

The lunch, of course, hadn’t happened. And the party would have gone on, with or without him, too. That’s how it usually was with him and the girls. He came and went at his pleasure. If he was there, great. If not, no big deal. Was that why it worked so well?

The realization, on this day of standing up as a man, didn’t sit well with him. At all. He loved Marie and Gabrielle more than anyone else on earth. They were his sisters in his heart. He looked out for them. Felt protective of them.

And, he supposed, he used them, too. Like a brother used sisters.

To whine to.

To have them always be there.

And to know they’d always be happy to see him when he bothered to show up.

Like now, as he stood there, hands in his pockets, watching as the residents got ready for the big moment. He’d paid for the party.

And here he was thinking it was a bonus that he’d been able to show up.

Liam didn’t like the man he was seeing.

At all.

Was the old man right then? Was he worthless?

“Shh, quiet, everyone, they’re rounding the corner! They’re coming in the front!” Susan Gruber, wife to Dale, said, with a sideways smile to her husband. Liam had never seen one without the other.

The front door ope

ned. He pasted a huge smile on his face, glad that he’d made it back in time.

“Surprise!” More than fifty voices chorused at once. His was among them. And the shocked happiness on both of the girls’ faces was worth the effort it was costing him to hang around, to pretend that all was well. That he was going to be fine.

He was a good man. Maybe he’d taken advantage of the girls all these years. Maybe he hadn’t seen that. And maybe, now that he did see it, it was up to him to do what he could to rectify the situation. Maybe, very soon, he’d be in a position to be around more, to tend to them for a change.

Because he was decent. His father be damned.

He’d remembered every birthday. Always took them out. Brought gifts that he’d picked out himself and that they’d loved. Whenever they needed a favor, he did what he had to do to grant it.