Once Upon a Friendship

“What?” Tamara, dressed in black leggings and a pretty white blouse, turned around from the front seat beside her mother.

“I was just going through these papers,” he said. A folder of his father’s that hadn’t matched any of the ones he or Gabrielle had seen in Denver.

“The folders of papers he hadn’t filed yet,” Gabrielle said.

“That’s what we thought they were. I mean, the forms all match transactions and accounts that we know about, so there was no reason to keep them separate,” he said.

“But now you think there was a reason?” Tamara asked. She was one smart girl. A chip off the old block, not that his old man deserved the credit for that.

“Look at these.” He pulled out papers and handed them to Gabrielle. She studied them with that focused look she got when she was fully engaged in something.

She was being such a great sport. Traipsing along with him for the weekend. Putting up with the drama his father had created for so many people.

Was it any wonder he loved her?

“They’re all signed and dated by him,” Gabrielle said, looking at him. And for a split second he had no idea what she was talking about.

He loved her? Not like he’d always loved her and Marie, but...he loved her?

“Signed in ink, not computer-generated or electronic signatures.” She stopped talking.

He stared at her. As though somewhere on her person was the clue that would let him know that he was wrong. She was just Gabi. One of his two best friends in the world.

Instead, he wanted to kiss her. In the worst way. In a way that prevented anyone from ever taking her away from him...

“Are you feeling okay?”

Her concern, more than her words, got through to him. “Yes.” He looked away. Breathed in deeply and out again. Escaping the emotion threatening to overwhelm him as he’d learned to do at the foot of his father.

She’d been talking about forms. Signatures. “Dad insisted that all investments and payouts be signed in ink,” he said. “By him or George.”

“So we’re to assume that all of these were done while he was here? He’d have scanned them and sent them back, but still kept the originals.” She was still looking at him oddly.

And as she handed him the folder, leaned into him.

He took the folder. And kept his shoulder pressed against hers as he opened it. “That’s what I’m thinking. He’s got copies of transactions in the other files, open transactions, just like he does at home. These are set apart because they’re originals.”

“I can tell you every time he’s been here in the past fifteen years,” Missy said, looking in the rearview mirror as she made a turn that had them heading toward the ocean. She’d changed into black jeans and a sequined sweater and put on more makeup. She wasn’t a beauty, but there was something quietly pretty about her.

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; He could see what his father might have seen in her.

He didn’t approve of any of it. Not when he thought of how hard those last years of his mother’s life had been. How hard she’d tried to be the wife his father had needed her to be, to make appearances and host dinners and always look her best, in spite of the pain she’d been in. Or the lack of energy she’d had.

“A list of those dates would be good to have, Missy, thank you,” Gabrielle said beside him, and Liam was ashamed for his bad manners. “If you could just email it to me?” All four of them had already exchanged email addresses before they’d left the cottage that afternoon.

“I have the list, too,” Tamara said. “At least for recent years. I made him sign my diary every time he got there and write me a note in it before he left. I told him it made him feel more real to me during the times he was gone.”

Liam felt as though he’d been sucker punched. His father had written in this child’s diary? To comfort her?

This child had craved their father’s presence while Liam, who’d taken it for granted, had wished him gone much of the time.

“How often did you see him?” He asked a question that should have been first off his tongue.

“Only a couple of times a month, a couple of days each time, when you were home. But since you went away to school and lived on your own, it’s been more often,” Missy said.

“More often since Tamara was little.” He was glad to know.