Tears prickled my eyes as I walked to the grave. The visit brought clarity as if Sam spoke in my ear that Wes’s actions had to do with Sam and not me directly.
“What do I do, Sam?” I whispered. A tear rolled down my cheek.
My friend had been so good at advice, spilling it readily to all who’d listen. A product of his years of being in a leadership position.
I glanced over my shoulder. Wes’s head was down. This had to be killing him.
“Why didn’t you tell him? Why’d you cut him off entirely?” Why’d I get dragged into the middle?
There were no answers from the grave.
Wes
I poked at my food. Unappetizing macaroni coated in yellow-dyed powder was soaked in half a cow’s worth of butter. When Chef made mac and cheese, it was the stuff a five-star restaurant could serve with pride.
Sam’s grave.
My stomach turned. What had possessed her to go to Sam’s fucking grave?
Mara’s gaze was on me, but I wouldn’t look at her. I couldn’t decide if I was furious with her, numb, or should drink a liter of whiskey and crawl inside the bottle.
She set her fork down. “Are you done?”
I nodded and she took our plates to the sink.
“Did you…did you fix my sink?”
“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “I had a friend help me.” Without Flynn, I’d have gotten nowhere. “Hope you don’t mind. We also fixed the bathroom sink and the cupboard doors.” She jerked around to look for sure. “And we sealed the windows for winter.”
“Wow.” She stared at the sink with a stunned expression and my chest threatened to puff with pride. “Thank you. Your friend’s kind of handy to have around.”
The corner of my mouth lifted at her teasing. “He’s not a bad guy.” A swell of emotion hit me. I liked pleasing her, liked making her life easier, liked joking around with her. Confusion morphed into remorse and the combo churned the processed food in my belly. I pushed back from the table before he did something stupid like confess everything. “Listen, I’m going to have to get going. I hope you don’t mind.”
Disappointment creased her brow. “Is everything okay?”
“It’ll be fine. Just not feeling well.” I went in search of my duffel and grabbed my coat, not bothering to put it on.
She met me at the front door. I dropped a light kiss on her lips before I left, the worry in her eyes haunting me.
The drive home felt longer than normal. I never looked forward to going home, not like when I went to Mara’s place.
My house was empty. I pulled into my four-car garage, relieved that my mom hadn’t taken root while I’d been gone.
I took the stairs at an easy pace and dropped my duffel by the laundry basket. The clothes I’d worn with Flynn were dirty. Flynn had made the crack that I could wash them at Mara’s because he knew full well I had never run a washer in my life.
In the upper level where I spent the majority of my time, I bypassed my home office and the master bedroom and went to the door at the end of the hall.
I flipped on the light and faced tubs full of toys and cardboard boxes full of comics. When I’d been shipped off to boarding school on the East Coast, my mom had put them all into storage. A move unusual for my mother, who was more likely to burn things than store them. But even my mom had expressed rare sympathy for how Sam had abandoned me.
For hours, I sifted through old comics while memories assaulted me. I wondered if that old comic book store was still open.
A quick search on my phone revealed that it’d been closed for ten years. Years after the divorce. Had Sam gone in until the day the doors had shut? If he had, had he remembered how much fun we used to have? No less than once a month, we’d collected the latest comics.
I pulled out Sam’s old Star Wars comics. I ran my hand over the plastic cover booklet and recalled Sam’s gruff voice bitching about how the comics in those days weren’t canon and strayed from the origins of the Star Wars universe.
I smiled despite the sharp pain in my chest. It was why I’d named my night club Canon.
With a frustrated sigh, I shoved all the books back in place and glared at the piles of toys. I’d completely unravel if I cracked the lid of any of those.
My phone rang and I expected Mara to be calling, but it was Helen. I frowned. This late on a Saturday? I couldn’t let it go to voicemail.
“Mr. Robson, I need to meet with you about the findings I have on Miss Baranski.”
“Meet you at the office in the morning? Ten o’clock?”
“I’ll be there.”
I hung up and put my head in my hands. Meeting tonight would’ve been best, but my intuition said I should try to get some rest first.
Chapter 17
Wes
I dressed and drove to my office tower. Helen waited outside and I let us in.
“We don’t need to mess with going upstairs. Have a seat in the vestibule, Helen.”
Brusque and to the point, she laid out a folder of papers. “I didn’t have to dig very deep, sir. Two major concerns popped out immediately.”
She handed me a form and I scanned the print, my eyes narrowing as I read.
“Is this a trust?”
“From one William Kostopoulos to Mara Baranski. One point five million dollars when she turned twenty-two.”
“What’s the relation? Or was it a relationship?”
She crossed her penny loafers at the ankle and leaned in. “Mind you, the financial department hasn’t dug that far yet. However, I found no marriage certificate for her mother so I assume Baranski is a maiden name. Again, nothing is proven, but something I felt you should know since this seemed an urgent matter.”
I set the paper down,
