“They’re past that, Louisa.”
She lifted her chin. “They are not.”
He paused. “You know they are.”
Why did she feel like they weren’t talking about their parents? Why did she feel like this was his way of telling her that no matter how kind he’d been—no matter how gentle his touch or patient his demeanor—the two of them were beyond repair?
No birthday wish would ever bring them back together.
“You can’t fix everything, Louisa. It’s broken. Leave it alone.” His tone had softened, but she heard the warning in his voice. What was he so afraid of?
“You know I can’t do that.” His face blurred behind the cloud of tears that filled her eyes.
“Yes, you can. You have to learn to leave things alone.”
Normally she would’ve had a witty retort at the ready, but she simply didn’t have the energy to be funny right now. She didn’t want to know what “things” he was talking about, and she couldn’t shake the idea that it wasn’t “things” at all—it was people, namely him, that he wanted left alone.
“All right.” She was aware of the stubbornness in her own voice. “If you want me to leave things alone, then I won’t tell you what I just found.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking like he was trying not to care.
She picked up the mail she’d sorted and pretended to sort more. She also pretended that it had no effect on her whatsoever that he was standing within a foot of her, so close she could inhale the scent of him—a scent that was starting to become familiar and one she was certain would always make her think of him.
“Fine.” He said it like it was a complete sentence and not one he wanted to say.
She looked at him. “Fine what?”
“Don’t do that, Louisa. Tell me what you found. Was it a dead chipmunk? Because I’m pretty sure there’s got to be some sort of animal carcass in this mess.”
She thumbed through the pages and found the one with the abnormal cash deposit. He took it, scanned it, then looked up at her, a lost expression on his face.
She pointed to the total—$52,675—and waited for the light bulb.
“That’s the same amount as one of my father’s withdrawals,” he said.
“I thought it might be,” she said.
“Was there another one for $25,382?”
“No. At least not that I’ve found yet. There’s a lot more to go through.”
“Did you ask Maggie about it?”
She shook her head. “To be honest, I don’t think she has any idea what all is up here. These envelopes were still sealed. It was like she handed her money over to my dad and never thought about it again.”
“But she still gets money from her investments?”
Louisa shrugged. “I suppose I could ask her that.”
He surveyed the disaster in front of them. “Maybe there’s another clue in here somewhere.”
A line of tension stretched between them.
“I can help you look?”
Her heart flip-flopped at the idea, and in that moment Maggie’s messy house felt like a gift from God. After all, without it, they’d be through her files in no time. As it was, this was likely to take days.
She summoned her most nonchalant voice and muttered a quiet “Okay.”
“Where do we start?”
After two more hours of sorting, skimming, and filing, they hadn’t turned up a deposit or withdrawal for $25,382, but they had discovered that Maggie Fisher did just fine for herself financially.
The deposit of $52,675 had resulted in a great return, and it was still making money for their old friend. She wasn’t rich, but she was comfortable.
“I guess your dad knew what he was doing.”
Louisa shrugged. “Who knew?”
Cody was looking at the paper that recorded the investment of $52,675, and his forehead creased with what she could only assume was confusion but very well might’ve been worry.
“Do you think this means that your mom and my dad weren’t having an affair?” he asked absently.
“You didn’t really believe that, did you?”
He met her eyes. “Didn’t you?”
“Maybe for a second, but then—no. I asked her about it, and she was pretty convincing. Besides, your parents were perfect together.”
“And your parents?”
Were her parents perfect for each other? She didn’t think so. But maybe the accident had simply changed them. Maybe they had been perfect together once upon a time.
“My parents seem to tolerate each other,” she said with an unamused laugh. “Maybe they should never have gotten married in the first place.”
“Don’t say that.” He set the paper down and gave her attention she didn’t want. “I’m really glad they did.”
She stopped sorting and dared a look up, found his eyes full on her. Something inside her twisted. “I guess.”
There was a charged pause between them then, a spark that was impossible to ignore. How was she supposed to function with him this close to her?
Louisa set the stack of pages on the floor in front of her, busying herself with anything to keep her mind off the fact that Cody was watching her, then took the page that marked the deposit and set it down too.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” She flicked through the papers, practically begging them to speak to her. But they stayed quiet. She split the stack in two and put pages that were sent before the deposit—including the big withdrawal—on one side and pages that were sent after the deposit on the other, then put the paper with the deposit details in the center. She stared at them.
“Is this a magic trick?”
She shot him a look. “Hilarious.”
A lopsided grin lit his face. “Just checking.”
She picked up the top page of each stack and compared as if trying to spot the differences in one of those magazine games. “Wait . . .”
“What?”
“Look.” Each paper had a set of initials at the bottom: the person sending the letter and, she assumed, the person who typed it. The ones before the deposit were labeled WC/dab. The ones after the deposit were labeled differently: TK/dab.
Cody studied them. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, I’m assuming WC stands for Warren Chambers,” she said.
“And DAB?”
She frowned again. “Your dad didn’t work at my dad’s firm. What was your dad’s middle name?”
“Joseph.”
“Probably a secretary or something then. I think my dad had one named Dorothy? I bet it was her. TK is probably Ted Kauffmann. He works with my dad. They play golf together a lot.”
“But does that mean your father isn’t Maggie’s financial adviser anymore?”
Louisa shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“We could ask Maggie,” Cody said.
Louisa straightened the papers. “I don’t want to bother her with any of this. Maybe it doesn’t matter anyway.”
But one look at him told her it did matter—at least to him.
She wanted to kiss him. She knew she shouldn’t, but she really did. She wanted to take every question spinning around his head and answer it, to make sense of the things he not only wanted—but needed—to know.