I pulled the foam out, and underneath was a manila envelope sealed with masking tape.
My name was written across the front in Frank’s shaky handwriting.
I sat down right there on the floor before I opened it. Frank had never been much for speeches. In nine years I probably heard him say more than a few dozen words at a time only when we were out fishing. So seeing a letter from him felt strange enough. What was inside hit even harder.
The first page was a note. Frank wrote that he knew his son would get the house because that was how things worked. He wasn’t trying to fight that. But he said a house wasn’t the same thing as a home. Then he thanked me for the years I’d spent helping him. Driving him to appointments when he gave up driving. Bringing groceries when the weather was bad. Fixing things around the place. Sitting on the dock when he just wanted company and didn’t feel like talking. He wrote, “You were the closest thing I’ve had to family in a long time.”
Behind the letter were savings bonds and an old bank account passbook with my name listed as beneficiary. It wasn’t a fortune. What mattered was that Frank had planned it himself years earlier. He knew exactly what he was doing. At the very bottom was a photograph of the two of us holding a pair of ridiculous little perch we’d caught one summer. On the back he’d written, “Best fishing partner I ever had.”
His son called me after everything was settled. Not to ask how I was. Not to talk about Frank. Just questions about money. I answered what I had to and left it at that. There wasn’t really anything else to say.
The photograph sits on a shelf in my living room now. Sometimes I’ll look at it while my morning coffee is brewing. Two old lawn chairs on a dock, a tackle box between us, and Frank grinning at the camera like he’d just landed the biggest fish in the lake.