My best friend of 37 years suddenly asked me to take one LAST photo together during our beach trip. When I asked why she said “last,” she gave me an unsettling smile and whispered, “Because tomorrow, you’re going to find out who I really am… and you may never want to see me again.”

The crooked little finger. Our secret handshake. Dad had that same finger. I’d always thought it was just mine.

I went to the hall closet and dragged down the old family album my mother had given me after Dad’s funeral. I hadn’t opened it in years.

Halfway through, I found it. A summer afternoon at Lake Wynne. Paige and me at eight years old, in matching yellow swimsuits, sunburned and grinning, standing on the dock. And between us, holding one of our hands in each of his, my father.

I looked at his left hand, wrapped around Paige’s.

The little finger was bent sideways at the top joint.

Exactly like hers. Exactly like mine.

Three crooked fingers, in one photo, on one dock, for thirty-six years. And I had never once seen it.

And Paige’s parents. Splitting up when she was seven, so fast, so ugly. Her father, Ron, moving out practically overnight.