When she got home that night there was a message on her phone from Gail telling her she was safely home and missed her already. She really was a good friend.
That evening her mother reached out and they chatted for a while. With Betty on the mend and busy her mom and dad wanted to take a vacation to Ireland and were leaving at the end of the week. Betty told her about her meeting with Financial Associates and how he had promised her work. Everything was going smoothly for a change.
The airplane went down in the north Atlantic sometime in the early morning hours that Saturday. It was several days before they found the wreckage and in that water there were no expected survivors. The final investigation blamed it on a bomb that had been placed aboard before it left New York. Betty had now lost her husband, son, mother and father in half a year.
She refused to yield to the bottle this time. Instead she buried herself in the work of taking care of her parent's affairs and working for Financial Associates. She was tireless, rarely slept and within a month had control of all the moving parts. There were no bodies for her parents. They were lost at sea. She had a marker made for the family plots in the city cemetery and made arrangements for funerals and a full military honors ceremony for her dad. He was a war vet as well as an important member of Richmond society. The turn out was excessive.
Gail came to help and Betty was eternally grateful. They resumed the sex and both of them seemed to charge up the other. The energy level both in the bed and out of the house was off the charts. They worked tirelessly and played relentlessly.
She soon had to decide what to do with dad's business. She had no desire to run it herself and as a silent figurehead they called her time and time again for advice. It was a headache that she didn't want. Money wasn't an object for her but she wanted out. With Tom's advice and help she took the company public and sold the shares on the market. She retained forty nine percent for herself, which paid her well but took her out of the decision business. She declined a seat on the board of directors, preferring they get more experienced people.
Betty was now a wealthy woman of Richmond. She had her own legal practice and a giant house to do something with. She wanted to live in the old house so she had it renovated making it into two very large apartments, one up stairs and one downstairs. Each had it's own entrance and the detached garage was modernized with a full smaller apartment upstairs as well and automatic doors.
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She moved in downstairs six months later and invited Gail to come spend a week helping her with decorating the place. She secretly hoped Gail would want to move to Richmond and take the upstairs apartment for herself.
Gail came and they had a grand time. They decorated the walls, found furniture, refinished some of the old furniture her parents had and both seemed to be on the same page for every decision. The rooms came together beautifully and after a month they started on the upstairs apartment. Betty let Gail take the lead in colors and paintings, furniture and floors. Gail sensed what was going on but bent right into the task and together they made the place beautiful.
"When can you move in Gail?" Betty said one night after they had made love in the newly decorated second floor apartment.
"Oh Lord, you want me to live here?"
"Yes, and live in your own space. We can spend all the time we want together and still have our privacy."
"Betty, I love you and I have always loved you but I can't stay. I have too much going on in Baltimore and don't want to leave that life. Baltimore is my home just like Richmond is yours."
She wanted to help her friend but couldn't leave what she had. Betty understood and no hard feelings were expressed.
Gail returned to Baltimore and Betty went in search of a tenant for her upstairs apartment.
