A Gift of Time

by Beth Flynn

  Alec confided that Paulina had left him and the boys. She hadn’t been happy for years and had been on a series of antidepressants.

  “I guess she just couldn’t find her happy place.” His normally cheerful expression looked downright melancholy. “I think she was looking for it in all the wrong things. You know what I mean, Gin?”

  “No.” I frowned. “What do you mean ‘the wrong things’—the medication?”

  “She thought happiness could be bought. New car, bigger house. When that didn’t make her happy, she thought children would be the answer. They only depressed her more and gave her a sense of responsibility she didn’t want. You had to have sensed it, Ginny. I’ve seen you with your children. They’re your life. Paulina considers our children the end of hers.”

  “Oh, Alec, I’m just so sorry. Tommy hadn’t said anything to me. And I guess you probably know we were having some problems of our own.”

  I looked away uncomfortably, not knowing how much, if anything, Tommy had told Alec.

  “Don’t be sorry. I haven’t told him a lot. I knew you two were dealing with some issues of your own, and I didn’t want to burden him.”

  “So where is she? Does she come around to see the boys? Are you on friendly terms?”

  I was curious about their situation but also trying to turn the conversation away from my and Tommy’s recent problems, subconsciously kicking myself for mentioning it in the first place.

  “She’s out ‘finding herself.’” His voice was casual, and he was momentarily distracted as he handed the waitress his credit card.

  “So there’s a chance she’ll find herself or whatever it is she’s looking for and come back to you, then. Right?” I had to be careful how I tread here. It wasn’t too long ago that I’d left Tommy to do some thinking of my own. I was reminded of a Bible verse: Judge not lest thou be judged.

  He looked down. “I’d take her back, but she’s never coming back.” The waitress returned, and he signed the receipt.

  Before I could decide whether or not it was polite to ask why, he answered my question for me. “She’s out finding herself with her yoga instructor.”

  I was shocked—another man was involved. I had to admit I was surprised. I couldn’t imagine Paulina finding a man who could come close to replacing Alec. In my opinion, he seemed to be the epitome of everything a woman could want. But I didn’t live inside their marriage and had no right to speculate, I quickly reminded myself.

  “Have you met him? Do you know his name or anything?”

  “Yes, I have met him,” Alec said drily. “He’s a she, and her name is Sherry.”

  I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. I’m sure I just stared at Alec with my mouth open.

  He smiled warmly at me then. “We need to get back to the office so you can see Tom and then meet your client.”

  I looked at my watch and realized we’d been eating lunch for over two hours. Where had the time gone?

  “Oh, no! I won’t have time to see him. I have to get going so I can be home when Jason gets off the school bus.”

  “I’m sorry, Ginny. I hadn’t realized the time either. I hope this doesn’t look bad for that client you were supposed to meet.” He looked at me with a knowing expression, a playful smile on his lips.

  I gave him a sideways smile. “You and I both know there’s no client, so stop being a smart-aleck.”

  We both laughed at my pun. His eyes grew serious then.

  “I hope Tom appreciates what he has. You are definitely a rare gem, Ginny.”

  There was something in his look and the way he said it that sent a small thrill through me, but I told myself it was nothing. What forty-something woman doesn’t want to hear herself compared to jewels?

  I brushed it off as lighthearted banter between two friends and let him walk me out to my car.

  After hastily dropping Alec off in the parking lot at Dillon & Davis Architects, I sped home as fast as I could so I could change into clothes that wouldn’t have my son questioning where I’d been.

  I’d have to surprise Tommy another time.

  Chapter Eight

  Mimi

  1997, Fort Lauderdale

  Mimi told herself if the safe didn’t open on the third try, she’d just have to ask her parents for a copy of their marriage certificate. But she really didn’t want to do that. Her heart was set on surprising them, and they would know something was up if she asked to see it. Not just see it—she’d have to borrow it to have the plaque made.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the telltale click of the safe releasing. She turned the handle slightly and tugged. There was a suction that grabbed for a split second, but gave way when she applied more force.

  After seeing its contents, she hesitated. She sat up straight and resolved to handle this as professionally and maturely as possible. After all, she was almost a teenager. If you want to be an investigator, Mimi, you’re going to have to probably see things worse than this. She memorized how everything looked so she could be sure to put things back exactly as she found them.

  Inside the safe were some dark tan envelopes stacked on top of each other. She was certain they contained what she was looking for. But it was what was on top of them that had her swallowing hard. Two handguns and several stacks of cash.

  She tried not to think about why her father had guns and cash. It was probably something all fathers kept hidden away from their families. He was their protector, and he was responsible enough to keep the guns locked away where a child couldn’t get to them. And the cash she was certain was for emergencies. There were also some small boxes, she realized. Probably some of Mom’s more expensive jewelry.

  With surprisingly steady hands, she removed the guns one by one and set them to the side. She did the same with the cash and small boxes. She reached in for the first envelope and smiled when she noticed her brother’s name written on the front. Jason. The one below it had her name written on it. She set them both down.

  The final envelope didn’t have anything written on it. It was thicker than the other two. She turned it over in her hands and decided to undo the clasp. She opened it and pulled out the stack of papers. There was a large cluster held together with a big paperclip. It looked like the deed to the house. She fanned through the rest and saw what she thought were life insurance policies. There was a Last Will and Testament with both of her parents’ names.

  It has to be in here somewhere. She rifled through the papers, found her parents’ birth certificates and laid them aside.

  “Found you!” she exclaimed out loud as she saw the marriage certificate. She held it carefully and read slowly.

  Her smile faded when she got to the date. According to this document, her parents’ anniversary was off by almost two months. This can’t be right. Unless...

  No. Not her parents. Especially not her mother. There was no way her mother was pregnant with her before she married her father.

  Mimi let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping. So her parents weren’t perfect. That was okay. It might’ve even been a bit of a relief. They got married and stayed married, and that was more than she could say for a lot of her friends’ parents. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to surprise them with a silver-plated marriage certificate without letting them know she knew their secret. She harrumphed out loud when she realized her surprise wouldn’t have worked anyway. They would surely know where she’d found their marriage certificate—and they’d know what kind of snooping she’d have done to find it.

  “Sometimes you don’t think, Mimi,” she said aloud.

  Carefully, she put everything back in the envelope, closed the clasp, and laid it at the bottom of her father’s safe. She reached for the envelope with her own name and started to put it away, but stopped herself. What kind of things were her parents keeping for her? She’d come this far. What was a little more investigating going to hurt?

  She undid the envelope and p
ulled out the contents. The first item gave her pause. It was the deed to a house. It looked like the same type of paperwork she’d seen in her parents’ envelope, except this deed was in her name. Miriam Ruth Dillon. And the address on the paperwork was in the Shady Ranches subdivision. She recognized the address immediately. Why was her name on the deed to Uncle Bill and Aunt Carter’s house?

  She shuffled through her immunization records and First Holy Communion and Confirmation certificates, then came to her own birth certificate. She smiled to herself as she held the document and realized she really didn’t care if her parents weren’t married when she was conceived. One thing she knew for certain—she was a baby made out of pure and sheer love. She sometimes watched how her parents looked at each other, and it was obvious even to a twelve-year-old how completely devoted they were. Their little secret was safe with her.

  She picked the stack of papers up and shuffled them, banging them slightly against her knee to straighten them so she could fit them back into the envelope neatly, when a smaller white envelope fell out and landed on her lap. She picked it up and studied it. It was sealed and didn’t have anything written on the outside. What could this be?

  Carefully, she broke the seal. It was so old that it came loose easily. She took out the paper folded up inside and squinted as she tried to understand what she was seeing.

  It was her birth certificate. Again. Wait, hadn’t she already seen this? Why was there another copy folded away in an unmarked envelope? This was identical to the one she’d just read, so why...

  Her eyes widened. Was she reading this right? There must be some mistake. This was her name—well, part of her name. They got her first and middle name right, but not her last name. Her birthday was correct. Her mother’s name was clearly written. Guinevere L. Lemon Dillon.

  But where her father’s name should have been was a name she didn’t recognize, and one she was certain she’d never heard before.

  Who the heck was Jason William Talbot?

  Chapter Nine

  Grizz

  1988, Prison, North Florida

  Grizz grabbed William “Pretty” Petty roughly by his arm and yanked him out of the small library office. He half dragged, half pushed the reluctant inmate around a large bookshelf and into a small alcove.

  “Are we away from the camera?” Grizz asked quietly as he shoved Petty away from him.

  “Yeah, we can’t be seen,” the young man mumbled. He looked at the ground and said in an even voice laced with resignation, “What are you going to do to me?”

  The sound of Grizz’s zipper caused him to look up.

  “I’m not going to fuck you if that’s what you’re worried about,” Grizz whispered.

  “You—you’re not?” Petty cocked his head. “So what is it that you want? Something else?”

  “Yeah, I want something else.” Grizz let the pause hang. “I want to talk.”

  Petty ran a hand through his hair. “I—I thought you were going to rape me. You looked um ... ready.” His voice was shaky, the doubt still obvious.

  Grizz rolled his eyes. “That boner wasn’t for you. I never had to make myself think about my woman before while yanking on my dick in front of a guy. I did it to make it look a certain way in front of that camera in the office. After announcing to the entire prison in the chow hall that you were mine, I couldn’t not do something about it in case they’re watching us on the security camera, which I’m sure they are. They’ll think I’m back here porking your brains out. I had to make it look real.”

  “Actually, no they won’t.” William rushed on. “They won’t be watching. I’ve had that camera rigged on a timed loop for whenever I’m in here. I’m given special privileges by Officer Headly to have some time in here every week, but he thinks it’s to read. He doesn’t know I get on the computer, and I don’t want anybody knowing it, so I hacked the camera and used a prerecorded feed from when I was in the library reading in that chair.”

  He pointed to a table with chairs visible through the big window in the small office, and just in line with the camera.

  “If anybody thinks to look at the camera feed, they won’t see me sitting at the computer, they’ll see me reading over there at the table. It’s not perfect, but they haven’t noticed yet.”

  Grizz nodded. He’d stayed away from anything involving technology. Maybe he shouldn’t have. After learning about them so many years ago, he knew technology would play an important role in how they accomplished a lot of what was in the foreseeable future. He preferred to stay away from it personally, but just because he didn’t use it didn’t mean he shouldn’t have let himself be more aware.

  “How did you pull up my mug shot? Is it on the library computer?” Grizz asked.

  “No, not the library hard drive. I had to hack the prison’s mainframe. Which I did easily.” William looked at him. “You know, your mug shot, from when you were first arrested, doesn’t look anything like what you look like now. You had long hair and no beard. Now you have no hair and a long beard. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “Yeah, I did it on purpose. I want to look different. So let me ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Can you go into other agencies’ computer systems and swap out my mug shot? Can you hack into the police department where I was arrested?”

  “What do you mean? Do you have another mug shot?”

  “No, but I can get one. I want my mug shot to resemble what I look like now. I want the longhaired, clean-shaven mug shot gone. For now. But one day, I’m going to want all of it to disappear. Can you do that?”

  William nodded. “Yeah, if you can tell me the names of the agencies you think have them, I can access them individually. There isn’t a way to do a general search—you know, with a search engine—but that’s coming in the future. For now, I have to go to each one independently.”

  “So if somebody, maybe even the newspaper, has articles about me or pictures of me in their computer files, you can delete them or replace them?”

  “Like I said, tell me the names of the places you think have you in their systems, and if they have a modem, a way to dial to the outside, then I can dial in. What I can’t do is erase any evidence that might be on a microfiche machine or in hard files. You know—how libraries will take actual pictures of newspaper articles and store them on microfiche? One day physical copies of everything will be sent to the shredder, though we’re not there yet,” he shrugged. “But, yeah, if it has to do with computers, I can help you.”

  A slow smile spread on Grizz’s face. This was good. This was very good. He wanted to start erasing any information that might be available about him and his past. He couldn’t erase all of it, but he could certainly make a dent in it. When Grizz got out in a couple of years, he didn’t want any chance, even remotely, that he might be recognized by someone. Besides, he never wanted his daughter, Mimi, to be able to run across anything from his past.

  “You help me out, and I’ll make sure nobody bothers you in here again,” Grizz said. “We got a deal?”

  William smiled broadly. “Oh, yeah. We got a deal.”

  Grizz turned very serious then. “You even think about betraying me, you will suffer and die. You understand that? I don’t fuck around. With anybody.”

  “You keep Psycho and his crazy friend away from me and my rat, Buddy, and you’ll have my loyalty and all the help you need.”

  Grizz nodded and motioned toward the small table and chairs.

  “Now sit down and tell me about yourself.”

  William told him everything—how his parents had died when he was young, and he’d gone to live with his elderly grandfather. He had no siblings or aunts and uncles. It was just him and his grandpa. He was raised in Miami, and they lived in a small apartment over his grandfather’s appliance repair shop. William could fix anything by the time he was ten. He didn’t have many friends, but he didn’t mind. His grandfather was his best friend. He told Grizz how his grandfather’s
favorite television show in the sixties had been Star Trek and how that show had influenced his interest in technology.

  “My grandpa used to tell me that anything we see on TV, anything we think is pretend, will actually be a real thing in the future. If a man can dream it up, he’ll eventually be able to do it. Anyway, even before computers started becoming popular, I was already learning about them.”

  “And that’s what you do for a living? Did for a living, before you ended up here? Computer repair?”

  “No. Computers are my hobby, not my job. And nobody knows about my hobby. I think it’s in my best interest to keep what I do with computers to myself. Nobody needs to know what I can do. What they can do.”

  His last comment caught Grizz’s attention. “They?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.” William sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.” He looked at Grizz sideways, shook his head. “My grandpa was big into conspiracy theories and shit. Studied JFK’s assassination and other crap like that. Forget I mentioned it. He was a crazy old man. He died believing that our first walk on the moon was shot in a movie studio. Lovable and kind, but a little nutty.”

  Grizz nodded in understanding. He would save the rest of this conversation for another time.

  “You asked me what I did. I took over my grandpa’s appliance repair business. If it was broken, I could fix it.”

  “So you were an appliance repairman who dabbled secretly with computers. How the hell did you end up in here? Hack a bank or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. I was framed.”

  Grizz laughed. “Yeah, everybody in here was framed, myself included.”

  “No, I really was framed. And it had nothing to do with computers. I was in the back of a bar fixing the dishwasher when the place was robbed. They caught the guy, and I identified him.” William’s jaw tightened. “I later found out the robbery was a gang initiation, and I was warned not to get involved. Even the bartender said he couldn’t remember what the guy looked like, but I was stupid. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing by helping to get the bad guys off the street. I was their sole witness, and the guy was convicted. Less than a month later, I got pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Cop said my taillight was out. Found drugs in my car. A lot of drugs. They weren’t mine. Florida is tough on drug offenders, even non-violent ones. I have no prior arrests or convictions, not even a parking ticket, but I have to do ten years.”