Resilience

by Tymber Dalton

  It was…mind-boggling.

  No, of course Tyler would never trade the life he’d had for a life with Marcus. Not even if he could go back and do things over and see all sides of the matter.

  Tom, Nevvie, their children—the Kinsey family.

  His family.

  Nothing could compare to any of that.

  There were things to file, the bank to visit. They could handle the bank tomorrow, and Goossens would take care of the estate filings that had to be completed.

  “How much do we owe you for all of this?”

  “It was already taken care of by Marcus. Paid for in advance.” Goossens kindly smiled. “He literally wanted you to have little more to do than sign papers.”

  Tyler thought about the apartment full of belongings to deal with, and the yet unseen storage area.

  The emotional detritus.

  “That was very considerate of him,” he opted to say.

  When they finished with all of that, and Tyler was in possession of copies of all their paperwork, including the information on the utilities—which Goossens would take care of transferring into their names for them—they headed downstairs so Goossens could drive them back to the apartment.

  “Could we stop by a grocery store on the way?” Tyler asked. “I’d like to pick up a few things.”

  “But of course.”

  Leaving Tommy in the car with Goossens, Tyler trudged through the unrelenting rain into the store, where once inside he quickly oriented himself. He was used to large, US big-box stores. It’d been quite a while since he’d shopped in a small grocery.

  Thinking ahead, and yet keeping in mind the small size of the refrigerator, Tyler grabbed enough to feed them for a couple of days, including two bottles of wine.

  He would definitely want a glass or several of that while sorting through the apartment’s contents.

  Once he was back in the car, they headed off again.

  “Could you forward me information on any local charities that might be willing to take items? Clothes and such?” Tyler asked Goossens.

  “I will look those up for you and forward them to your e-mail. I take it you found the notes regarding the password for the Wi-Fi and his computer?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Tyler sat back, too absorbed by his growing mental to-do list to look at the city passing outside.

  Back at the apartment, Goossens let Tommy out at the building’s front door and found a parking spot. Then he helped Tyler schlep all the bags upstairs while Tom slowly limped up after them.

  “I’ll return in the morning around ten, if that’s all right?” Goossens asked.

  Tyler nodded, wanting to get back down the stairs to Tom to help him. “Yes, that’s fine, thank you.”

  Inside the apartment, Tom didn’t even remove his overcoat before collapsing on the sofa.

  “Sorry, sugar.” Pain gave his handsome face a pinched, pale look. “I’m not going to be much use tonight.” He still had at least another hour before he could take a pain pill. He rarely had to use them, and that he’d been taking them so regularly told Tyler how much pain he was really in.

  “It’s all right, love. Let me help you with that coat and I’ll get the groceries sorted and dinner started.” He helped Tom slip it off, then removed his shoes for him and retrieved a pillow from the bedroom.

  Once he had the casserole put together and in the oven, Tyler walked over to Tom, where he dozed in front of the TV.

  When Tyler leaned in and kissed him, Tom’s eyes fluttered open.

  “I’m going to pop downstairs to the storage unit and have a look around. Will you be all right?”

  Tom nodded. “Yeah. Do I need to do anything with the food?”

  “No, I set the timer on my phone. I’ll have it with me. Text me if you need to get up. Right?”

  He nodded. “Won’t argue with you, sugar. Trust me.” His eyes drifted closed again.

  Tyler locked him in and headed downstairs, nodding in passing to a woman with a young child in tow heading up as he passed them on his way to the ground floor. After a moment, he found the door leading to the basement.

  There was a communal laundry room there, washers and dryers, although they had a small washer/dryer combo unit in the kitchen upstairs, and a retractable clothesline on the bedroom balcony area. Past that were the storage areas, clearly marked on each door with the corresponding apartment number.

  The key easily turned in the lock. Darkness inside met him. He turned on the flashlight on his phone, looked around, and found a light switch just inside the door.

  He flipped it on. Inside the approximately ten-by-ten area, he found himself met by assorted items and piles of boxes, many neatly labeled in Marcus’ hand, some in French, some in Dutch. Some of the boxes were labeled in French in a hand Tyler didn’t recognize, and these boxes looked older.

  Jean-Claude, perhaps?

  Likely.

  Bloody hell.

  There were, by his best estimate, at least a hundred boxes to sort through, in addition to the other random items. Sure, he could turn off the light, close and lock the door, and ignore it, or simply pitch everything in the rubbish, sight unseen. Except if he did that he knew it would eat at him, its presence calling to him to deal with it properly.

  He opened one nearby box after entering what turned out to be a Dutch word into Google Translate on his phone and finding it said Pictures.

  Photo albums and loose pictures, fairly old, mostly of the man Tyler presumed to be Jean-Claude in his childhood and younger years. No pictures of him with Marcus.

  Closing that box and setting it aside, he opened another box that was marked Books in Dutch.

  College textbooks, in French, a few in English, for a variety of subjects. The copyright dates were no newer than thirty years old.

  He closed that.

  Another marked Clothes in Dutch revealed just that. Pants that could not have ever fit Marcus, based on how short the legs were. These were not as old as the college textbooks, and Tyler wondered how long they’d lain in a dresser or closet after Jean-Claude’s death before Marcus could force himself to pack them and bring them down here?

  The man couldn’t get rid of his dead lover’s things.

  He’d had a heart.

  He’d had a conscience.

  He’d had a devastating heartbreak.

  He’d long held a part of Tyler’s soul that Tyler had been unable to retrieve, no matter how much he’d wished to.

  And he wished he’d been able to know this side of the man, parted ways on far better terms way back then.

  Had Marcus simply confessed to Tyler at the start of that night so long ago that it would be a one-time thing, that he was returning to Brussels…

  He might still have slept with him, but Tyler wouldn’t have felt so…used in the aftermath.

  Violated.

  And Tyler resented that he simply couldn’t let that go, and that it made him feel guilty for not being able to. The man was dead.

  Bollocks.

  He forced himself to turn away from the boxes, shut off the light, and lock the door behind him. On the way up, he found the mailbox in the lobby and checked it.

  Nothing.

  Tom lay dozing on the sofa. Tyler quietly closed and locked the door behind him and headed down the hall to the bathroom there to wash the dust off his hands.

  Unfortunately, the office pulled him in. He once again found himself standing in front of the shelves, staring at his books there.

  Another time, another place, another room in another flat, with shelves full of his books. Only that time Nevvie had been with him and it had been his father’s flat outside of London.

  A welcomed reunion once the truth was out.

  He’d had no actual contact with Delores in two years, although his younger brother and sister kept him apprised of her condition as a matter of courtesy since he was footing most of the bill for her care. She lived in a nursing home and was deep in the mid stages of Alzheime
r’s.

  He felt no remorse about not visiting her, since she’d lied to him and his siblings about their father. Even after he’d confronted her and demanded the truth, about a year after his reunion with his father, she’d stuck to her lies.

  Had felt no remorse for what she’d done. For the years of separation she’d caused.

  For the fact that she’d treated Tyler far worse than his younger brother and sister simply because he was the mirror image of their father.

  More false emotions he could have avoided, more pain he’d needlessly endured due to that woman’s narcissistic insecurities and hatred.

  She’d never seen any of Tyler’s children in the flesh, and she never would, either.

  Not that she’d even know who any of them were at this point in her life. She didn’t even know who she was.

  He also felt zero guilt about that. As far as he was concerned, Peggy Kinsey had been his adopted mother from the moment Tyler became part of that family. It was ironic she became both his mother-in-law and step-mother. And Tyler also felt close to Nevvie’s birth mom, Kelly.

  He reached out and took hold of the paperback copy of Damning Thoughts, his first published novel.

  A first edition printing, but obviously well-read, from the creases in the spine and at the corners of the covers, scuff marks here and there.

  Marcus had drawn him into conversations about his writing, his books. Had made Tyler feel like his work had genuine literary merit, unlike many of his former coworkers who thought he was simply an artistic sell-out.

  Marcus had not only been an older peer academically and professionally, but had believed in him and his work.

  A damn sight more than his own mother ever had.

  And Marcus owned far more of Tyler’s books than she had.

  Tyler stared at the back cover, the picture of a much younger him. He remembered the day it had been taken, over at the USF Tampa campus, where he’d been teaching at the time. The photographer had stood him against a tree outside Cooper Hall, a tree that no longer existed because a business school building had been constructed on the spot. Hot, muggy, sunny, and she’d played with light angles until she’d framed it exactly the way she’d wanted. A real camera with real film, long before the advent of cell phones, much less digital cameras.

  He hadn’t even been thirty yet.

  I was a child.

  He returned the book to its place and walked along the shelves. These were obviously Marcus’ more prized books, or ones that he frequently accessed, like a thesaurus and dictionary.

  Tyler sat at the desk and stared out the windows. He could see into the park and imagined on a sunny day it was a beautifully distracting view.

  The laptop wasn’t brand new, but it wasn’t an ancient dinosaur, either. Using the info on the sticky note, he powered it up and logged in, finding a file titled passwords on the desktop. The desktop image was a picture of Marcus and Jean-Claude, smiling at the camera, taken at a seashore with the water behind them. Clicking on the file provided a Word document containing various account information and logins. When he examined the file info, it had been created less than six months earlier.

  Utilities, banking, credit cards—which Goossens had told them today had been paid off three weeks earlier.

  When he clicked back to the desktop, he noticed another file there, its name sending a chill through him.

  Tyler

  Before he could lose his nerve, he clicked on it. Another Word doc.

  I hope you can find these of some use. If so, please do so with my blessings, with your byline alone. If not, my apologies.

  Followed by a list of directories under the main Documents folder, with the file structure.

  Tyler explored them.

  Research, unfinished drafts of books, snippets of stories. Ideas.

  Marcus had taught college literature and written a dozen scholarly books on various famous authors.

  This was…

  This was fiction. All of it.

  Upon first glance, quite good fiction.

  Very good.

  The phone timer went off, startling him. Tyler closed the laptop’s lid without shutting the computer down. He’d need some time to think, to process everything thus far.

  Right now, all he wanted to do was stop thinking and focus on taking care of Tom.

  Because Tyler had truly hit his mental and emotional limit for the day, and the last thing he wanted to do was seriously contemplate using the words of a dead man who’d never had any fiction published and who might very well be a far better writer than he could ever aspire to be.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nevvie ran to the store after completing her morning chores. Since it was Wednesday, that meant dinner at Dad’s house next door. It was great having Andrew living right there.

  Even better when Tyler and Tom were home and the three of them could eat dinner with the whole family, her parents and Ty’s dad, Tom’s sisters, the cousins—everyone.

  Family.

  Something she’d lacked growing up.

  Something her children had never lacked for.

  She stopped by on her way to the store, opening the front door and sticking her head in, calling out. “Hello?”

  “In here, Nev.”

  She followed his voice to the kitchen, where she found him leaning against the counter and frowning as he studied what turned out to be a page from an old three-ring binder.

  After kissing his cheek, she rested her head on his shoulder. “Need anything from the store?”

  “No, Karen and I went last night, but I’m trying to decipher this old recipe.” He pointed to some of the measurements.

  Nevvie squinted, realizing she was going to have to break down and go to the eye doctor to see about getting glasses. “Oh. Okay. I remember Mom making this a few times.”

  “Then could you please re-write it for me? You know I love Peggy, but the woman should have been a doctor, her handwriting was so blasted miserable.”

  Nevvie pecked his cheek again. “Sure. You have a pen and paper?”

  He got it for her and she sat down at the kitchen table with the recipe, a chicken and broccoli casserole dish. The paper it was written on had yellowed over the years, and bore a few splotches where it looked like something had been splashed or spilled on it during the cooking process, but she muddled her way through it. When she finished, she handed it over to Andrew, who smiled.

  “Ah, much better, love. Thank you so much.”

  “You think you have everything now? Do I need to get you anything from the store?”

  “Well, Karen remembered the recipe and was able to help me with the ingredients, but she’d never actually made it herself from scratch before. She just remembered it well. Apparently, it was one of her favorites growing up.”

  He skimmed the list again. “No, I have everything I need, thank you, love.” He looked up from the list. “Any word from the wayward ones in Brussels?”

  Nevvie really wasn’t in the mood to discuss it yet. Plus she didn’t want to stress Andrew by him worrying about the boys’ emotional health on this jaunt. “They’re busy with the attorney today.” She hoped one of them would be able to fill her in sooner rather than later. The time difference meant limited opportunities to talk to them when the kids weren’t home.

  This definitely wasn’t something she wanted to discuss in front of the kids, especially the hyper-nosy twins, who seemed to want to stick their ears in everywhere they didn’t belong.

  Fortunately, Andrew was distracted by his recipe. “That’s good. Hopefully they’ll be home sooner rather than later.”

  “Yeah.” She stood. “I’m going to head out. Call me if you think of anything you need.”

  “Right. Thank you, love.”

  It was good having Andrew here. With her mom and dad living across the street from them, it was nearly perfect.

  The only one missing was Peggy.

  As Nevvie headed to the store, she tried to get her mi
nd off that day, one that, despite what they’d been through as a family, had shot to the top of her list as the worst day of her life.

  She was pulling into the parking lot when her phone rang, Tommy’s number.

  Nevvie smiled and answered. “Thank you for calling Gorgeous Georgia Gals. Press one for hot phone sex in a grocery store parking lot, or two to talk to your lonely wife.”

  Tom snickered, but it didn’t sound quite right, like maybe he’d taken a pain pill. “Hey, baby girl. How you holding up? The twins eat you alive yet?”

  “No, that’ll probably happen when they get home from school and before dinner at Dad’s. I have a feeling they’re going to be highly pissed off that I didn’t drive them to school today. How’d it go at the attorney’s office?”

  * * * *

  Tom glanced at where Tyler stood in the kitchen, cleaning up from dinner, his back turned to Tom. He merrily hummed some nameless tune and was already on his third glass of wine.

  “It…went.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ah. Ty’s close by and you don’t want to say too much?”

  “Yep.”

  She sighed. “Is he okay?”

  Tom dropped his voice. “He’s on glass number three of wine, and I don’t have the heart to cut him off.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  Tyler wasn’t much of a drinker. Tom didn’t miss that he’d picked up two bottles of wine during the grocery stop. And Tyler would know damn well that Tom wouldn’t be drinking with him because of his pain meds.

  “I’ll shoot you an e-mail in a little while, but it’s…wow.” He’d taken some pictures of the place earlier in the day.

  “How much do we have to pay out?”

  “Um, no. Exact opposite.”

  “There’s money besides the apartment?”

  He didn’t want to talk about this and drag down Tyler’s mood. “Definitely.”

  “I’ll eagerly await your e-mail, Mr. Kinsey.”