Homecoming for Beginners

Chapter 2

IF TY hadn’t been well on his way to sobering up by the time he got out of the shower, walking into the funeral home would have done it.

The rich half of town had turned out to pay their respects, so the lot was full of black Jaguars and Mercedes and Land Rovers, everything spit polished to keep up appearances. Ty’s beat-up pickup wouldn’t have fit in any better than Ollie’s respectable silver Honda Civic.

“You going to be good?” Ollie asked, as if he hadn’t done enough for Ty already this morning by waking him up, feeding and caffeinating him, and practically pouring him into his suit.

Ty puffed out his cheeks and blew out a long breath. “No idea,” he admitted. “Thanks for the ride, guys. I guess I’ll see you around.”

And then before he could lose his nerve, he got out of the car.

He didn’t look back.

Just like he hadn’t looked back when he left this town over a decade ago.

Reid Funeral Home hadn’t changed since they buried Ty’s mother. It had the same neutral walls, the same somber décor, the same dark wood furniture. Ty’s chest felt the same way now as it had then, like he’d taken a crushing injury that left his broken ribs screaming every time he tried to draw a breath. Back then he’d been grieving his mother, furious at the world for taking her from him and leaving him with his distant, impossible father.

Now his dad was gone too, and Ty didn’t know what made him angrier—that he’d had to come back here for this or that he’d never get to tell the old man to fuck himself.

Not unless he wanted to make a scene, anyway, and Ty… didn’t have the energy to make another scene today. He’d embarrassed himself enough .

Eliza Kent and the funeral-home director met Ty at the door. The director shook his hand, and Eliza took his arm like he was a frail old lady, or maybe like she’d taken one look at him and calculated how much he drank last night. “Come on,” she said in a bracing voice that reminded Ty of his mom. “We’ll get you through this.”

Ty was installed at the front of the room, near the casket, which was closed. “The accident…,” Eliza had told him when she’d come to the station to find him. “It wasn’t pretty.”

The funeral director had asked if Ty wanted to see his father, assured him they’d reconstructed his face as much as possible. Part of Ty had thought maybe looking would make it final, make it real, and the other half was pissed off that even if he did look, he wouldn’t get to tell his father to go to hell.

It was too late to change his mind now.

Ty shook hands with a hundred of his father’s nearest and dearest, who offered hollow condolences to his face when he knew for a fact they’d spent his adolescence gossiping about him. Even when Alan Chiu not-so-surreptitiously wiped his hand after shaking Ty’s, Ty didn’t have the energy to give a shit. He could just about manage to stand upright, and even that he had to credit to a guy he’d literally never met before this morning and who he’d initially assumed was a product of his imagination.

Finally the parade of mourners ended and Ty got to sit down at the front row of the chapel, where everyone was staring at his back as the local preacher talked about his father’s impact on the community .

Ty kind of wished he were still drunk.

Instead he sat ramrod straight next to Eliza and kept his eyes fixed forward. He did his best to let the eulogy wash through him without leaving anything behind. It was easier than it should’ve been.

After the service, professional pallbearers lowered his father’s casket into the ground. The well-dressed crowd waited for Ty to throw a handful of dirt onto the coffin, or maybe to spit on it. Ty did the former and then wiped his hand on his suit pants like a five-year-old and immediately felt stupid and self-conscious.

At least the old man himself wasn’t here anymore to look at him with that perennially disappointed sneer.

The fog didn’t clear from Ty’s vision until the crowd dispersed and suddenly he found himself standing with his father’s lawyer and…

… and Ty’s high school football and baseball coach ?

Now that he was looking at the guy, Ty vaguely remembered him coming through the condolences line, but he’d been too out of it then to pay attention. But now he was standing next to Eliza in a—a really nice suit, which was maybe why Ty hadn’t recognized him. He’d never seen the guy in anything other than a track suit or a school polo.

“Uh. Coach Tate?”

Coach put a hand on his shoulder. “How you holding up, Ty?”

“I have had better days.”

Coach squeezed, and Ty swallowed an unexpected lump in his throat.

“We have some things to discuss,” Eliza said gently. “Why don’t you come back to our place for a chat? Henry can make us lunch.”

Our place? Ty wondered. Henry? The last Ty knew, Eliza was married to a guy named David. He was about to ask, but then Coach Tate put his arm around Eliza’s shoulders and the penny dropped. “Wait,” Ty said, “you two are married ?”

“Six years now,” Coach Tate said.

“There’ve been a few changes around here since you left.” Eliza put her hand on Ty’s arm. He couldn’t help but feel like he was being… handled… but it had been a long time since anyone cared enough about him to try it. “Come on.”

He spent the ride from the funeral home looking out the window of Eliza’s slick SUV. Winter was receding, leaving mud and damp brown-green grass. The trees had started to bud, though nothing had leafed out yet. In Eliza’s neighborhood, daffodils were blooming in the garden beds and the tulips had started to come up, though it was a crapshoot on whether they’d get to flower. Ty’s mom had always complained about the deer eating the tops off before they opened.

“Kind of dreary,” Coach Tate commented as Eliza pulled into the driveway. “What do you think, sandwiches and chicken soup? Homemade. My specialty.”

Coach Tate had been a bachelor when Ty knew him. This sudden turn for the domestic threw him for a loop. “Uh, yeah. Sounds great, Coach. Thanks.”

Moments later the door to Eliza’s home office closed behind them. Ty expected something like his father’s study—heavy dark wood and leather furniture, something that felt stifling in its attempt to convey luxury and importance. Instead it was a bright room with a bay window facing the back garden. It was decorated with a menagerie of potted plants and midcentury furnishings. Eliza motioned Ty to one of the two armchairs in front of her desk. He expected her to sit facing him, but she took the one next to his instead.

“How are you doing, Ty? Really. I know this is a lot, and you and your daddy never did get along….”

Ty snorted before he could control himself. “That’s a hell of an understatement.”

“I know.” She patted his arm. It was wild. Ty had never considered her the maternal type. “And I’m sorry. But it’s better that we sort out what we can now.”

“Uh, Ms. Kent, no offense.” How could he put this into words without coming across as ungrateful? “But… what do you mean ‘we’? You’re—you were—my dad’s lawyer. It’s not like we’re….” Friends? Yeah, obviously not, because Ty didn’t have any of those. At least not in this town.

Eliza was quiet for a moment, her dark eyes serious. Then she said, “It’s true that I was your daddy’s lawyer. But he’s dead, God rest him”—she said that the way Southern women said bless your heart —“which means I’m your lawyer now. And while I can’t directly act against his legal will, he’s also not here to clarify how any of his wishes should be carried out, if it hasn’t been put down on paper. Do you understand me?”

The last of Ty’s two-day stupor evaporated, and he looked at her with clear eyes as his brain translated: Fuck your dad. Not something he’d ever expected to hear from her, even if it wasn’t in so many words. “I think so.” He paused. “Thanks.”

She waved this off. “You’re welcome. Now, that being said, your daddy paid my retainer for this year, but if you’re planning on getting arrested and I have to bail you out of jail, my rates are going up, you hear?”

And now she was… teasing him? This day kept getting weirder. Ty raised his hands. “Hey, I get you. I haven’t been arrested since the last time you had to bail me out. I promise. They don’t let you be a paramedic if you’ve got a criminal record, you know.” And his job was the one thing he had going for him. The sooner he got to go back to it for real, the better .

“Yes. About that.” She sighed, and in the sudden lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth, Ty detected that she had actually aged in the ten-plus years since he’d last seen her. “I’ve been going over the policies your father had in place, but because of the nature of his death, the insurance payouts will be minimal.” Translation: nobody wanted to pay because Ty’s dad drove himself into a tree, possibly on purpose, when he had already lost his license. Ty was lucky Eliza hadn’t said anything yet about someone suing his estate. “There’s more than enough money in his accounts and in the house. The problem is with the will, probate, and home insurance.”

Of course it was. “That actually sounds more like three problems.”

With a shake of her head, she got up from her chair. “You always were smarter than your daddy gave you credit for.” She went to a sideboard, where there was a pitcher of ice water and two glasses, and poured one for each of them. Then she sat back down, this time on the opposite side of the desk.

“First problem.” She passed across a glass for him, along with a cork coaster. “The will. Your father has named you executor, which you already know. It’s a responsibility you can refuse, which I’ve also told you.”

Ty chugged the glass and wiped a droplet of water from the corner of his mouth. The pitcher was still half full; he eyed it hopefully. Dehydration was setting in. He should’ve packed himself a banana bag—an IV infusion of potassium would be great right about now. “Right,” he said. “And you said the executor takes, uh, 5 percent?”

“Typically that’s what they’re entitled to, although in this case you’re also the beneficiary of the majority of the property.”

Ty’s mouth fell open. “I’m sorry?” He’d been sure his dad would disinherit him.

“There’s five hundred thousand set aside for a donation to the Cancer Society.” Eliza reached for a tablet at the corner of her desk and thumbed it on. “As well as various endowments. But that leaves a substantial amount of assets, including the house.”

Ty stumbled to his feet and poured himself a second glass of water, which he brought back to the desk with him. “Uh. The Cobra?” Ty didn’t care about the house, but the Cobra had been his mother’s baby, a car she loved driving with her dad when she was a kid. She even taught Ty to drive stick in it .

Ty’s dad locked it up when she died.

Eliza cleared her throat. “Donated to an automotive museum.”

Ty’s heart broke. “Of course he did.” Why would he have thought otherwise?

“There’s more.” Eliza surged forward. “As I said, you can refuse to be executor. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of waiting, and you’ll be under some scrutiny. Probate takes a long time, sometimes more than a year. Nothing can happen with your father’s things until that process is complete.”

“What happens if I turn it down?”

“Well, normally the state would perform the service and take its percentage of the estate. However, your father included a clause that, if you refuse the duty of executor….”

Oh boy, Ty thought. Here it comes.

“A second will comes into effect, and the proceeds from the estate will be given to the Alliance Defending Freedom.”

Great. “Let’s take it as a given that I’m accepting the job of executor.” Ty didn’t care about the money. Well—okay, he could use the money. He only wanted to refuse it because it had been his father’s. But if the alternative to the drudgery of being executor was his dad’s riches going to an actual hate group, then no thanks. He’d find the time between shifts to figure out how to handle all this. Once he mentioned to any self-respecting accountant how much he stood to inherit, he’d have people lining up to get paid in a year. “What’s the next bad news?”

“The home insurance.” She shook her head. “A house like that, it costs a lot to insure. Currently, those payments are set to come out automatically, so you don’t have to worry about that. The more pressing issue is that under the current policy, the home has to remain occupied, or the policy will lapse.”

“Okay, well, that’s….” He shook his head. “I mean it can’t be that hard to find someone who wants to rent the place, right? I’ll put it on the market for like a thousand bucks a month and….”

Eliza was already shaking her head. “That would require changing the current insurance policy, which can’t be done until a whole host of other t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. It’ll take time. Time you don’t have.”

His stomach sank and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So you’re saying what, exactly?”

“The easiest way for you to solve this problem is to move in permanently, or at least until the estate clears probate and you can put the house up for sale.”

Fuck. Ty thought that was where this was going. He’d spent more than fifteen years furiously swimming away from this place, but he’d never escaped the chain around his ankle, and now the anchor was dragging him back down. “My job is in Chicago.”

The words sounded as flimsy as they felt.

“I know.”

It would’ve been easier if she’d been more like his father—more like he expected. But this unknown, gentle woman who was almost familiar just made him want to crumple.

Ty took a deep breath and let it out. Then he washed away the tightness in his throat with another sip of ice water. Finally he put the glass down, wiped his hands on his suit pants, and sat forward. “Take me through the rest of it.”

Five minutes in and Ty felt like he should be taking notes. But when he reached for his phone to start making them, Eliza shook her head and said she’d email him a summary.

Ty didn’t know lawyers could be saints.

Eliza was just wrapping up a primer on inheritance tax and how it would apply to his father’s estate—she was also emailing him a list of questions to ask his father’s accountant—when Henry knocked on the door and stuck his head inside. “Lunch is ready.”

The scent of a homemade meal sneaked into the office, and suddenly Ty’s stomach forgot all about Ollie Kent’s french toast. “That smells amazing.”

“Well, let’s eat.”

He thought they might sit in the formal dining room, but instead Henry led him into an eat-in kitchen where they sat at a battle-scarred table. The soup tasted as good as it smelled, and it did the job of chasing away the rest of Ty’s hangover as well as any banana bag would have. Henry and Eliza carried the conversation while Ty focused on eating, digesting not only the food in front of him but the mountain of things he’d have to do over the next few months just because his dad was a spiteful old dick.

Ty had never been all that great about staying focused when he didn’t have to, though, and it was only a matter of time before his gaze started to wander. The office might’ve been all Eliza, but the kitchen was obviously Henry’s domain. A desk against one wall hosted practice schedules and permission forms, and the wall was full of photos of the high school’s athletic teams. Two of them featured a huge trophy, and Ty’s stomach twisted.

He should be in one of those pictures. But after his mom died, after his father shut down, after Ty lashed out because it was the only way he knew to get any kind of parental attention, his dad had shipped him off to boarding school. Too bad, so sad for the home team, who were down their star pitcher before baseball season even started. More than one of the guys on the team had hated Ty for that.

Except…. Ty frowned. Except the year on that photo….

Without meaning to, he got up from the table and walked closer to the wall.

Those were Ty’s teammates, all right—Jimmy and Carlos and PJ and the rest of them crowding around the trophy, grinning like it was the best day of their lives. And there was Coach Tate, beaming like a proud dad, standing next to—

“Is that Ollie Kent ?”

Conversation at the table stopped, and Henry and Eliza looked at each other. “You know Ollie?”

“Well, I didn’t know he stole my spot on the baseball team.” Ty grimaced internally. He hated how that had come out. Ollie hadn’t stolen anything. Ty lost that spot through his own stupidity. And Coach Tate was the last person who deserved to be the target of that anger. He put as much into that team as any of the players. “Fuck. Sorry. I just… didn’t know, uh, I mean, obviously you had to replace me.”

“Nobody was going to do that.”

Ty swallowed. He traced his fingers over the trophy, then over Ollie’s shoulder. The shoulder that should’ve been his. He exhaled shakily.

“How do you know him?” Eliza asked.

“He showed up at the house this morning.” It felt like a lifetime ago now. “Um, with his son. I guess he was supposed to start work for my dad as a… I don’t know what you’d call it. A home health-care aide, I guess, except I don’t think he’s qualified beyond being able to lift a grown man off the floor if he falls down. Adult babysitter? Which, all ev idence to the contrary, I don’t actually need. But since dear old Dad is dead as a doornail, it wasn’t like he could call and say, ‘Sorry but you’re fired,’ so I got to do that part.”

There was a beat of silence. Then Eliza said, “I’m going to kill that boy.”

Ty blinked.

“Eliza—”

“No, Henry. I asked him three days ago to set up a phone conference with Ollie Kent”—she whipped out her cell phone and brandished it toward him—“and what did he do? He emailed an invitation to my calendar and then never followed up.”

Ty put together that that boy did not refer to Ollie.

“Albert’s a good kid,” Henry insisted.

“But a lousy secretary,” Eliza finished. “I’d better call him myself and apologize. Having a single father—my late husband’s nephew —drive all the way up from DC for a job that’s disappeared, honestly.” She huffed. “I should’ve double-checked. Excuse me, boys, please.” With one last touch to Ty’s shoulder, she left the room.

Maybe Ty wasn’t the only one who’d been thrown for a loop this week. He didn’t get the impression Eliza dropped the ball very often. “Albert?” he asked Henry, for something to say.

“Class of 2022.” Henry gave a little wince. “Tore his ACL in the last football game of the season. Goodbye, college scholarship. Eliza needed someone to help out in the office, he needed a job…. Guess I can forget about that second career in matchmaking.”

“Career,” Ty echoed as the reality of his conversation with Eliza closed in around him. Without his input his legs carried him back to the kitchen table and dumped him in a chair. “Right.”

Henry tilted his head at him. “What?”

Of course—Eliza wouldn’t have told him anything, even though he was her husband. “Uh, it looks like I kind of have to move into my dad’s place temporarily for….” He waved his hands. “I don’t know. Insurance reasons I guess.” Though in theory, couldn’t he roll the dice? If the place burned down, oh well?

Maybe… but if someone decided to sue him because they got hurt, he’d be hosed. Ugh.

“Which means you’re looking for a new job,” Henry finished, and Ty could see the wheels in his head turning .

“Just don’t try to make me Eliza’s secretary.” They’d kill each other inside a week. “I’m a danger to myself and others if I have to sit still for too long.”

“I do remember your teenage years, yeah.” Henry tilted his head. “What have you been doing for work?”

Eliza hadn’t told him that either? Ty spared a moment to be a little bit glad about that. His job was the one thing he’d managed to get right, and he wanted to make someone proud of him. Nothing ever would’ve been good enough for his dad, but—“I’m a paramedic. Uh, for four years now. I actually just got a promotion.” Which he’d have to give up unless he could con someone into letting him take an indefinite leave of absence. He’d have to talk to his union rep. He could probably get a couple months unpaid for bereavement, but he would still need to work in the meantime. Not for monetary reasons—Eliza had explained he’d have access to some of his dad’s accounts as executor—but because he would lose his mind if he didn’t have something else to do.

Henry’s eyes widened. “Hey, good for you. That sounds like the perfect job for you.”

Ty warmed at the praise. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a doctor or anything, but it’s important, and I-I’m good at it. Keeping a cool head in a crisis. Which, believe me, I know that’s ironic because cool head is not something any of my teachers would’ve said about me.”

Henry laughed. “No, I think Mrs. Murphy in particular—”

“I did not blow up the chemistry lab,” Ty protested automatically with a grin, falling into the old banter.

“You did singe off your eyebrows, though.”

Ty sniffed. “It was the fashion.”

“Uh-huh.” Henry shook his head. “Well, if you’re bored, I could use another set of hands at games and practices. Someone with good first-aid credentials? Even better. I can’t pay you for it, but—”

“That sounds great, actually.” Anything to get him out of the house. “Turns out my schedule is wide open.”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll fill up. You just let me know.”

Fill up with what, Ty wanted to ask. By now all his high school teammates either thought he was a loser or they’d forgotten all about him. He was an only child and now an orphan. His parents didn’t have much family either. Ty was the last. The closest thing he had to friends right now were Henry and Eliza—a whole generation older than he was—and the stranger who’d seen him at his worst and taken pity on him to make sure he didn’t show up to his father’s funeral reeking of bourbon.

Maybe he should get Ollie’s number from Eliza, call, and… what? Apologize? It wasn’t Ty’s fault his dad died.

He shook off the thought and refocused on the conversation at hand. “So, baseball. How’s the team looking this year?”