Tropesick

Chapter 86

Tyler

Meredith flung Katie’s final question to Ingrid onto a crisp sheet of paper, and I nearly wailed. Pinot stepped toward the

typewriter, removed the page, and then used his tongue to set it on the desk to dry.

“This can’t be real,” I said for the dozenth time since I’d forced Meredith to sit down and type—to show me how this could

possibly work. All as I’d tried to make sense of the cold nothingness of her body, the fact that she’d fucked my father, the

fact that she was not entirely there.

She said nothing. She simply sat at her desk, her hands in position as I scoured the latest scene. I traced the words, filling

in the blanks Meredith had left up to the reader on my own. Katie, growing up. Katie, grieving. Katie, getting on without

me. It was exactly what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? Exactly what I’d begged her to do.

I walked to what remained of the plot wall and ran my fingers over the beats of our summers—both this one and the ones cut

short eight and eleven years ago. And here, in this room, with my own wounds at my fingertips, I could no longer run from

the truth.

Even without Carolyn’s ultimatum, I’d believed that leaving Katie was the right thing to do.

And every day, these past eight years, I’d believed it a little more.

I’d fallen asleep to the memory of her face, the glow of her bedroom, and the warmth of her laugh, convincing myself that she’d be all right.

That, in time, she’d forget me, and maybe—if I was very lucky—I might forget her.

And all this time, I’d blamed Carolyn because it made me powerless.

Because it allowed me to believe that, somehow, I was a decent guy.

Because it allowed me to believe that, in some parallel universe, I was the kind of man who stayed.

But here, in this moment, with my flaws, secrets, and lies laid out for me like a puzzle seconds from being solved, I finally

understood. I would’ve run either way. I would’ve done anything but stick around and try to love her.

My fingers fell to another cluster of note cards. Each of them, scribbled with a trope. The ones from our seaside brunch with

Meredith were there, but so were others. Ones that had been more quietly embedded in our story. Against all odds. Everyone’s connected. Rich people behaving badly. All grown up. Just one bed.

My hand dropped another inch. Meddlesome ghost. I tried not to laugh or cry or sink to the floor.

“Clever,” I said.

Meredith stood a few feet behind me. When I turned, she cracked a tempered smile. “It was right there,” she said, “on that

list Katie gave you in the pizza parlor.”

I traced the trope again. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know.”

“I mean, you can cry. You can cook. You even drink. If you’re a ghost, then how . . .”

“I know,” she said, walking toward the window. Outside, the sun had begun to set, and the Atlantic glimmered gold. “Only wine,

though. And it’s not supposed to make sense, really. It doesn’t have to. You know that. You write speculative fiction, after

all.”

I rubbed my temples. “But . . . but what about Selma? She sent us here. We talked to her all the time.”

Meredith pressed her hand to the glass. “Selma,” she said, “has been living with Alan for over twenty years. She and him both

know. Alan’s art business dried up long ago. He made a few bad investments with the money he had left—some hotel on the Lower

East Side, a golf enterprise in Saudi Arabia, who knows. He hasn’t worked since his fortieth birthday. He and Selma have been

raising chickens and growing heirloom lettuces in godforsaken California ever since.”

“What do you mean, they know? Selma—she found my short story. She got my manuscript from my old agent. I queried him myself in college. That was years

ago.”

Meredith turned then. The evening light, beaming right through her. Was this why we couldn’t enter this place? Not just because

she was writing our story but because here, the truth showed?

“I saw you and Katie,” she said, “at Michael’s funeral. He had mentioned to me after group one night that he knew you two

had a thing. He wasn’t sure if anything had happened yet, but he knew it would eventually. At his service, I spotted you instantly.

You look so much like your father. I saw you, and I saw the way you were watching Katie. I know a love story, Tyler, when

I see one.

“I had wanted to talk to you that afternoon. I had come to speak to you—to introduce myself. To offer my condolences and maybe help you understand who your father really was. But your mother spotted me first. I saw what was happening with Carolyn. I overheard it all—you and Katie, being torn apart. An angry parent, turning cruel. Turning their back on love. That, I’m afraid, is its own tale as old as time.

I was drinking heavily then—it had been years since I’d last seen your father.

I’d spent millions on private investigators, trying to track him down.

“I know you may not believe me, but I saw the connection between you and Katie and instantly saw myself in it. I was you,

Tyler. Your father was a Katie. I know you can’t comprehend that, but he put it all on the line for me. He didn’t care what

anyone thought. He didn’t care if it made him a bad husband. He just wanted love.”

I nearly laughed at that. Didn’t she realize how selfish she sounded? Romanticizing my father’s dedication to her like it

was anything other than his turning his back on us? But somehow, it made sense. And so I let her continue. I let her pace

around this strange, time-swept place and explain herself.

“I got this idea in my head,” she said, “that if I could just get you and Katie to secure your happily ever after, maybe that

would bring me some peace, some closure. Perhaps not enough to stop drinking, to become a good person, but enough to know

I’d done one meaningful thing in my pathetic little life.”

My hands were on my head. “But Selma . . . I still don’t understand that part. How is she in on this?”

Meredith chuckled. “Selma and Alan came to check on me about a week after Michael passed. I was still reviewing my ghostwriters’

manuscripts then. I still had a hand in my books and my business. I had missed a couple of deadlines and failed to return

a few voicemails. As I mentioned, my drinking had gotten quite bad. The two of them came out to the Hamptons to make sure

I was all right.

“Do not be mistaken. This was not because they cared for me. This was because I was their cash cow. And so, hungry for more,

they arrived in their blue jeans and their farm boots, fresh off a charter from Montecito.”

“Where—Where did they find you?”

Meredith had glided back to the now-closed window, and her hand was glued to the pane. “On the shore,” she said. “With the

water up to my knees.”

There was a lump in my throat. “Were you okay? What happened?”

She shrugged. The sky was growing dimmer by the second. “The night of Michael’s service, after I got home, I began plotting

your love story. I was trying to put all the pieces into place, just with what I could glean, with what Michael had told me,

with what I could understand by looking at you two. I never dreamed I’d be able to read your minds one day—to see through

both your souls like characters of my own. But then . . . I saw something.”

I was quiet.

She pressed her hand a little harder against the glass.

“I saw Tom,” she said. “I saw Tom swimming, and then . . . I don’t know. A part of me never came back. My body is still there,

in that ocean. And the rest of me, well . . . The rest of me became whatever it is I am now.”

My head moved up and down very slowly. It took me a full minute to realize I was nodding. That somehow, her story made sense.

Despite everything, it all made perfect sense.

“He’s who you see?” I whispered. “When you close your eyes?”

She nodded. She did not turn to me when she did it, but I felt it anyway. I felt, with every bone in my body, Meredith Bradford’s

heart break.

“When Selma and Alan found me, we struck a deal. The business keeps running, they keep getting paid, and they keep my secret. We maintain the house, I retain the art, everything stays the same. I instructed Selma to hire an intern from whatever college Katie chose to attend and to ensure she was a shoo-in for a contract by the time she graduated. And you . . . I knew you were writing, and I knew when you signed with Oliver your last year at Brown. He was quite incompetent, it turned out. We got lucky with that, I suppose. When he dropped you, I told Selma to acquire his agency—to get access to your unsold work. It took a while, the plan, but it had to be this way. I needed you two older. I needed you two wiser. I needed to get the timing right.”

“And our thoughts? You . . . you got access to them that night? When you saw my dad?”

Meredith nodded. I was silent for a moment. And then, because I was still me, because I couldn’t help myself, I said, “Did

you actually like my book? Or were you just saying that?”

She cracked another smile. “Your book was wonderful, Tyler. It was good before. It’s even better now. It’s extraordinary.

And Selma will sell it for you this autumn, or she will introduce you to somebody who can. She will honor your agreement.

You will have a fantastic career. That I’m sure of.”

I nodded. She walked back to her desk and exhaled.

“Everything you’ve experienced in this place,” she said, “has been real and true and worth remembering. I have only set the

scene. You wrote your own love story, you and Katie. All I did was move a few pieces into place.”

“So, Danny?”

“Real,” she said.

“The kiss cam?”

“Real,” she said.

“Katie’s building? The fire code violations?”

“Real,” she said. “Also, Maurice.”

“Pinot? My glasses? The storm? The night I kissed her?”

“Real. A little magic, sure. But real. And Katie was right. The tropes really do work.”

I chuckled almost, then inhaled carefully. The next string of words floated out of me—a surprise as I spoke them. “Will you

write me? If I sat in the corner and closed my eyes, would you write my thoughts? Would you read it to me as you type? I have

to see it for myself—see it from my own point of view.”

She nodded, taking a seat at her desk. Pinot assumed his position, a single paw at the ready. I slumped against the wall and

waited for the first click of a key.

“In this moment,” Meredith said, and a shiver ran through me. The words formed in my brain, loose and free and entirely mine,

and as the typewriter clacked, Meredith, a beat behind, recited each one. “I think I finally understand what had, from the

day I was born, drawn me to Katie. What had, time and time again, brought me back to her window. Back to the pink-gold glow

of her good and glittering heart . . .

“I am no longer convinced that I was born rotten, but at some point, I took a wrong turn. That much I know. And I thought

that once things started getting dark inside, everything else around me would turn dark too. That everyone else was going

to see how unlovable I was and give up on me. That everyone else would disappear. That they’d go—that they’d leave.

“But I was wrong because there she was. The whole time, there Katie was—so light, so kind, even in her suffering. And I couldn’t stand the way she shined.

I couldn’t stand that she’d been handed just as shitty a hand and came out so good.

I couldn’t stand the mirror she held up to me.

How short I fell every single time she laughed or looked at me or loved me.

I couldn’t stand the way she beamed. The way she lit up a room.

The way the muscles in my body softened when she said my name.

“And so I hurt her. I hurt her because I thought it might break me into enough pieces that she’d stay away for good. That

it might shatter the both of us enough that she’d finally see me for what I was. I hurt her because it was easy. I hurt her

because I wanted to punish myself. I hurt her because I knew that sorry was never going to be enough. That, to stick around,

I would’ve had to live with what I’d done every single second of every single day, and that had seemed impossible. That had

seemed like something I would’ve never survived.

“Because even this summer, even in the moments she was completely and totally mine, I’d truly believed the only way to give

Katie the love story she deserved was to turn back time.”

My words dried up. The typing stopped. I opened my eyes. Meredith stood in front of me, holding a charcoal-colored tuxedo.

In Pinot’s mouth, a strip of silk. A bow tie.

“It is not too late,” she said, “to tell her how you feel.”

I winced. “It is, though. We saw her arc. She’s going to be all right. She doesn’t need me anymore. She’s going to fall in

love again. She’s going to find someone better. She’s—”

“For God’s sake, Tyler. That girl loves you. She doesn’t want someone better. She wants you better! She loved you at your absolute worst. Can you imagine how much she’ll love you once you forgive yourself? When you

start loving her the way she deserves? When you start loving her all the way?”

“I . . .”

“You listen to me,” she said. “We all do terrible things in our lives. Very few of us pay the price. You and me—we paid dearly. We have suffered enough. But Michael, he loved you. He wanted you and Katie to be together.”

My eyes lifted. “He did?”

Meredith nodded. “He knew you were good, Tyler. I promise you this.”

I let out a bleat and put my head in my hands. I thought of Mikey—of all the things we’d left unsaid. Of the apology I’d never

had the chance to give him, and all the people he might’ve become. Of the way he made space for me like nobody else on this

planet could. Of all the ways our paths diverged and all the hits he’d taken for me once things went gray. Of the way he loved

Ingrid, the way he ate a whole carton of Sour Patch Kids before he pitched a game, and the way he’d never, ever loved me less

for what I’d done.

“Fuck,” I said. “I miss him so fucking much.”

“Go to her, Tyler. Make something of this mess. Make it mean something.”

“It’s too late,” I said. “You should’ve seen the look on her face this morning. I mean, you did. You were there. There’s no

coming back from that. She’s not going to forgive me again. She’s not going to give me another chance.”

Meredith sat down beside me, that tuxedo splayed out between us. She was flickering wildly—growing paler, more translucent

with every passing breath. Her eyes were filled with tears.

“I think,” she said, “you’re underestimating what a heart can do.”