The Choice of Twilight

Chapter 2: The Man With The Toy Store

Heart attack, the doctors said. No previous history of them, no symptoms, he was in perfect shape for a man in his seventies. It came out of nowhere, not even waking him up. 

There was no reason for him to be gone. No reason at all. 

# 

A few days later, Ty found himself in a church. Rain hammered the roof so loud he could hardly make out what the speaker was talking about. Then again, he couldn't focus on much of anything. He wasn't even sure what the service was-a memorial or the funeral itself? 

The amount of people around him-that he was aware of. There was not an empty seat left in the whole chapel, even more people forced to stand against the walls, in the aisle. He had never seen a church so packed before, all gathered not for God, but a single man. 

For Ty, that did not surprise him; his grandfather was the greatest person he had ever known. He was kind and caring, always ready to do everything in his power to help someone in need. Full of joy and jokes, the kind of man that everyone he met fell in love with before he even opened his mouth.  

By many measurements of success, his grandfather was a failure. He was not a businessman or a politician. He wasn't rich or (despite the crowd) known nation wide. He would not show up in a history book-heck, his death wouldn't even make the local news. He was only a man. 

A man who ran a toy store.  

# 

A few blocks from Ty's neighborhood is their downtown area, little more than a rundown assortment of shops and businesses. Not a lively place, no artists or college students. About the only thing it had going for it was the 0% chance of your place getting shot up or robbed-too boring to even attract criminals.  

In the middle of this depressing sight, squished between a bank and a laundromat, was his grandfather's toy store. His fellow business owners hated him and his store with a passion. Painted in bright, cheery colors, his one building was a blotch on their perfect gray world. 

Even though it was noticeable and interesting, not many people got close enough to downtown to see it. His grandpa made no effort to advertise either, resulting in an obscure store that by all rights shouldn't have been able to draw in enough customers to stay in business.  

Ty asked him once why he was all right with keeping the store so hidden, to which he replied, "Because the people who need to find it, will." 

And they did. Somehow, no matter how bad it looked, the store would bring in enough money month by month to keep them going. Without fail, at least one person would come into the store every day. If that wasn't strange enough, most of them weren't even residents of their town; people from all over the country have wound up in the tiny toy store.  

His grandfather asked them how they found him, and they all had the same story: they didn't know. No one decided one day that they were going on a thousand mile road trip to find a hidden toy store-it just happened. By a series of random events, they were brought to Ty's town and drawn to the store soon after. 

Why? Ty had no answer. He loved the toy store, but he knew that a lot of other kids would find it boring and old. There were no superhero figures, no famous cartoon characters, no trading cards-any popular toy that had a TV commercial was guaranteed not to be on his grandpa's shelves. Instead, there were stuffed animals, train sets, yo-yos, wooden animals, vehicles, monsters, anything you could imagine being built without needing to be mass produced in a factory.  

They may not have been flashy, but they each had personality. Everything that he sold his grandfather made by hand. No matter how small the toy, he poured love and care into every detail. He worked harder than anyone Ty had ever seen, making only enough money to keep living.