New Birds

Legacy Part 5

Tilly pushed open the screen door and watched the big vehicle with its bumper sticker, "Better Living through Denial" approach the farmhouse. It seemed like another lifetime when Keitin had spotted the yellowing sticker in a box of such stickers in an old-world flea market. She might have been seventeen. The absurdity of its truth became their catch phrase for a while, especially when she would accompany him down into Calgary to purchase some item, which her father requested, from the militants.

Now, she had to wonder if this earlier aversion she and Keitin had once shared had been more optics on his part, for he blatantly had no qualms anymore, asking her to side with all manner of unscrupulousness in order for her to keep her mountaintop. As she ran her hand along the veranda's railing and down its steps, the wood of which had weathered an ash grey, she tried to rid herself of the mood Louis had left her in. She didn't want to address any new concerns her lawyer might have in her current mood.

Keitin's hair, although he still had a full head of it for his seventy-nine years, was as grey as hers. He had also gained another layer of chin within the last year. A small lava field of flesh which stopped at the collar of his shirt. A sign of prosperity. He smiled at Tilly as he came around to open the rear car door, pulling out, first, his father's motorized wheelchair and then his fragile father, roughly placing him in the chair. It wasn't until Keitin reached back into the car for the oxygen tank that he released his father 's paper-like cheeks from the taunt stretch of the nasal prongs and its tubing.

Hal hadn't so much as blinked over this mistreatment. These days, one either died far too young or stuck around forever. It seemed to Tilly anyway, and Hal, at a hundred and forty-two years old, was the latter, minus his occasional shut down. His current catatonic state was now in its fourth month.

As Keitin placed the oxygen tank in the holder, Hal stared at her through a fine sheen of cataracts, with the same pissed off expression he carried ever since he went catatonic. Unlike the Tuckers before her, Tilly had often ignored this man's council in favour of his son's, even though Keitin was never half as clever as his father. Which most likely contributed to the mess she was now in.

Tilly gave Hal a gentle but quick hug before stepping back a full arm's length. A reflex from when she was much younger, when he would pull her to him, holding her tighter and longer than what was necessary. She was barely fourteen when quietly introduced to that side of him and all of seventeen before she realized she wasn't required, out of any sense of decorum, to subject herself to this old bastard's hugs and hand placements. Perhaps, if she had brought this to the attention of her father, Hal wouldn't have become her advisor and trustee, which according to her father's last will and testimony, was not to be contested, including, apparently, by her. Looking back, her naivety at eighteen was a thing of wonder, but over these years, however, she spotted some wisdom in her father's decision, especially when Hal would step in to squash some bureaucratic agenda that might have harmed her mountain.

And although Hal had never offered her an apology for his behaviour or even any true acknowledgement, he had been astutely aware of her continued unease around him, and at times she had spotted a glimmer of regret in his features. It wasn't quite enough, and she never got around to ever liking him, but it was still difficult seeing this brilliant man now in the roughshod hands of his son. Not that a small part of her, who remembered well his lecherous side, didn't feel he had a little of it due.

"How are you, Hal?" she asked.

"He's fine. Enjoying every moment of being a thorn in my side," Keitin answered. "I wouldn't have brought him with me, except Tyler, hasn't returned yet from sitting with his forever dying aunt."

Tilly followed them to the side entrance, where it was accessible to Hal. Once inside, Keitin sat down at the table and pulled out some folded papers from his shirt pocket.