“Lot of changes going around.” Ty drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as a sudden thought occurred to him. “Hey, do you and Theo have plans for dinner tonight?”
OLLIE NEVERexpected to be invited back to the Morris mansion, but Ty pointed out that he owed Ollie a meal, at the very least, after Olliehad helped him make it to his father’s funeral without reeking of booze. Ollie had spent all day in a tin box that felt a little too much like other tin boxes he’d been in, and the idea of facing a meal in public made him want to crawl out of his skin. If he dissociated in Ty’s kitchen, at least Theo would have someone to talk to.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked in the parking lot.
Ty’s cheeks flushed a surprisingly dark pink. “Uh. I actually have no idea what I was going to make. Why don’t we ask Theo what he wants, and we can all go shopping?”
Ollie didn’t know how he ended up agreeing to that, but somehow it wasn’t that bad, trailing his kid and Ty through the local supermarket as they picked up ingredients for a baked pasta—“with homemade sauce,” Ty promised—and fresh fruit and ice cream for dessert.
Theo kept up a steady stream of informational chatter about his first full day of third grade, which included even more frog facts and a play-by-play of every joke his new friend Hassan had told. Ollie didn’t get all of them and wasn’t sure if that was because he wasn’t eight years old, because Theo had mangled the punch lines, or because Ollie was just in the wrong headspace to pay attention. Still, he didn’t get lost at the grocery store, nobody interrupted Theo to thank Ollie for his service, and the ride in the Honda to the Morris estate was comfortable.
And then Ty was letting them in the front door to his ridiculous house… which looked nothing like the last time Ollie had been there despite the fact that the only thing he could pick out as different was the lack of curtains. Now the front room was filled with afternoon sunlight.
“Wow,” Ollie said. “You undecorated.”
“Yeah, the Addams Family vibes are cool but not really the way I want to live my life.” Ty had taken a few doors off their hinges too, so now they could all go right through to the kitchen. He hefted the paper bag of groceries onto the island counter and then turned around to face Theo. “Okay, buddy, I’m going to get started cooking, but first, do you want to be my sous chef, or do you want to see the games room?”
Theo’s eyes went wide. “You have agames room?”
“Do I have a games room.” Ty shook his head and popped the ice cream into the freezer. “Every creepy mansion has a games room. I’ll show you.”
Bemused, Ollie followed them on a brief tour down a hallway with actual painted portraits, where Ty pointed out a likeness of his great-auntClementine—“Dad said the song was written about her, but the old man was full of sh—uh, nonsense.” Then Ty led them to a broad enclosed sunroom at the back of the house.
“Not what I expected,” Ollie admitted.
“Yeah, you thought upscale billiards and snooker, right?”
“This is thecoolest,” Theo said.
Ollie had to admit it was pretty cool. The windows offered a panoramic view of the gardens, which were currently overgrown but in a kind of endearing way. There were beat-up sofas against one wall, interspersed with ancient arcade games like pinball andPac-Man. A bookshelf crammed with books and board games stood in one corner next to a poker table that would seat eight. Instead of a pool table, there was Ping-Pong.
“Dad, Dad, can I play pinball?”
Ollie looked at Ty, who raised his eyebrows as if to say,What, you thought I’d ask your kid if he wanted to look but not play?Which was a fair point. “Sure. Just holler if you get lost on your way back from the bathroom, okay? I’m gonna help Ty in the kitchen.”
Translation: He was going to hide from arcade-game noises.
“Okay.”
Ollie followed Ty back down the hallway.
“Thanks again for inviting us,” Ollie said when they returned to the kitchen. “You really didn’t have to.”
“Look, I’m gonna admit up front my motives aren’t purely selfless.” He took down a cutting board, pulled a knife from a block, and started to chop onions. “I definitely owed you one. But also….” He set down the knife and gestured around him. “I hate rattling around in this place by myself.”
“I get it.” It had taken Ollie a while to adjust to living in Allison’s apartment in DC and not on base. Sometimes it got so quiet it seemed like the rest of the world had stopped existing, and it freaked him out. He had to open the window so he could hear traffic in the distance. “Uh, can I help with anything?”
Ty hummed noncommittally. “You drink wine?”
Ollie preferred beer, but he wouldn’t say no. “Sure.”
He uncorked a bottle of red and took out a heavy saucepan, which he doused liberally in olive oil and slid onto the stove. “It’s not my beverage of choice, but I need some for the sauce anyway, so….” He took down two glasses and poured generously.
Then he looked up, and Ollie met suddenly serious blue eyes as Ty handed his glass over. “Uh, feel free to tell me if I’m overstepping here, but… you look like you could use a drink. And I’ll add the asterisk ‘but alcohol is a shitty coping mechanism’ because I’m a medical professional and I’m an atheist, so I’m not worried about God smiting me for being a hypocrite.”
Snorting, Ollie took the glass. He didn’t know much about wine, but this one smelled good. “You’re not wrong on either count. I’ll stick to the one glass anyway, since I’m driving.” And in charge of a kid.
Ty nodded and went back to his chopping—tomatoes this time, then garlic, which he smashed with the flat of the knife. “You can talk about it if you want,” he offered, like that was a totally normal thing to say to someone.
