But that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was when Ollie said back, “I spent the day crammed into an armored truck, so worried I was going to have a flashback that I tensed every muscle in my body.”
He hadn’t even tasted the wine yet. The VA should move their shrink headquarters into Ty’s kitchen.
For a second he worried he’d fucked it up, that Ty was going to get all sympathetic and ask too many follow-up questions until he ended up chasing Ollie out of the house. But Ty just said, “That sucks. I wonder if the old man kept the Jacuzzi heated,” and then turned around and scraped the onions into the saucepan.
Ollie blinked.
Ty didn’t turn away from the stove.
Ollie sipped the wine. He was right, it was good, but it certainly wasn’t strong enough to explain why he opened his mouth again after he swallowed it. “They’re making me carry a gun, which I get is the point of being an armored guard, but I kind of hate it. I’ve shot enough people. Money seems like a stupid reason to do it again.”
As acknowledgment, he got a “hmm,” and then Ty pulled out another frying pan and decanted a pound and a half of Italian sausage meat from its butcher paper. “So you don’t keep a gun at home?”
Ollie felt like he’d slipped into the Twilight Zone. “I have PTSD and an eight-year-old, so no.”
“Okay, good. Guns are a deal-breaker for me.”
A deal-breaker for what? Was this some kind of very strange first date? Ollie would’ve known if he were being asked on a date, right?
Right?
“I’ve seen too many gunshot patients,” Ty elaborated. The garlic went in with the onions. Suddenly Ollie was starving, bizarre conversation notwithstanding. “Especially young ones. I mean, one would’ve been too many, you know? It’s good that you’re smart about it. And open.”
I’m really not. You’re just kind of a human barbiturate.Finally Ollie said, “Is something on your mind, Ty?” because he was going to get a headache if he didn’t figure out which direction this conversation was going.
Yet another cooking vessel emerged from the cupboard, this one a deep pot. Ty filled it from one of those fancy pot-filler taps that Ollie had always secretly wanted in his kitchen one day, even though he didn’t cook. “I’m getting there, okay?”
Ollie took another sip of wine and figured he might as well relax on the barstool. “Okay.”
“Since we’re sharing and everything….” Ty dumped the sausage into the hot pan and Ollie’s stomach growled over the sizzle of cooking meat. “I told you I’m stuck here, right? Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Until I can sell this house, which won’t be for a while. Because my oh-so-well-prepared father didn’t put it on a transfer-on-death deed, I’m stuck living in it. I have to wait and make sure there are no creditors, which includes, like, the government. I hope the old man kept up the property taxes.”
Ollie didn’t even want to think about the property taxes on a house like this. “Me too.”
“I have an appointment with my lawyer and my dad’s accountant on Saturday.” He stabbed at the sausage to break it into smaller pieces. “There’s enough money in the accounts Icantouch to hire the best professionals to do most of the work, but it’s going to suck anyway.” Ty threw back half his glass of wine.
None of that made the eventual destination of this conversation any clearer, but Ollie decided to go with the flow. Ty was providing food and wine. Ollie could listen to him ramble. “You didn’t have a good relationship with your dad.”
With a soft huff, Ty scraped the tomatoes into the onion pan. “What gave it away?”
“Can I ask why?”
He froze, shoulders tensed; then he turned around and sat across from Ollie at the island. “It’s an ugly story.”
“I’ve heard a few of those.”I told you my kid’s mom died.
Ty spun his wineglass in his hands and peered into its depths. “My mom found out she had breast cancer when she was pregnant with me.”
Oh.“Fuck,” Ollie said. Cancer had almost taken his kid—it still could. He couldn’t imagine having to choose to save his partner or his child.
Ty quirked a sad smile. “Swear jar.” He shrugged. “Dad wanted her to terminate so she could do cancer treatment, said they could try again after she recovered. Mom wasn’t having it. She wanted to carry to term, so she did. Had me and went right into chemo followed by a double mastectomy, radical hysterectomy, reconstructive surgery….”
“So she beat it?” Ollie asked.
“She and Dad thought so. But then when I was eight, doctors found something suspicious on one of her lymph nodes. She fought it for years, but eventually it spread too far. She died when I was sixteen.” A thump as one of Ty’s feet slipped off the stool and smacked the side of the island. “Dad didn’t make it a secret that he thought it was my fault. If Mom had aborted me like he wanted, the cancer wouldn’t have gotten as strong of a foothold.”
The way he said that, it sounded like Ty believed it too. “There’s no way to know that.”
“My dad thought he knew everything.” He got up again and dumped the pasta into the now-boiling pot, stirred the sauce to break down the tomatoes, and poked again at the sausage. “He blamed me, I acted out like any kid whose mom had died, and he sent me off to boarding school rather than deal with me. The end.”
