He propped the door open with an unnecessarily ornate—and heavy—flower pot and jogged down the steps to the car. Theo opened his door just as Ollie got there. “Hey, buddy,” Ollie said. “Small change of plans.”
Theo hopped out, pushed his glasses up his nose, and shut the door with both hands. He’d gotten steadier on his feet in the past couple weeks, and he was starting to put on some muscle again. This kid filled Ollie with so much relief and pride he didn’t know whether to explode or melt into a puddle.
“Okay,” Theo said. “What’s the new plan?”
“Breakfast.”
Theo squinted up at him. “But we had breakfast at the motel.”
Exactly right, and why Ollie wasn’t too worried about getting food poisoning from a guy who’d forgotten to put pants on this morning. They could just skip the food part. “You’re right, so you don’t have to eat anything if you don’t want to. But the man I’m supposed to take care of isn’t here anymore”—Ollie swerved around the D-word and crossed his fingers Theo didn’t notice—“so we’re going to go inside and talk to my new friend for a little bit and figure out what to do next.”
Like find an apartment and a job. Totally doable with an eight-year-old in tow. Piece of cake.
Ollie made himself walk up the steps behind Theo. The kid was still recovering from chemo, and Ollie didn’t want any broken bones, but he also didn’t want Theo to grow up feeling like he couldn’t do anything without his dad hovering.
For the time being, Ollie was doing his best at hovering unobtrusively when Theo’s back was turned, but sooner or later the kid was going to figure it out, and then…. Ollie didn’t know what then. He’d burn that bridge when he got there.
“Does this mean we’re not going to live here?” Theo asked as they got to the top step. “Because this place iscool, Dad.”
This place is creepy as hell, Ollie thought,and I’ve flown helicopters in active combat.Which was part of why no one could catch him hovering—one helicopter-dad joke and he’d be toast.
“Sorry, buddy,” he said out loud. “I don’t think so. But it sure is… interesting.”
The place—housesimply did not apply—was enormous. Cavernous, even. Maybe that was why it felt so cold. The front room had twenty-foot ceilings and an entire wall of windows, but the curtains had been drawn halfway and no one had cleaned the glass at the top in maybe a decade, so it was dark too. The furniture looked like it had come out of a period piece, or an antique catalog, or a horror movie set.
Ollie wasn’t even Catholic, and he was still fighting the urge to cross himself.
An antique globe in an old-fashioned wood stand sat next to an armchair. Theo spun it, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Ollie sneezed.
“Where do you think the kitchen is?” Theo asked.
That was a great question. Obviously this place had been built beforeopen conceptwas even a twinkle in an architect’s eye. Ollie surveyed the sides of the room, where heavy oak doors were interspersed with equally heavy dark wood paneling—but none of the doors were moving, so there was no way to tell where their host had gone.
Not that he’d gone to the kitchen, probably. Unless he kept his pants there. You never knew with some people.
“I have no idea,” Ollie said after a moment. “Maybe we’ll just wait here for, uh—”The guy with no name.
God, he had to be crazy. Bad enough that he’d gotten himself into this situation, but he’d dragged Theo into it with him. If they got ax murdered this was totally on him.
Ollie was just about to let his common sense override whatever misguided softhearted dumbassery had lured him in here when one ofthe doors swung open and Boxers Man came back in, this time dressed in fleece pajama pants with smiley-face emojis and a blue T-shirt with PARAMEDIC written on it.
Or, actually, the shirt said CIDEMARAP, because he’d put it on inside-out. Even if this guy intended to brutally ax-murder them, Ollie was pretty sure he wasn’t capable of pulling it off at the moment.
“Oh God, you’re really not a hallucination, are you?” the guy said. Ollie couldn’t tell if he was relieved or mortified.
Ollie looked down at himself. “Not the last time I checked. But it’s pretty early in the morning for philosophical debate.”
The ghost of a smile flickered across Smiley-Pants-Man’s face.
Which reminded Ollie—”Uh, this is my son, Theo.” Who was drawing smiley faces that matched the guy’s pants in the dust on the globe stand. “Theo, this is….”
“Ty,” the guy said, stepping forward. Ollie would’ve debated about shaking hands when he didn’t know where this guy had been, but instinct took over. Fortunately he wasn’t sticky. “Uh, Tyler. Morris. In case you didn’t grasp the subtext, this is—was—my dad’s place.”
Theo shook hands too, because Ollie might be new at full-time parenting but he’d managed to get that far.
But he was still eight years old, so he followed the handshake with, “Do you have a dungeon?”
