Then he turned toward the front of the restaurant and put on a smile for his kid. No reason for Theo to get dragged into this. “You ready to go, bud? I was thinking we’d go find a sports store, pick up a baseball bat—”
“Yeah!” Theo whooped. Ollie’s mother looked like she’d bitten a rotten lemon. “Can we go right now?”
“Right now.” Ollie kissed the top of his head.
And then, because if he was going to be an asshole, he might as well be a useful asshole, he added, “Oh, hey, Mrs. Robinson—I think Ty here is waiting for a pickup order.”
As he strolled out into the spring sunshine, he could feel the eyes of the whole town on his back, but he was starting to think maybe he only cared about the startled blue pair that lived down the hall from him.
Chapter 10
TY DIDN’Thave time to drive around aimlessly—there were a limited number of hours in the day, and he still had to do laundry—but he couldn’t stomach the idea of going home yet, so he drove to the park and sat alone at a picnic table to eat his sad takeout sandwich. Mrs. Robinson had let it sit in the pickup area so long it had gotten soggy. He understood why she hated him—Tyler Morris, offender of church ladies everywhere—but he thought at least half of it was misplaced anger.
No point in trying to tell someone to stop carrying a grudge they’d held on to for sixteen years. If she hadn’t gotten over it on her own by now, nothing Ty could say would change that.
At least his milkshake was still delicious, even if it had half melted. On the other hand, no brain freeze.
But eventually his puttering had to end. He drove home and shoved a load of laundry into the washing machine, went over his outlines for the next two days’ lessons, and then sat down in front of his laptop to write an email.
He’d managed to squeeze in half an hour with the fire captain in Holton. Originally he’d only planned to go out there to see if they had any professional education he could sit in on, because their website was broken as fuck and nobody had their direct phone line posted anywhere these days. But instead he got sucked in as Gina lamented the state of the district’s EMS services.
“That village you live in might have been small fifteen years ago, but its population has doubled in the past five years. And it’s the same with three of the other villages we share services with.” Ty didn’t know how old she was, but she looked like she was aging as fast as the population was growing. “We’ve already started losing people because we can’t be everywhere at once.”
“That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Oh, it gets better.” She put her head in her hands and rubbed her face. “Two of the villages in our district petitioned to start their own departments, but they can’t because technically theyhavean ‘established fire department.’”
“So either the district boundaries have to be redrawn or any new station has to be a substation of this department.”
“And building substations is expensive. All new sets of equipment, including the engines, ladders, and ambulances. Why not try hiring more people and see if that works? And let’s forget about the fact that we still have to transport them to the emergency.”
Ty whistled under his breath. “Don’t you just love red tape?”
“I’d love to drive the engine through it,” Gina muttered direly. “But anyway, to answer your question—no, we don’t have any professional development activities coming up I could invite you to. Because we literally don’t have time to organize something like that.” She blinked. “Hey, wait, you don’t want to organize something, do you?”
At that point Ty made his excuses and scrambled out of the station before he could get press-ganged into service.
But now, well…. Ty might not live in this town anymore, but other people did—people like Ollie and Theo and Henry and Eliza and Peggy. And even the people Ty didn’t like still deserved prompt access to emergency services so they didn’t die or lose their homes. Part of being a first responder was spotting problems before they turned into catastrophes, and this one was on the fast track.
So he planned to write an email to the town council as a “concerned citizen.” He figured he technically was paying taxes here, so his opinion should count. But he hadn’t expected to look at the council roster and see Mr. Chiu sitting on the board—and what the hell did that guy need a councilor’s salary for? Writing the email now felt pointless, because Chiu was an asshole and would ensure anything Ty said got dismissed because Ty said it. But he wrote it anyway and sent it. Then he put serious thought into whether the wall between the kitchen and the living room was load-bearing and if he remembered where his dad kept the sledgehammer.
It was probably for the best that he heard the crack of a bat from outside and found a better outlet for his feelings. He slipped on his shoes and walked out the back door of the games room.
If Ty’s childhood had looked like this….
Butit hadn’t.
Ty must’ve missed the lesson on holding the bat and how to swing, because Ollie was pitching now, slow underhand tosses. They were using softballs rather than baseballs, and Ollie had a whole clutch of them at his feet. There was another collection behind Theo, and a few more lying in the grass at various intervals.
“Okay, now try choking up on the bat a little bit. Just like that, good. You ready?”
Theo adjusted his hat—a new one Ty hadn’t seen before—his grip, and his stance. Kid was practically ready for the pros. “Ready!”
Ty cheered when he hit a solid line drive back at Ollie. “Nice hit, Theo!”
Ollie jumped out of the way to avoid a straight shot to his nuts. “We’re gonna work on your aim, though,” he added ruefully.
Theo was giggling even as he accepted Ty’s high-five. “Sorry, Dad.”
