The side door opened, and a breeze picked up the top few pages of one of Ollie’s piles. He reached out automatically with his left hand to keep it from creating more of a mess. “Close the door, please.”
“Uh…. Dad?”
The door closed. Ollie carefully collected the displaced papers and put them back where they belonged. “Hey, bud.”
“What are you doing?”
There was a careful silence behind him. Ollie could practically feel Ty weighing the same question.
Slowly, Ollie stood, dusting his hands on his pants. “I had the day off,” he told his kid. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look Ty in the eye yet. “So I thought I’d organize the office.”
The silence stretched a little longer. Finally Ty asked, “Into the hallway?”
Yeah, Ollie maybe deserved that. But when he glanced up, Ty didn’t seem angry, just bewildered.
Which was also fair. Now that Ollie had broken out of his fixation, he became aware of all kinds of muscle aches. His knees felt bruised. “Uh… well. I ran out of space.”
Ty picked his way through the various stacks and peered into the office. He said nothing. Ollie… kind of didn’t remember what it looked like in there right now. He was a little afraid to check.
After a few seconds, Ty backed out again, his expression carefully blank. “So you did.”
The back of Ollie’s neck felt weirdly hot. “Your dad, uh, wasn’t the most… organized. Toward the end.” Duh, that was why Eliza had originally hired Ollie to help. “It was kind of a mess in there.”
“As opposed to how it is now.” Ty nodded. His eyes were wide.
“Hey,” Ollie protested weakly. “There’s a method to my madness.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Ty paused as though searching for words. “Can we, maybe—move some of your madness to the dining room table so we don’t trip over all this going to the bathroom in the middle of the night?”
They didn’t use the dining room for anything anyway. “Okay, yes. Good idea. Uh.”
Ty was still looking at him like he might do something weird, like tap-dance or explode. He raised his eyebrows fractionally.
Fuck it. Ollie reached toward him. “I’m stuck, okay? Give me a hand to get up.”
The three of them made quick work of moving the piles. If Ty was curious about what was in them, he didn’t let on, and the lack of interest spread to Theo, who barely looked at them. Ollie, meanwhile, had taken all day to go through them for a reason. He kept getting drawn into Ty’s father’s weird business empire, trying to track the different ventures, what exactly the mandidfor a living. Owned things, it seemed like. A little light venture capitalism. Silent business partnering.
Ollie felt like Alice falling down a rabbit hole.
“Dad, I got the newPercy Jacksonat the school library today.”
Ollie raised his eyebrows. “There’s only three days of school left and they’re letting you take out books?”
“Mrs. Aster made an exception.” Theo gave him big, pleading puppy-dog eyes. “Can I go read now? I want to finish before I have to give it back.”
“Yes, go.” Like Ollie was going to say no to his kid reading on purpose.
When he’d gone, Ollie raised his eyebrows at Ty.
“I maybe suggested I could make sure he brought it back before the summer,” Ty admitted.
Theo was going to stay up too late trying to finish the book. That or he’d be reading at recess, during lunch, and in the car on the way to school. Maybe all of the above.
Ollie would have to be kind of a dick to be mad about that. “Special treatment from the teachers.” He smiled vaguely, hoping he was still allowed to tease. “The other kids are gonna think he’s a brown-noser.”
Ty rolled his eyes. “He’s been going home with one of the teachers for six weeks. I think that ship has sailed.”
“Ah… yeah. True.” And there was that awkwardness again. All Ollie’s fault, and he still had only half understood what was wrong with him, but he knew he owed Ty an apology. “Listen… I’m still working through some things. But I want to apologize.”
