Homecoming for Beginners

Chapter 10

TY DIDN’T have 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 they have an ‘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….

But it 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.”

“You want in?” Ollie gestured to Ty. “We’ve got room for a catcher… or a fielder… or a medic.”

Theo laughed again.

Did Ty want in?

“Absolutely. Let me see if I can find my glove.” He hoped his dad hadn’t thrown it away.

THE WHOLE first week living with Ollie and Theo, Ty had been on alert for disaster. It seemed like so much could go wrong. What if Theo turned out to hate him, or one of them used up all the hot water in the morning, or they didn’t like the same food? What if they somehow managed to step on each other’s toes in his dad’s rambling mansion? What if Ty had forgotten how to live with other people in his space?

And those were only the rational worries. That didn’t count things like What if I run into Ollie when he’s just gotten out of the shower and he’s wet and only wearing a towel , which happened to him on that first Wednesday morning. The rest of the thought went and I can’t stop staring or drooling and it makes Ollie so uncomfortable he moves out and I never see him or Theo again , which didn’t happen because despite what Ty’s father might have said on the subject, Ty did actually have both self-control and self-respect.

Did he also now have the image of Ollie’s muscular chest and shoulders seared into his memory for eternity? Of course, but Ty was a goddamned adult and he could deal with it .

Anyway, the point was, after that first week, it got… easy. Ollie frequently still looked so good Ty thought he was hallucinating—he spent a lot of time outdoors and that agreed with him in a way Ty couldn’t articulate—but it didn’t take long for that to become the least interesting thing about him. He read Theo bedtime stories (insisting even when Theo claimed, unconvincingly, that he was too old) and did the dishes and cut the grass and yelled at the TV when the Mets were losing, which was frequently. Three of them in the house and none of them could pick a winning baseball team. Someone should figure out the odds on that.

They folded laundry together and ate together and hung out together, and it took no time at all for Ollie to go from that hot guy I live with to the best friend I’ve ever had .

And that didn’t even make sense. Ty worked ridiculous hours in a high-pressure job that basically forced you to make a surrogate family out of your coworkers because you were going to see them more than you saw your actual family. And sure, he missed his team back in Chicago—Stacey with her wry advice, the rookie’s every-other-f-bomb way of speaking, Jordan and his city-slicker homesteading and his homemade bread-and-butter pickles.

Ty had never been tempted to tell any of them about his childhood, beyond I don’t really talk to my dad. It’s complicated. With Ollie it was like he could hardly keep it from bursting out of him, like someone had filleted him open and sewed him up, but the stitches wouldn’t hold, and he just kept spilling his guts.

The thing was, he’d started to suspect his guts were poisoned, because every time he did it, he felt a little better after.

Maybe when he went back to Chicago, he could open up a little more with his team. It would be nice to have that kind of unguarded, honest relationship with them that they had with each other—to have people know he was available to babysit, and have someone he could ask to water his plants when he went out of town. This time Ty had brought all his herb pots to the station, figuring they’d get used even if they weren’t alive when he got back.

He had to hold on to the idea that he could recreate what he had now in a different setting. He liked working with kids—they kept him on his toes, they made him laugh, they made him think about things differently—but what Ty really needed, what every therapist he’d ever seen had told him, was to be needed , and the kids didn’t. They’d be fine, or better off, in a real teacher’s hands. Real teachers knew what they were doing. Ty was a glorified babysitter, and he was okay with that temporarily, but he was his best self when he could step into someone else’s crisis.

He missed being that version of himself, but he knew he couldn’t do it here. Ty needed the trust and confidence of the people around him. He couldn’t exist in a place where he’d always be his father’s fuckup.

Which was too bad, because this town could use an experienced paramedic or six.

All this was buzzing around in the background of his brain one day near the end of April. Baseball practice had been rained out, so Ty had taken Theo with him to get a few groceries instead, figuring he had the extra time, so he’d make something special.

“Do you know what your dad’s favorite dinner is?” he asked as they picked up a cart. Ollie’d been getting home later and later, the new job obviously not what he’d been expecting. It was wearing him down, and Ty wanted to cheer him up. “Something he used to order in restaurants, maybe?”

This town didn’t have a whole lot of dining options—definitely not compared to what Theo and Ollie would’ve been used to in DC.

“He used to get buggy beef.”

Well, Ty wasn’t making that . “Do you know what kind of restaurant it came from? What did you order, when he got that?”

“Pad thai.”

Okay, so some kind of Asian restaurant, probably. “ Bulgogi beef?” Ty asked.

Theo’s face brightened. “Yeah! That’s it.”

“Okay.” Ty steered the cart toward the produce section. “I can make that.”

Buggy beef. He shook his head. Kids were hilarious.

This early in the afternoon, the grocery store patrons were mostly older folks—people his parents’ age or older. Ty caught Eliza’s eye from an aisle over and waved; she waved back with a smile and then rolled her eyes when she noticed Mrs. Sanford giving him the gimlet.

That would’ve made grocery shopping at this time uncomfortable, but Theo provided a good buffer. Nobody wanted to outright be a jerk to someone hanging out with a kid—especially hometown hero Ollie Kent’s kid .

Theo did not protect Ty from the awkwardness of running into Jake Robinson, but Ty didn’t think anything could save you from the mortification of meeting someone who’d been caught with your dick in his mouth behind the school bleachers. A piece of you would die inside and that’d be it.

At least the encounter seemed to mortify Jake too. Ty nodded at him as they passed in front of the pears. “Jake.”

Jake cleared his throat and pointedly kept his gaze ahead, like he couldn’t be caught speaking to Ty in public. “Morris. Cute kid.”

“Thanks. I’m just borrowing him, though.”

Even that short of an exchange would probably have the church ladies buzzing. Jake probably knew it too, from the wry smile he managed when their eyes accidentally locked for a second.

Small towns. What were you gonna do, really?

Ty was pretending to consult Theo on which cut of beef to buy when someone shouted for help.

Ty knew a medical emergency tone when he heard one. Instinct kicked in and sent him running toward the shout—and then he remembered Theo.

Theo, who’d lost his mother a few short months ago. Who’d been in a hospital for too much of his life. Who didn’t need to see whatever Ty was running to.

Who had been entrusted to Ty’s care.

Then he saw Eliza beelining toward him down the main aisle and sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the god of first responders. He met her eye and she nodded. “Theo, hey, have you met my friend Eliza? She knew your dad when he was your age.”

“And even younger,” Eliza agreed, holding out her hand to shake.

Ty knelt so he could be on Theo’s eye level. “Okay, buddy, you know I’m a paramedic, right?”

Theo nodded.

“Someone in the store needs help, and I need to go to them. I need you to stay with Eliza, okay? She’s a good friend of mine, she’ll take good care of you.”

Somehow he managed to wait for Theo’s confirmation before he sprang to his feet and booked it down the cereal aisle.

The bystander effect was in full force in front of the Cheerios. Two people in store polos were standing together, both with their phones out, neither dialing. A woman lay on the floor, unmoving, blood pooling on the floor near the edge of a pallet. She must’ve hit her head when she fell.

Ty was already jerking off his jacket as he got next to her on the floor. He looked up long enough to point. “You”—store employee on the left—“call 911, give them the store’s address, and tell them we’ve got a….” He glanced down. Fuck, that was Mrs. Sanford. “Woman in her midsixties, head trauma, possible spinal injury.” He pressed his fingers to her neck. No detectable pulse, so either her heart had stopped or she was tachycardic, and it was racing so fast it couldn’t pump enough blood. Based on the fact that she didn’t seem to be actively bleeding, he was betting on the former. “Possible cardiac arrest. Breathing is shallow.” He started chest compressions.

The store employee Ty had given instruction took a few steps back to make the call.

Ty looked at the other employee, who was wearing a manager name tag that read Christie. “Christie, does this store have an AED? A defibrillator?”

Christie snapped out of her dazed staring at Mrs. Sanford and met Ty’s eyes. “Uh, yeah, we—in the break room—”

“Go get it and the first-aid kit now. Hurry.”

Even as he told her, he doubted it would be enough. Mrs. Sanford’s sternum cracked under his hands.

“Does this store have a pharmacy?”

Phone Guy shook his head.

Ty didn’t think so. “Does anyone know this woman? Does she have any medical conditions?”

The growing crowd of bystanders only looked at each other, shaking their heads.

But Ty recognized one of them, and—well, he’d make do. “Jake, I need you to pick up her purse and open it. Go through it, see if there are any medications in there. Nitroglycerin would be great, but anything you find, let me know. Meanwhile if anyone here has aspirin…?”

“I have Advil,” offered a woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty as Jake dumped the contents of Mrs. Sanford’s handbag on the floor.

Ty stopped CPR long enough to check for a pulse. Nothing detectable. He laced his fingers back together and resumed. “No, if it’s a heart attack, that’ll make it worse. Run to the frozen food section and get me a couple bags of frozen vegetables. Peas would be best but whatever you find, be fast.” On the slim chance she was tachycardic, cooling her down could help slow her heart rate, maybe give her heart a chance to recover and start pumping more normally. “I need the ETA on that ambulance!”

“They’re saying ten minutes.”

Jesus Christ . “Tell them to drive faster.”

“Jake, anything in the purse?”

“No, nothing! Sorry!”

Christie and Frozen Peas arrived at about the same time. Ty didn’t stop compressions, just directed the young woman to put the peas along the side of Mrs. Sanford’s face and under one armpit.

“Christie, you know how to use that thing?”

“Um, um, we had a training session on it last year—”

One she wouldn’t remember while she was panicking. Ty walked her through it so he didn’t have to stop until he had to pull his hands away to cut Mrs. Sanford’s shirt open.

God, if she survived this, she would probably send him a bill for it.

The pads went on. How long had it been now since her heart had stopped pumping? Three minutes?

The AED recommended a shock. “Come on, Mrs. Sanford,” Ty muttered. I know you have something to say about how I ripped your shirt off in the grocery store. “Everybody get back— clear !”

Her body arced as electricity raced through it.

The AED did not detect a pulse.

Ty swore and went back to compressions. Ten, twenty, thirty. No pulse. Time to shock her again. “Clear!”

When the on-duty paramedics finally arrived, Ty had sweated through his T-shirt from the effort of the compressions and the pool of blood had stopped spreading.

He gave them a rundown of the interventions he’d tried and let them take over, but by that time they all knew it was a lost cause.

The ambulance didn’t run the siren as it pulled out of the parking lot.

The crowd dispersed.

Ty heaved a long breath and fought the urge to wipe the sweat off his forehead. He had blood on his hands and soaked into the knees of his pants. At least he was wearing dark-wash jeans today .

“Um,” said Christie, who was the only other person left in front of the Cheerios, “we have a staff washroom in the back, if you want to wash up.”

With a little luck, he could get there before Theo saw him. “I would really appreciate that.”

He texted Eliza as soon as his hands were clean, and she brought Theo to the back of the store to meet him as he emerged, as presentable as he could make himself.

“Thank you,” he told Eliza feelingly, “for looking after him while I—”

To his utter shock, she cut him off by pulling him into a hug.

For a second Ty didn’t remember what to do with his hands. Then, after a moment, he folded them around her. “My clothes are kind of—”

“Shut up and hug me, Ty.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After a moment she pulled away and patted his cheek. “You’re a good boy. And so’s this one.” She put her hand on Theo’s shoulder. “Though between you and me, I think he deserves some ice cream.”

Ty cracked a smile. “Well, that makes two of us.”

“Two who deserve ice cream?” Theo said. “Or two people who think I deserve ice cream? ’Cause that’s actually three.”

“All right, all right.” Ty smiled at Eliza and steered Theo to the frozen section—the long way, so they could stay far out of sight of the war zone in the cereal aisle. “New plan. What about frozen pizza and ice cream for dinner?”

“And we can do bulgogi tomorrow?”

Tomorrow they had a baseball game. Ty was pretty sure the meat had to marinate for a while, and he’d lost his enthusiasm for grocery shopping. “Maybe Thursday.”

He got them both home and set Theo up with his homework in the games room while Ty went to have a very fast breakdown in the shower.

Theo hadn’t asked him any questions, at least not about what Ty had been doing. Based on his level of calm, Ty would bet he didn’t know a woman had died in the store today. He did ask why Eliza wasn’t still Ollie’s aunt, or how that worked, which Ty admitted ignorance to. He didn’t have any personal experience with relatives beyond parents. If he had to guess, it had more to do with Ollie’s family not having moved to town until after his uncle was dead than anything .

But just because he hadn’t asked this afternoon didn’t mean he wouldn’t ask. News was bound to get out. Sooner or later Ty was going to have to explain—

Fuck. He needed to text Ollie.

He closed the toilet lid and sat down as he pulled out his phone. Where did he even start with that? Hey, remember how you trusted me to look after your kid? Well today he almost got to watch someone die because of me.

But it was a small town and gossip traveled fast. Ollie needed to hear it from Ty before he heard it from anyone else. A lady had a heart attack while Theo and I were at the grocery store today. I asked Eliza to look after him so I could go do CPR. I don’t think he saw anything but I wanted you to know.

There. Now he could sit here on the toilet with his guts churning while he waited for Ollie to text him back and tell him he had fucked up and they were moving out and he was going to be alone again.

Ty’s hands shook. Dealing with a death on the job was easier. The uniform let him keep some distance between Ty and Paramedic Morris. Not that he hadn’t done first aid while off duty before, but he’d never done it in his hometown.

He’d never lost a patient while a kid he was looking after was within spitting distance.

He felt like he might puke.

Finally the phone vibrated. Oh my God. Is she ok? Are you ok? Is Theo ok?

Ty blinked suddenly stinging eyes. Ollie wasn’t mad at him—yet.

Mrs. Sanford didn’t make it. I’m fine. That much was, if not exactly true, then only a little white lie. I don’t think Theo knows she died. But he would find out, if not at school tomorrow, then probably sometime this week.

I’m really sorry. I know he’s been asking a lot of questions about death since his mom passed. I hope this isn’t triggering for him.

His hands were still shaking when Ollie’s reply came through. Like you said, he doesn’t know yet. But even when he finds out, it was going to happen sooner or later. People die. Then, before Ty could think of another way to frame this mess as his fault, You were doing a good thing. Theo will understand.

Something inside Ty unclenched. Okay, so Ollie really wasn’t mad. Good. That was—good. I hope so , Ty wrote back, and then he turned the shower heat up as high as he could stand and tried to melt the guilt from his shoulders.

He’d done everything he could. Right? Mrs. Sanford had been bleeding from a head wound on top of her cardiac event. He couldn’t have done anything else to save her. He only had one pair of hands. Maybe if he’d gotten the aspirin from the store’s first-aid kit, if he’d crushed that up and gotten it into her system—

Had he not done it because she treated him horribly?

No. He wouldn’t have let her die. He’d done everything he could. Some people couldn’t be saved.

The patch of dried blood on his thigh turned pink and washed down the drain. He willed his guilt to go with it. It didn’t work, but it was worth a shot.

He got out of the shower and put the clothes he’d been wearing in a garbage bag. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford new ones, and he didn’t want to deal with the bloodstains. He didn’t want to look at the evidence. He’d never wear them again even if by some miracle it did all come out.

Then he dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt and took the garbage bag out to the garage. Not that he thought Theo might go through the garbage or something, but… just in case.

But something was weird when he returned to the house.

“Theo?”

There was a decisive snap from the games room, followed by the sound he’d heard before—a stifled hiccup of a noise, all the more distinctive for the fact that Ty hadn’t heard it in years.

The unmistakable sound of a boy trying to hide his tears.

Had Theo found out what had happened? Had he been crying the whole time Ty was in the shower. “Theo, are you—”

He stepped into the games room to see Theo holding an iPad to his chest, the cover closed tightly over it. The source of the snapping noise, no doubt. Theo’s eyes were red-rimmed, his cheeks streaked with tear tracks, even if his skin was dry now.

“Hey,” Ty said gently, feeling awkward and out of his depth. But he couldn’t leave Theo alone. He pulled out the chair next to Theo at the poker table and folded himself into it. “Is, uh, is everything okay?”

Theo’s chin crumpled as he curled his lips inward, biting down on more tears or whatever words he wanted to say .

“It’s okay,” Ty backpedaled. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d known this kid for two weeks. Theo wasn’t going to just spill his guts—

“Do you ever miss your dad?”

Or, okay, he was totally going to spill his guts and Ty was going to have to find a way to navigate that conversational minefield.

Really, he should’ve seen this coming. Theo had lost his mother. A kid didn’t simply get over that. And he knew Ty had just lost a parent too. Of course he wanted to talk about it with someone who’d been through the same thing.

Ty wanted to answer his questions in a way that felt sensitive and helped him process his grief, but he didn’t want to lie. “It’s complicated, for me.”

Theo put the iPad on the table. “How come?”

Loaded question. Ty let out a slow breath and considered his phrasing. “You know how your dad plays baseball with you, and reads you stories, and eats dinner with you every night?”

Theo nodded.

“Well, my dad—he wasn’t like that. We didn’t spend a lot of time together, even before my mom died. But then she did, and….” He pursed his lips. He didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, even if his father deserved it. He didn’t want to do that in front of Theo, who was looking for someone to relate to. And so instead he admitted out loud, for the first time, something he’d always suspected, and gave his father the grace no one had ever given Ty. “I think every time he looked at me, he saw my mom, and that hurt him because he missed her.”

With a heavy sniff, Theo looked around and—yeah, okay, Kleenex, they needed Kleenex before that snot trail made its way to his mouth and Ty gagged. He used his long reach to snatch the box off the top of the bookcase and offered it.

Theo blew his nose with the volume of a foghorn, because he was eight years old. Right. Ty needed to refocus this conversation. This was about Theo’s grief, not his. “But it’s okay if you miss your mom. Everybody—everybody experiences grief differently.”

Theo swiped his eyes with the snotty Kleenex. Ty fought down a twitch. “Miss Eliza said she likes to talk with Uncle David’s family ’cause they knew him too, and it helps her feel like part of him is still here. But nobody here knew my mom. And it makes me mad, because I’m—because they have that and I don’t. ”

Oh, kid. Ty’s battered heart tried to break again. “Your dad knew her,” he pointed out gently. “You know he’d talk to you about her if you wanted. I know that they weren’t together , but they were friends. He loved her. He misses her too.” And if Ty knew anything about Ollie, it was that he’d walk through fire for his kid.

Theo ducked his head and dropped the Kleenex on the table. Ty took the opportunity to whisk it out of reach before Theo could give himself pinkeye. “But I don’t—I don’t want him to think he’s not good enough. I know he’s trying really hard.”

No kid should have to carry this inside them. Now Ty needed a Kleenex. “I don’t think he would think that,” he said around the lump in his throat. “But if you want… if you want, you can talk to me about her. I didn’t know her, but I can listen.”

There was a scrape and a clatter as Theo stood up too quickly and knocked the chair over. And then Ty had a crying eight-year-old in his lap and tears in his own eyes, and they were wrapped up in a hug that felt like family, the kind of hug Ty hadn’t experienced since his mom died. He was on the other side of it now—the adult instead of the child—but it grounded him just the same.

When they’d both gotten control of themselves, Ty snatched a tissue from the box for each of them and dabbed his eyes. “Okay, I think we need a new plan. First, we’re going to wash our faces.”

Theo nodded.

“And then we’re going to make cookies.”

“Before dinner?” Theo asked. “What about homework?”

Ty extended a hand toward the door and let Theo precede him into the hall. “Sometimes we have to take care of our hearts before we can take care of our brains, so we’re going to make cookies. My mom’s special recipe. And maybe you can tell me about your mom. Only if you want. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They stopped by the linen closet and Ty got them each a fresh washcloth. Something about the moment felt fragile, and he didn’t want to let Theo out of his sight just yet, so he led them through the master bedroom—unoccupied since his father’s passing—and into the master bath, so they could each have their own sink to wash up.

When they were safely ensconced in the kitchen, Theo on a chair so he could better reach the counter, Ty thought he was prepared for more emotionally heavy stuff. After all, he’d invited Theo to talk about his mom.

But he wasn’t prepared for Theo to say, “Hey, Ty?”

Ty got down the flour and sugar. “What’s up, kiddo?”

“Does it…? Is it bad that I get mad sometimes? ’Cause my friends still have their moms? Or ’cause Miss Eliza has people who remember Uncle David?”

Ty huffed out a breath and made a note to measure the chocolate chips with Theo’s heart, rather than his own. “No, buddy. You’re not bad, okay? It’s okay to have feelings. It’s not nice to take your feelings out on other people, though. But you’re not doing that, and even if you did, I think people would understand it’s because you’re hurt.”

Theo nodded and flipped open the latch on the flour canister. He didn’t look up when he asked, “Do you ever get mad? ’Cause of Dad and me. Does it make you sad?”

Kid, we literally just stopped crying. “A little bit, sometimes. But mostly it makes me really happy, because you deserve a dad who pays you lots of attention and spends time with you. Every kid should have people who love them like that, Theo. And it’s good for me to see that and to remember I should’ve had that too and it’s not my fault that I didn’t.”

After a moment of contemplation, Theo nodded. Then he said, with the kind of gravitas only an eight-year-old could manage, “Feelings are hard.”

Ty startled into a laugh. “You said it, kid.” He plopped the egg carton on the counter next to the stand mixer. “Now, pass the sugar.”