He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, unlocked the screen, and opened up his phone contacts. Hesitating only briefly, he tapped on a familiar phone number and then brought the phone to his ear, listening as it rang once, twice...
“Hello? Sam, is that you?”
“Good morning, Mrs. E!” Totally chipper. Confident. Happy. His usual self. He could do that.
“Uh-oh. Sam, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Is it Ollie? Where are you?”
Sam groaned inwardly as he stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. He should have known better than to try to fool Katherine Ellison. She was as good at reading him as she was at reading her son, even over the phone. Sam ran his free hand through his hair and blew out a long breath. “I just walked him to work. He’s... Well, um...”
“It happened again?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it bad, like last time?”
Sam closed his eyes. Last time had been a nightmare. And not literally; Ollie had been awake then. But there hadn’t even been a trigger that time, at least not one that any of them had been able to identify when they’d all talked about it together.
“Not... not as bad, maybe, but...” He really didn’t want to talk about this over the phone, and that hadn’t been his intention when he’d called anyway. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and then started across the street as the crosswalk light changed. “Um, can I come over, maybe? I think... um, I need to pick up those cookies and... and maybe, you know, we can, um, chat a little?”
“Of course, honey. JoJo and I just got back from her walk, and I’ll be here all morning,” Katherine said.
“Perfect. Um...” Sam picked up his speed to a brisker walk as he stepped up on the curb on the other side of the street. “I’m just a block or so from Ollie’s apartment, and I’ll head straight over. So, maybe twenty minutes?” He hoped he wasn’t underestimating the early morning traffic along the east side of Lake Sammamish up to Redmond, where Katherine lived. But he also knew she wouldn’t mind if it took him a bit longer than that.
“The door will be open.”
“Thanks, Mrs. E.”
Sam hung up the phone, hurried the rest of the way to Ollie’s apartment, and then let himself in. He paused inside the entryway for a few seconds, staring at the familiar space where he now spent most of his time when he wasn’t at work. Although he still kept his apartment in Seattle for those rare times when Ollie wasn’t in town or when he was too tired after work to drive back to Issaquah, he considered Ollie’s apartment home. And really, that had more to do with the fact that Ollie lived there than anything else. Home was where Ollie was.
Sam smiled to himself as he pictured Ollie’s huge grin lighting up the room. But his smile quickly faded. It had... been a while since he’d seen that smile—that smile that made his pulse race and brightened his day. It still peeked through every now and then, but recently, it seemed to have become less frequent as Ollie’s nightmares had become more frequent. Sam hoped the big surprise he had planned for their weekend getaway next week, after Sam met his deadline with his project at work, would alleviate whatever stress was causing Ollie’s anxiety to worsen and maybe also give them a better chance to reconnect.
For now, he needed to get to Redmond. He moved into the kitchen to grab his thermos and fill it with fresh coffee—he actually did need coffee, he realized, since he was running on only a few hours of sleep. Then he headed back out, jumped in his car, and pulled out onto East Lake Sammamish Parkway, heading north.
The drive was blissfully quick, even with Sam sticking to a few miles per hour below the speed limit, and he pulled into Katherine’s driveway only nineteen minutes after leaving Issaquah. The beautiful two-story home, which could probably be considered much too large for its sole occupant, was at the end of a cul-de-sac in an upscale neighborhood and backed to a lightly forested area crisscrossed with trails and jogging paths. Sam and Ollie had spent countless hours exploring those trails together, usually when Katherine was traveling for work and they’d had to stay at her home to take care of her dog, JoJo. The house had become a sort of home away from home away from home for Sam.
Sam got out of his car and closed the door carefully, aware that the neighborhood was still quiet this early in the morning. He waved to Katherine’s neighbor, who was outside picking up his newspaper from the driveway, and then jogged up the walkway to the front door, knocking lightly as he let himself in.
Almost immediately, a much-too-energetic black-and-white ball of fur raced down the stairs and launched up into his arms, barking an enthusiastic greeting. Sam laughed as JoJo, Katherine’s small border collie mix, licked his face in greeting and then jumped back down to the ground, barking as she ran through the living room toward the kitchen. Sam heard Katherine scold the dog lightheartedly, and he started toward the kitchen.
“Sam, is that you?”
“It’s me, Mrs. E!”
Sam grinned as Katherine met him in the open doorway to the kitchen, and she pulled him right into a warm hug, which he eagerly returned.
“You made good time,” she observed, glancing at the clock on the wall as she pulled away from him. She moved back to the counter, where she had several dozen cookies set out on a platter. “No traffic?”
“Nope. I was pretty lucky, I think,” he replied, following her and taking a seat at one of the bar stools at the island. He watched her work in silence for a moment as she transferred all the cookies into two small plastic containers. When she was finished, she let out a long breath and then looked up at him.
“It had to have been bad, or you wouldn’t be here now,” she said quietly. Then she frowned. “Sorry, do you want coffee or... I made some cinnamon rolls for the neighbor, but I have a few extra. Are you hungry?”
Sam shook his head. “No, no, thank you. I ate earlier.” At her raised eyebrows, he grinned. “Blueberry pancakes. And yes, we used those blueberries from Mr. Penton. Hard to find better ones, even at the farmers’ market.”
“They were good, weren’t they?”
Katherine moved around to Sam’s side of the island and took the seat next to him. Sam lowered his eyes to his hands and took a deep breath.
“I know Ollie says I can talk to you about this, that he wants me to talk to you when I’m... struggling, but I...”
