Page 108 of The Fix-Up
“Only fight we ever had.” He pointed at a faded half-inch white line on his forehead near his hairline. “Left me with this scar, he did. Your grandma was in her twenties by then. Olliemade me tell him everything I knew about his daughter. Then he hired a private detective to find out the rest.”
“That’s what all this is.” Gil opened the file folder. “There are yearly reports from the PI going back years. He knew everything about us.”
Teddy nodded. “Ollie wanted to go introduce himself and have a place in your mother’s life. He went so far as to drive over to where she was living up in north Texas somewhere. Parked in front of her house and watched for a long time. He said she looked so happy. He got to thinking what would happen if he just showed up in her life and decided he’d rather her be happy. He didn’t want to mess up her life. So, he turned around and drove back to Two Harts. Never tried to reach out again. But he always kept track of you all. Knew everything about you. I think he understood Amelia’s thinking, deep down—she thought she was doing this in his best interest.”
Gil pulled out yet another folder.
“How many of those do you have?” I asked.
“A lot.” He opened it. “These are all receipts for college tuition. To my college. I was told I had a scholarship.”
Teddy snorted. “Wasn’t no scholarship. It was Ollie. He was real proud of you.” He pointed to me. “You, too. Used to go on and on about how much you reminded him of Amelia.”
“Really?”
He squinted. “Oh, sure. You with your big smile and always being so nice to everyone. And that boy of yours. He loved that boy.”
I blinked back tears.
With a chuckle, Teddy waved a hand between Gil and me. “He had this big idea if the two of you met, you’d get along real good.” He leaned closer like he was telling us a secret. “Personally, I think his whole plan was to play matchmaker.”
I made the mistake of turning my head. My gaze caught on Gil’s and held. The look in his eye made the rhythm of my heartbeat change, become slow and languid. I wondered what he was thinking behind those dark-blue eyes, and was it of me…of an us that didn’t exist.
Teddy chuckled, pulling my attention away. “I’m serious. Ollie was a romantic. He used to write poetry to Amelia. You were his favorite people. He liked to say you two needed each other. Too bad he had to die to make it happen.”
“Teddy, we aren’t a…” I took a deep breath. “We’re business partners. That’s all.”
Teddy snorted and stuffed a large forkful of mashed potatoes in his mouth. “Sure thing.”
“Why do you think he never gave me a chance to meet him?” Gil asked.
“I think mostly he didn’t want to interrupt your life. He just wanted to know you were happy and healthy. I guess that was enough for him.”
“Maybe that is enough,” Gil murmured.
Teddy leaned over and patted Gil’s shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on Ollie. Always made me sad but I guess I understood. Ollie loved you enough to let you go.”
FORTY-FIVE
Love is whenever I see you.
—LOUIS, AGE 9
“I’ll do the cutting in,” Gil said, hands on his hips.
It was a Sunday afternoon at the end of May, although the weather was overcast and humid and thunderclouds loomed in the distance. Gil had come home early from his weekend trip to beat the storms and right as I was dragging everything out of the bathroom to paint.
I mimicked his stance. “I said I would do it. I like doing it.”
“Nobody likes cutting in. It’s tedious.”
I picked up a paintbrush and climbed up the ladder. “Then I guess I like tedious. You’re my friend and you might be the most tedious thing in my life right now.”
His eyes narrowed. “Fine. You do it.”
Shaking my head, I watched him stomp off, probably to work on taking wallpaper off some wall in this house. Lately, he’d spent a lot of time removing wallpaper. It was like an obsession with him—aggressive wallpaper removal. I had no idea what thatwallpaper had ever done to him, but he was taking no prisoners, that was for sure.
The tension between us had ratcheted up considerably since my date with Abe. It was like a secret switch had been thrown. If I were in a room, Gil left it. I brushed passed him in the hallway, he practically climbed the wall to get away from me. He’d stopped eating dinner with us, although he had no problem eating the leftovers. When he was at the café, he hid in the office, but he always made time to talk with Teddy or Malcolm when they were around. He hung out with Oliver.
