Page 11 of The Fix-Up

“Forty-five.”

Hiding a smile, I sighed. “You drive a hard bargain. Thirty minutes. Final offer.”

He held out his hand and I shook on it. “Done.”

My brother came around the corner and held out his fist. “Give me one, O-Man.”

Without breaking his stride, Oliver bumped his little one on my brother’s massive one. Oliver would grow up one day and be big and tall, I was sure of it. His dad had been over six feet and I was no slouch, but for now, he looked tiny next to my brother and still the perfect size to cuddle with.

“I’ll take one of those.” Chris sat down at the table and started to cut himself a brownie roughly the size of New Jersey. Then again, Chris was roughly the size of the state of Texas.

Of the five Sterns children, he was the only son and the only one older than me, by five years. He’d recently announced his retirement from the NFL and had taken to a life of leisure. He planned to head to medical school in a year or so—nothing like being an overachiever. First, he wanted to enjoy married life, and I didn’t blame him. For all his quick smiles and golden retriever energy, he’d worked non-stop since high school, even before that. Football was hard on a body. More than once, I’d caught him wincing when he moved a certain way.

I smacked his hand away. “You do not get half the pan. Let me cut them.”

Mae, Chris’s wife, rounded the corner into the kitchen, returning from her ninety-seventh bathroom break in the hour since they’d arrived. “Brownies,” she breathed in awe. “You made these just for me, right?”

She grabbed the knife from me and cut an even bigger piece than Chris had. With her hand on her very pregnant stomach, she practically inhaled half of it in one bite. “So good,” she half moaned. “So, so good.”

Chris scowled. “Hey, how come you get a big piece, and I don’t?”

“Maybe because she’s going to give birth to your nineteen-pound baby in a couple of months and she needs all the sustenance she can get.” I patted Mae’s stomach. Which wasn’t something I thought Mae would ever allow. Soft wasn’t her personality, exactly. She was a natural-born Mama Bear and kind of intimidating, at least to me. As the head librarian at the Two Harts Public Library, she put all that energy to work.

But she’d definitely become a bit of a softie in her third trimester. She would never admit to it, but I saw her tear up over an article about the plight of pink dolphins in the Amazon a couple of weeks ago and she’d become obsessed with videos of unlikely animal friends. Which she texted to us several times a day.

“I need to keep my strength up,” Mae said around a mouthful of brownies.

Chris hooked an arm around Mae and gently pulled her to perch on his lap, a dopey, besotted grin in place.

“So,” Mae said once she’d settled and inhaled the rest of her brownie, “Ollie has a grandson. Who would have thought?”

I plopped down at an empty seat. “Yeah, Gilbert freaking Dalton.”

Chris shrugged. “Frankie said he seemed like a decent guy.”

I glared. “It’s been less than two hours, how have you already talked to Frankie?”

A phone buzzed on the table. Mae held it up. “It’s Ali. Should I answer it?”

“Yes,” I said. “If you don’t, who knows what she’ll do.”

Ali Goodnight had been Mae’s best friend since elementary school and, as of two years ago, she was also the mayor of Two Harts. It had surprised us all how well she’d fit into the role. Ali was known for her…strongsense of justice that usuallypresented itself through an array of revenge pranks. Since I’d moved here, Mae and Ali and I had become close. They were the kind of friends I imagine would help me bury the body. If the situation ever arose. It hadn’t.

Yet.

“You’re on speaker,” Mae said.

“Ollie has a grandson? That can’t be. The man never stepped foot out of Two Harts unless he was forced to. You should demand a blood test, or something,” Ali said as a way of greeting.

“He has a lot of Ollie’s grumpy energy,” I muttered.

“Well, we don’t know this guy,” Ali said. “We need to check him out.”

Chris groaned. “Please, no. Because when you say check him out, you mean dressing like a ninja, doing some light stalking, and maybe digging through his garbage, too.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought about digging through his trash,” Ali said, sounding excited. “That’s a great idea. I’ll call down to the motel and see if they can save it for me.”

“Please don’t,” I said.

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