Page 15 of The Fix-Up

He leaned forward and an unholy light began to glimmer in his eyes. Alarmingly, my pulse began to thrum, and not from anger. “I have to live there for the next six months, don’t I?”

Something in my stomach swooped. I frowned. Silence grew between us. I fidgeted, gnawing on my bottom lip. He sat still as a cat right before it pounced. Prey meet predator. Except he didn’t look like a predator; he looked like an accountant.

“But you’re a stranger,” I said. “And I have a son.”

Gilbert leaned back in his seat slowly. “A son?”

“Oh, Ollie had me do background checks on both of you,” Doug said. “You’ll be happy to know neither one of you has been in any trouble with the law.”

“That just means he hasn’t been caught.” I whipped my phone out. “I’m googling him.”

“Maybe I’m the one who should be afraid,” Gilbert said. He held his phone up and began typing.

The first page of results was for a politician named Gilbert Dalton who lived in Wisconsin. Then a few entries about a guy who owned a cattle ranch in California in the eighteen eighties. But when I loaded the second page, I found him.

I bit back a smile of anticipation. Please be something good. Oh, maybe he’d been involved in a pyramid scheme, or he’d been writingFifty Shadesfanfic.

“Miss Tomato Harvest?” Gilbert turned his phone around. “Look, there’s even a picture.”

I grabbed his hand to hold the phone steady. A zing snaked up my arm at the contact. I ignored it. In the photo, sixteen-year-old me had just been crowned Miss Tomato Harvest, as the wide white sash I was wearing announced. I remembered searchinghigh and low for the tomato-red dress I had worn. Not everyone could pull off wearing a tiara with a large sparkling tomato on top of it like I could.

“Let me guess, you got free tomatoes for a year.” He wasn’t wrong but I wasn’t going to admit that. With a knowing smirk, Gilbert pulled his hand away. “Your parents must have been so proud.”

“Yes, they were,” I said. “It was a great honor.”

Back on my phone, I redoubled my efforts to find something sketchy about Gilbert. Ah-ha, a newspaper article with his name in it. I clicked on it and greedily read the title, “Two Local Teachers Nominated to be Named Texas Teacher of the Year.” I scanned the article, my heart sinking as I went. There was his name—as a nominee.

“You’re a teacher.”

Gilbert didn’t lift his eyes from his phone. “Was. I left to work as a youth counselor at a community center.” He glanced up, an eyebrow raised. “After I got my master’s degree.”

“Good for you,” I mumbled.

“Look at this, you have a page on the movie database. You do some acting, Eleanor?”

No, he couldn’t findthatinfo. I glanced across the table and gave serious thought to lunging across it and tackling him for the phone.

“Kangaroo’d Three,” Gilbert said. “Three? They made three of these movies?”

Actually, five of them. With a groan, I dropped my face into my hands.

“A woman is kidnapped by a giant kangaroo that has been genetically modified in a lab,” he read aloud. “To escape, she must survive on her wits while living inside the kangaroo’s pouch…if she doesn’t fall for her captor first.” He smirked.“Wow. How have I never heard of this? Surely it was nominated for awards.”

I’d been offered the role of the kidnappee three months after moving to Los Angeles. The script had been terrible. The plot, terrible. The director, terrible…and weird. But my boyfriend was convinced this would be my breakout role and it was my first paid acting job (a whopping five hundred dollars). Up until then, I’d gone on about five million auditions. Just me and every other tall blonde in a fifty-mile radius for a bit part in a cable TV show.

It had become clear even then that making a living acting was going to be much harder than I expected. No one cared about my success in high school and community theater back in Oklahoma. Aside from a starring role in a short movie for a film student, mostly to get something for my acting reel, I hadn’t had any luck.

Also, living in LA was expensive. So, I took the role. Spent a lot of time in a human-size wool pouch. When I wasn’t popping out to make moon eyes at my kidnapper.

“Do male kangaroos even have pouches?” Gilbert wondered aloud. I jerked my head up and glared at him.

“I don’t think so, now that you mention it,” Doug said.

“Okay, yes. I was in the movie. I’m not embarrassed.”

Yes, I was. My face had to be five shades redder than a fire truck. I quickly went back to my phone. There was another mention of Gilbert Dalton in an Austin paper. It announced the winners of the National Merit Scholarship in the area. And, yes, Gilbert’s name was on that list, too.

“Chris Sterns is your brother?” Gilbert asked. “TheChris Sterns? From the Oklahoma Stars?”

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