Page 32 of The Fix-Up

“No, I’m not worried about you. But I don’t have time to deal with a dead body in my backyard. Took forever to bury the last one.”

“Funny,” he said and if I squinted, I thought he might be smiling. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I have plenty to keep me warm.”

“Okay.” I took a step backwards. “Well, good.”

I could still leave a couple blankets out on the back porch. Just in case.

“Night, Eleanor.”

I scowled at the use of my full name. Only my mom called me that and it usually involved yelling at me until next Tuesday. “Night, Gil.”

ELEVEN

Love is a feeling. That’s all.

—JOSEPHINE, AGE 12

From the sticky note correspondence of Gilbert Dalton and Ellie Sterns:

Eleanor—

What’s the Wi-Fi password?

—Gilbert

P.S. Thanks for the extra blankets.

Gil—

Glad you asked. I just changed it.

Password: YouNeedToPayForHalfOfThis

(Caps sensitive)

—Ellie

P.S. I left them outside for the feral cats that come around. But I guess it’s okay if you use them.

“So, what’s he like?” Ali asked. She was sprawled on the oversized sectional couch in Chris and Mae’s living room. A room that had been stripped to its bones as soon as Chris bought the place.

The previous owners had been into Hunter Chic, which I didn’t even know was a thing until I saw the house for the first time. Let’s just say there were a whole lot of stuffed animals. The dead, glassy-eyed kind. All of them found new homes except for Chuck, the nine-foot moose that lived in their oversized living room with the vaulted ceiling and huge stone fireplace. Mae claimed some kind of sentimental feelings toward it; Chris said he had no idea how the moose got into the house and even less of an idea of how to get it out.

They decorated Chuck for the holidays. Twinkle lights at Christmas, an Uncle Sam hat for Fourth of July, that sort of thing. Right this minute, paper hearts hung off his antlers in honor of upcoming Valentine’s Day.

He was staring at me right now. His mournful dark eyes seemed to say,How did my life turn out this way?Chuck and I—we were kindred spirits, I think.

I fisted the throw pillow on my lap. “He’s a jerk.”

Mae paused in her total demolition of a plate of loaded nachos which she’d rested on the top of her pregnant stomach like it was a shelf. “Iris said he’s hot.”

“Iris says a lot of things,” I muttered. “He’s very…uptight.”

“Oh? Uptight how?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t seem overly friendly, stern. He probably irons his underwear and socks. That kind of uptight.”

“Frankie said he seemed pretty decent,” Ali said. Frankie, the deputy who’d come to the house that night, was also Ali’s brother. Everyone was related to everyone in this town if you dug deep enough.

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