Page 6 of The Fix-Up

I straightened. “I have emergency services on the phone. They can hear everything. The police are on their way.”

He took a step back. “I’m not here to cause any trouble.” He opened one of his hands and keys dangled from a finger. “I have a right to be here.”

I stared at the keys. “How did you get those?”

“This is my house,” he said slowly.

“No, it is not. This ismyhouse.” I grabbed another book from the bookshelf and waved it wildly. “Out. Get out.”

“This is getting interesting,” Cammie said. It almost sounded like she was eating popcorn.

“Alright. Alright. I’ll go outside.” With a hand held up, either to protect himself or ward me off, he shuffled backwards. “But this house is mine, or at least half of it is.”

What?He was crazy. “Stop saying that. This is my house.” I grabbed the door and started to close it.

“Wait. Listen.” He paused, his face so serious it made me hesitate. In what felt like slow motion, his mouth opened. A tightness spread across my chest. Some part of me knew whatever he was about to say was important. It was the feeling I’d had just before I saw a positive on that pregnancy test I took seven years ago. Epically important. Life-changing.

“My name is Gilbert Dalton. Ollie Holder was my grandfather.”

Cammie gasped. “Holy sh?—”

The sound the door made when I slammed it shut was loud enough to drown out the rest of her sentence.

THREE

Love means if you do something accidentally, they won’t like get mad at you.

—CHARLES O., AGE 7

Deputy Frankie Ramos knocked on my door ten minutes later.

“Ellie, open up.”

“Did you arrest him yet?” I asked even though I knew he hadn’t. I’d been watching the whole scene from the window. Frankie had arrived and proceeded to hold an animated conversation with the stranger, which ended up in said stranger retrieving a file folder from his car, digging through it and presenting Frankie with paperwork which then ended in Frankie laughing and giving him a friendly slap on the back.

Like they were besties.

“Just open the door, Ellie,” Cammie said from my bookshelf. “Do you really think Ollie has a grandson?”

I snatched up my phone. “I thought you were supposed to hang up when the police arrived.”

“Eh. It’s been a slow night, and I’m invested now.”

Frankie knocked on the door again. “Ellie, open the door. We need to talk. There’s been a…misunderstanding.” He cleared his throat. “It appears he does own the house.”

I ripped the door open and glared at Frankie. “He does not.”

“Well, he has some paperwork here from a lawyer that says he does. Says he’s Ollie’s grandson.” He held up a stack of papers. I glanced between it and the stranger, Ollie’s so-called grandson, who stood a few feet away, looking much too smug.

“Ollie didn’t have any children,” I said. Everyone knew that. Nothing happened, or didn’t happen, in this town without it being broadcast in every group text, phone tree, and most prayer chains. “So a grandson would be impossible.”

There. Logic. Take that, Mr. Smug Smugface.

“Ollie did have a child. My mother,” he said and somehow, impervious to all laws of nature, he looked even smugger.

Frankie took a step between us and directed his next comment to Gilbert Dalton. “Now, to be fair, no one knew Ollie had any family left. After his mother died, and that was when I was a kid, he was the last Holder in Two Harts.”

“Thank you.” Crossing my arms, I gave a curt nod. “So that’s settled. Make him leave now.”

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