Page 79 of The Fix-Up

“Please?” I wrapped my hands around his arm and leaned into him, batting my eyes playfully. “Pretty please.”

Shaking his head, he closed his eyes and muttered something.

“What was that?”

“Jungle Cat Dropouts.”

“No,” I breathed. “This is amazing.”

“Whatever.” He laid the photo down on the bed, picture side down. “All these photos. All of them are of me or my mom. Years and years of photos. How? I didn’t even know Ollie’s name until last year when the letters from the attorney came. My mom didn’t even know until her mother passed away and, even then, she never told me. Maybe she would have but she died when I was young.”

I stood and took my time inspecting the other photos in the room. Aside from a few photos of Ollie’s Two Harts family, almost all the photos were of Gil or his mom. There were even a few of Oliver. I picked one photo that made me smile.

Somehow, I’d managed to talk Ollie into going on a little outing to Legacy Park. Oliver was about four at the time, his cheeks round and pinchable. Oliver was clutching Ollie’s hand and the two of them were ahead of me. I’d snapped a photo at just the right moment with the sunshine peeking through the trees and casting a ray of light on them. It was one of my favorite pictures. I’d printed it out, framed it, and given it to Ollie that Christmas. He’d stared at it for a long time, muttered a thank you, and we never spoke of it again. And to think, all this time, it had been sitting right here in his room.

“I had no idea Ollie was so sentimental.” I set the photo back on the dresser.

“All of these photos. He…he knew about us? How do you think he got these?” Gil stood and moved to stand next to me.

“I don’t know.” I moved around the room, Gil following me. There were more photos than I’d noticed at first. Every available inch of space held some memory, it seemed.

“Oh, my goodness, look at these.” I paused in front of four or five sepia-colored photos on the wall.

“Wait,” Gil said, peering at one photo of Ollie and two other people. One was a tall guy about Ollie’s age with wild hair and a huge smile. Something about him seemed familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on why. The other person was a slender, dark-haired woman. Ollie had his arm around her shoulders. “I think that’s my grandma.”

“Really?” I moved closer, my shoulder brushing against his arm. At first the photo seemed it was nothing more than two friends laughing but the more I stared at the photo, the more I realized these two were more than friends. It was in the subtle tilt of her head toward him, in how they stood a little closer than was necessary. “What was her name?”

“Amelia.”

“Amelia.” I rolled the name around. “I like that. Did you spend a lot of time with her?”

“Every summer. They lived in Louisiana so we’d go and visit, and my mom would leave me there for a good month in the summertime.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Oh, it was. Grandpa Joe, her husband, the man my mother knew as her father, was Cajun and wild on top of it.” He smiled slowly. “He was always getting into something or another and I got to follow along.”

I wanted to keep asking him questions. I’d already learned more about him in the last ten minutes than I’d learned in the last six weeks.

“I don’t know what this all means.” Gil moved to the middle of the room and stood, hands on hips. His eyes landed near the desk. “I wonder what that filing cabinet has in it.”

“We could check.”

“We could.”

Neither of us moved.

“Or not,” I said. “We don’t have to look right now.”

Gil took a deep breath and marched across the room. He tugged on the top drawer. “It’s locked.”

“There’s probably a key somewhere.” I began opening drawers and searching the tops of the dressers.

“Mommy?” Oliver asked from the doorway. “Why are you in here?”

“Mr. Gil wanted to see what Ollie’s room looked like.”

“Oh.” His expression bordering on reverent, he turned in a circle, taking in the room.

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