The Fixer Upper Part 19

I'd even borrowed the flowered rag rug I'd found in Uncle Norbert's bedroom. It too had gotten a soaking and some time on the clothesline, and now, every morning when I swung my feet onto that hard wooden floor, I was happy to have the rug's welcoming warmth.

My bedroom was my one refuge in this house-the one place I'd been able to clean up and fix up enough to take pride in. It was my happy place.

"Thanks," I told Tee. "I still want to paint the walls, and get rid of those nasty old ruffled nylon curtains, but I had to buy a new mattress first, and that cut into my budget. Bobby, G.o.d bless him, picked up the mattress for me and dragged it up the stairs. And, of course, eventually I want to frame those watercolors. Aren't they lovely?"

"Very pretty," Tee said, plugging in the docking station. "And well done. Where did you get them?"

"They were in a box in a footlocker I found up in the attic," I said. "Along with the quilt, and the bed linens, and some damask dinner napkins. They're all monogrammed, like the sheets, but the design is so intricate, I can't make it out."

"Hmm," Tee said, not really listening. "That's nice."

"None of the stuff in that trunk has ever been used," I added. "It's like somebody was antic.i.p.ating needing them, packed them away, and never came back. I'd love to know who did the tatting, and the watercolors, of course."

"One of your Dempsey relatives, no doubt," Tee said. "n.o.body else has ever lived here but Dempseys."

I gestured toward the doorway. "Do you think that stuff belongs to Ella Kate?"

"No way," Tee said quickly. "I don't think Ella Kate has a domestic bone in her body. Anyway, if it was hers, why would it be up in your attic? Ella Kate didn't move in over here until the last year or so your uncle Norbert was alive."

I turned on the iPod and plugged in my heat gun. Tee laid a cabinet door across his sawhorses, and made a show of snapping on the rubber gloves. When he uncapped the can of chemical solvent, I opened the back door to ventilate the room. The night air was surprisingly mild. Maybe spring really was on its way to Guthrie.

"I guess the trunk and its contents will just be another of Birdsong's unsolved mysteries."

"You could ask your dad, couldn't you?" Tee suggested.

"I could, but he knows even less about his mother's family than I do."

Tee shook his head. "I just find that so hard to believe. Doesn't he have any curiosity about his family? Don't you?"

"Mitch is an 'of the moment' kind of guy," I said matter-of-factly, aiming the heat gun at my first cabinet door. I watched with fascination as the old layers of paint began to loosen, then bubble up. "He's not the least bit sentimental about family stuff-unless, that is, it involves him and Pilar and the boys."

Tee winced. "Does that hurt your feelings?"

I placed the sc.r.a.per's blade at the edge of the cabinet and applied even pressure, pushing away a long, thick ribbon of softened paint, sc.r.a.ping all the way to the opposite end of the door. Then, I wiped the gummy paint from my sc.r.a.per and applied the heat gun to the next edge.

"Dempsey?"

"I know my dad loves me," I said finally. "He's just not very demonstrative with me. Not the way he is with the twins. And I'm okay with that. I think he regrets that he didn't have a closer relationship with me, and maybe, with Gavin and Garrett, he thinks he's getting a second chance at being a better parent. Or a different one, anyway."

"That's a remarkably mature att.i.tude to take," Tee said.

I laughed ruefully. "Well, maybe I just talk a good game. Things aren't all that rosy between my dad and me right now."

"Why's that?"

"We had a fight," I admitted. "He called me up this morning, after that reporter called him about the story in the Post. He was absolutely livid that I'd dragged his good name through the mud."

"Did you tell him your side of the story?" Tee asked.

"I tried. He didn't really want to hear."

"I'm sorry," Tee said. He stared down at the cupboard door. He'd only managed to sc.r.a.pe away a few inches of the paint.

"Do you realize what a great dad you have?" I asked. "I really envy the relationship you guys have."

"We weren't always this tight," Tee said. "I was your typical pain-in-the-a.s.s teenager. Dad rode me really hard-he didn't like my friends, my grades, or most of my choices. When I went away to college, I swore I'd never be anything like my old man. I was never going to be a lawyer like him, and I definitely was never coming back to live in a backwater like Guthrie."

"You'd never know that now. Anybody can see that he adores you, and is insanely proud that you're his son. What changed things?"

"My mom got sick," he said. "And when it was clear that she wasn't going to get any better, I guess Dad and I both decided our differences were pretty petty. Going into practice with him was sort of a last gift to Mom."

"That's so sweet," I said, blinking away sudden tears.

"Well, don't go getting all sloppy on me," Tee said. "I think you have a pretty idyllic notion of us. We're not perfect. We fight and fuss and cuss just like any other family. And he's still p.i.s.sed that I want to spend more time running the paper and less time practicing law."

"But he won't stand in the way of your running the paper."

"No," Tee said. "He just likes to give me a bunch of grief about it, every chance he gets."

Tee put his sc.r.a.per down and walked over to where I was working. "You're almost done with this door," he said accusingly. "And I've been hacking away over there with that smelly stuff, and I'm not even halfway finished."

"I'm quick on the trigger," I said smugly. "So sue me."

He held out his hand. "It's my turn now. Gimme the gun."

"No way."

He stood behind me and nuzzled my ear. "Please?"

"If I give you the gun, what do you give me?"

He switched to my left ear. He needed a shave and his stubble tickled my neck.

"Go away," I said, swatting the air ineffectively. "I'm very busy here. I have no time for your tomfoolery."

He wrestled the heat gun away from me with very little effort, then turned me around to face him. He carefully placed the gun on the saw-horse. "Seriously now. No tomfoolery, as you so quaintly put it. I have an important question to ask you."

I put my arms around his neck. "Okay. Ask away. But I am not giving you my heat gun. You'll have to get your own if you want one that badly."

"I will," Tee said. He kissed me.

"What's the question then?" I asked.

He kissed my forehead. He kissed the tip of my nose. He kissed the hollow of my neck in an exquisitely leisurely way, while his hands closed around my b.u.t.t, pressing us together.

The next thing I knew, something sharp and p.r.i.c.kly was slashing at my shoulders and my head.

"Stop that!" Ella Kate hollered, smacking me on the back with a broom. I broke away from Tee, and he ducked, just barely missing Ella Kate's next swing.

Instead, she landed a blow on my right cheek. "Trash!" she screeched. "I won't have such trashy behavior under my own roof. You hear? I won't have it." She swung again and smacked me on the right arm.

"Ow," I protested, rubbing my arm. "That hurts."

"Ella Kate!" Tee cried, grabbing for the broom. "Cut it out!"

"You cut it out, you little p.i.s.sant," Ella Kate replied, clutching the broom to her chest. "Get out of my house, right this minute, or I'll call the police. I'll call your father too, Tee Berryhill. Don't think I won't tell him about your behavior."

"What behavior?" Tee asked, his face reddening. "I was kissing a girl. She was kissing me back. We're not teenagers, Ella Kate. Anyway, this really is not your house. It belongs to Dempsey and her father."

"This is a respectable house," Ella Kate whispered. "Respectable! If you two want to cat around, you can just go to a motel. I won't have the two of you he-ing and she-ing under this roof. If Norbert knew this was going on here, he would be spinning in his grave. Killebrews!"

She took the broom and hit me squarely on the top of the head with it. She turned to Tee and gave him a vicious slap in the crotch, and then she calmly strolled out of the kitchen, broom in hand.

28.

"Are you all right?" I asked Tee.

"I'm fine," he said. "Just grateful she didn't hit me with the broom handle. Now, that would have been painful."

"Sorry about that," I said, raking my fingers through my hair just to make sure Ella Kate's weapon of choice hadn't left me with a headful of cobwebs or worse. "I've been trying to get her to warm up to me. I drive her to the drugstore, and to run errands, I even buy treats for her dog, but I don't think it's working. She still detests me."

"Don't take it personally," Tee advised. "According to my father, she's always been what he calls 'eccentric.'"

I picked up my heat gun and switched it on again. "Eccentric. That's one of those colorful Southern euphemisms, right?"

"Exactly," Tee said. He wrapped his arms around my waist again. "Now, about that question."

"Better make it quick," I said, glancing over his shoulder. "Don't forget, she does have a shotgun."

"Which makes my question all the more relevant," Tee said. "Look. You've been under a lot of pressure here lately. I can't even get you to let me take you out on a proper date. And we sure as h.e.l.l can't get any privacy, what with Ella Kate lurking around here, and me living with Dad. One of my law school cla.s.smates has a little cottage down on the coast, on Saint Simon's Island. Let's take a run down there next weekend. We'll have a nice dinner, ride bikes, take a walk on the beach. Just relax. What do you say?"

"I don't know," I said.

His face fell.

"It's just not good timing...with this Hoddergate thing hanging over my head, and the d.a.m.ned FBI agents skulking around town, and this newspaper reporter calling my family and friends."

"All the more reason to go away," Tee said.

I put both my hands on his chest. "I can't. Not right now. Give me some time, please, Tee?"

He sighed. "All right. No pressure. The offer stands. There's just one thing I need for you to do."

"Anything."

"Hand over the gun."

29.

It was pitch black when I woke up the next morning. I groped in the darkness for my cell phone, and saw that it was only 6:30 A.M. I lay back in the bed and groaned. Tee and I had worked on the kitchen cabinets until my hands and arms ached from all the sc.r.a.ping and sanding. We'd managed to finish stripping all the cabinets, but I still had plenty of sanding left-not to mention priming and painting.

I willed myself to go back to sleep, but it was no good. After five minutes of staring at the ceiling, I got up, shoved my feet into some slippers, and struggled into my bathrobe. Coffee. I needed coffee. Stat.

Soft, heartbreaking whimpers echoed through the high-ceilinged hallway. I hurried into the kitchen, where I found Ella Kate, sitting on the floor, cradling a writhing Shorty in her arms. She was dressed in faded red flannel pajamas, hair lank, wild eyed.

"Ella Kate?" I asked, crouching down beside her. "What's wrong? Is Shorty sick?"

"What do you think?" she snapped. "He ain't right, that's all I know. He wouldn't eat no supper, and Shorty never misses a meal. I took him outside to do his business last night, but he wouldn't go. Now he's bad sick."

"Poor baby," I said, looking down at the sad-eyed c.o.c.ker. "Is there anything I can do for him?"

"Get that bottle of castor oil," she said, jerking her head in the direction of a bottle sitting on the kitchen counter. "I been trying to get some down him, but he keeps jerking away from me. I'll hold him, and you dose him."

"Castor oil?" I wrinkled my nose.

"Just get it," she ordered. "That's what my mama gave all us young'uns when we had a bellyache."

"Is it safe for a dog?"

"Get it!"

I did as I was told.

She clamped her arms around the wriggling dog. "Hold your hand over his nose so he'll open up his mouth, then, when he does, you pour that stuff down his throat."

I uncapped the bottle of castor oil, and clapped my left hand over Shorty's snout. I held the open bottle over his jaws, but just as I tipped the bottle forward, he flailed wildly with his front paws, and the bottle went flying, an evil-smelling arc of viscous oil spreading over the stack of freshly stripped cabinets.

"Oh no!"

"Now look what you done," Ella Kate cried. "You done spilt every last drop of the castor oil."

"I'm sorry," I said, hurrying to mop up the mess with a wad of paper towels. I stopped short when Shorty let out another high-pitched moan.