Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
I don’t know, it means you love them.
“I’m going to see the kittens,” Oliver said the second we stepped in the house. We’d gone for a long walk after dinner. It had been an especially beautiful day with lower-than-average humidity for the beginning of April.
Oliver shot out of the kitchen without waiting for me to reply. We’d moved them to our laundry room when no one was home and let them out when we were. Oliver still hadn’t decided on names although he was workshopping Cinnamon and Sugar.
“Not for too long. It’s past bedtime,” I called. But I wasn’t too worried. Oliver had all week off for spring break, so staying up a little later wouldn’t hurt too much.
I headed to my bedroom to gather some clothes for the wash. But then I saw it. There at the end of the hallway, the door to Ollie’s room was open.
I froze, my stomach flipped. Gil wouldn’t have, would he? But there was the evidence as clear as day. Hands curled into fists, I stormed down the hallway and burst into the room. “What are you doing in here?”
Gil sat on the bed, staring down at a picture frame. He glanced up at me and back down without saying anything.
I stomped over to him. “Excuse me. I thought we were going to do this together.”
“I got tired of waiting,” he mumbled, his eyes never leaving the picture.
“I cannot believe you. You knew how I felt about this.” I waved an arm around the room. Ollie’s room.
Slowly, I turned in a circle to take everything in.
The first thing of note: this room was clean, neat, organized.
Not at all like the rest of the house had been when we moved in.
Soft blue paint covered the walls and a wallpaper border with alternating ships and whales wrapped around the room.
A long chest of drawers, a dresser, two nightstands, a small file cabinet next to a desk, wood floors that looked worn but cared for.
Overall, a very normal room. Except for the picture frames resting on every available surface and wall space.
I’d never seen so many photographs displayed in one place at a time.
“Whoa. This is not what I expected.” When he didn’t reply, I whirled back to him. He looked pale, his expression almost sad. “Hey, are you okay? I’m trying to yell at you, and you look like someone stole your lunch.”
Slowly, he turned the picture frame around to reveal a skinny, dark-haired boy standing on a boat dock wearing a pair of blue swim trunks and a huge smile and holding a fish dangling from his hand with a line.
“This is me. I was eight here,” Gil said. “It was taken when my stepdad took me fishing for the first time.”
“Oh.” I sat next to him on the bed and took the frame from him and studied it. Little Boy Gil had gangly arms, knobby, skinned-up knees, and eyeglasses a touch too big for his face.
Gil picked up another photo from a small pile on the other side of him.
“This was when I won the school spelling bee in seventh grade. That’s my mom.
” His fingers traced the boy in the photo holding up a ribbon that said first place.
Standing next to him was a pretty dark-haired woman with smiling blue eyes.
Gil had her eyes. “I remember the exact moment this photo was taken.”
“What was the winning word?”
“Silhouette.” He huffed a laugh. “It wasn’t even a word I’d studied. But my mom loved to read those Harlequin Silhouette books and that’s how I knew it.” The amusement drained from his face. “She died two days later in a car accident.”
My heart screeched to a halt. “Oh, Gil. I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I don’t think that’s something you ever get over.”
He set the photo aside. “I was lucky. I had my stepdad. He never made me feel unwanted, even though I wasn’t related to him by blood. And I was a little shit for a while there. I pushed every button he had. He was a good man.”
“Sounds like it.”
“He would have liked you.” Before I even had a moment to process this, he picked up another photo. “My mom and stepdad’s wedding.” And another. “My mom’s high school graduation.” And yet another. “My high school graduation.”
I grabbed that last picture from him and studied it. The teenage boy in the photo was still growing into his body, but the bones were there. Tall, lanky, with wide shoulders. A cocky expression. He wasn’t smiling; he was smirking.
I grinned. “You had long hair?”
He snatched the frame back. “It was a phase.”
“That is a look . Please tell me you were in a garage band.”
His cheeks pinked up. “No.”
“No, you weren’t?”
“No, I’m not telling you.”
I bounced on the bed. “Tell me your band name. Please tell me.”
“No.”
“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.
“Found it,” Gil said. The top drawer of the file cabinet was opened to reveal…files.
“Why’s there a key in the door?” Oliver fingered the doorknob.
Gil glanced over his shoulder. “That’s how I got in. You know that bowl of random keys in the kitchen? One of them worked.” He pulled out a file and began to flip through it.
“Oh.” Oliver stared at the key.
Even from the other side of the room, I could practically hear the gears in his head moving. “What’s going on over there?”
Oliver jolted. His gaze swung between Gil and me. “I love you, Mommy.”
“Love you, too, kiddo. Why don’t you go get your pajamas on? We’ll skip bathtime for tonight. I’ll be in there to read in five minutes.”
“Okay.” He backed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
“Sometimes I wish I knew what was going on in that kid’s head.” I crossed the room and stood next to Gil, trying to peek at the folder. “Did you find something?”
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes never leaving the pages.
I waited for more information and did not get any. “You gonna give me a little more than that?”
“It’s all about my mom.” He shut the file and held it out to me. “There’s everything. A copy of her birth certificate, a list of places she worked, the address for the house where we lived.”
I peered over his shoulder. “That doesn’t seem like information a man who abandoned his kid would have.”
The file snapped shut. “If that’s the case, why didn’t he ever contact her?”
“Maybe he did, and you don’t know about it.”
With a frown, he set the file on top of the cabinet and went back to thumbing through the files. “I don’t get it.”
“I need to go put Oliver to bed,” I said.
“Sure.” He didn’t even glance my way.
“Okay, then.” I pulled at the bedroom door and…it didn’t budge. I tried it again. Huh. I put a little more oomph into it but still, nothing. “Ah, Gil?”
“Yeah?”
I laughed nervously. “Any reason this door wouldn’t open?”
“Not that I can think of,” he said absently.
I gave the door another jerk. Nothing. “And yet, it’s not opening.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It opens.” He walked over and brushed my hand off the doorknob.
With all the confidence of a grown man getting weighed at the doctor’s office, he yanked on the knob and still nothing happened.
He glared at it like it had personally offended his mother, his grandmother, and his virility. “It won’t open.”
“I told you that.” I knocked on the door. “Oliver? Oliver!”
I waited several long seconds before I heard him stampeding down the hallway. “Yes, Mommy?”
“Can you open the door?”
“You probably have to turn the key in the lock,” Gil said.
“There isn’t a key in the lock.”
“Honey, yes, there is. It was right there a minute ago.”
Silence. A long, long silence. Eerie silence. The sort of silence I knew did not bode well.
“Oliver?” I put a little growl in my voice.
“I took the key out,” he said and quickly added, “but I have it safe. I didn’t lose it or nothing.
And don’t worry, I brushed my teef and I locked all the doors in the house and made sure the kittens had food and water, and I’ll go right to sleep so you don’t have to worry about me and you’ll see, in the morning, you’ll come out and be in love and be boyfriend and girlfriend. Ollie tolded me that was the plan.”
I laid my hand on the door. “Oliver Lucas Sterns, we talked about this. Ollie is in Heaven. He couldn’t have told you that.”
“But he did,” Oliver insisted.
“It is not okay to make up stories.”
“I’m not making it up. Ollie tolded me about Mr. Gil.”
“Oliver, you need to open this door immediately,” Gil said. The grumpiness in his voice needed its own zip code.
“I can’t, Mr. Gil. I promised Ollie. And a man’s word is his promise, right? That’s what the Man Club motto is.”
I glared at Gil. “You had to start a stupid club with him, didn’t you?”
“I’m going to bed now. Love you, Mommy. Night.”
“Open this door. Now. Do you hear me?” I pressed my forehead against the door.
“I cannot believe this,” Gil said.
I turned and held out my hand. “Give me your phone.”
“I don’t have my phone.”
“Of course you do.”
“I don’t. It’s in my room. Use your phone.”
I could picture it right now sitting on the kitchen counter with my purse. “I don’t have it on me.”
“We’re phoneless?” He gave the door one more yank. “And we’re stuck.”
I took a deep breath, determined I would not panic. It wasn’t that big of a deal. It could be worse. I could be locked in a room with Gilbert Dalton while he was wearing his toolbelt and cuddling kittens and have to talk myself out of mauling him.
That wouldn’t be bad either, a voice said in my head. Not bad at all.
Neither of us spoke. I felt his eyes on my face but when I turned, he looked away. This was awkward. We were two grown adult humans who could weather the course for a few hours locked up in a room together. It would be a breeze, all things considered.
“So, Jungle Cat Dropouts,” I said. “Please tell me they did a cover of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight.’ Maybe ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ Oh, I know, I know. ‘Welcome to the Jungle.’”
With a groan, Gil threw himself on the bed and pulled a pillow over his head.