Chapter 5 #2
“I’ll need the rest of the week to get some things taken care of. I can move in on Saturday,” Gilbert said.
I could show him the friendly folks of Two Harts, the Easter parade, the Founder’s Festival, the muffins I could make…
Wait.
“What?”
He leaned forward and an unholy light began to glimmer in his eyes. Alarmingly, my pulse began to thrum, and not from anger. “I have to live there for the next six months, don’t I?”
Something in my stomach swooped. I frowned. Silence grew between us. I fidgeted, gnawing on my bottom lip. He sat still as a cat right before it pounced. Prey meet predator. Except he didn’t look like a predator; he looked like an accountant.
“But you’re a stranger,” I said. “And I have a son.”
Gilbert leaned back in his seat slowly. “A son?”
“Oh, Ollie had me do background checks on both of you,” Doug said. “You’ll be happy to know neither one of you has been in any trouble with the law.”
“That just means he hasn’t been caught.” I whipped my phone out. “I’m googling him.”
“Maybe I’m the one who should be afraid,” Gilbert said. He held his phone up and began typing.
The first page of results was for a politician named Gilbert Dalton who lived in Wisconsin. Then a few entries about a guy who owned a cattle ranch in California in the eighteen eighties. But when I loaded the second page, I found him.
I bit back a smile of anticipation. Please be something good. Oh, maybe he’d been involved in a pyramid scheme, or he’d been writing Fifty Shades fanfic.
“Miss Tomato Harvest?” Gilbert turned his phone around. “Look, there’s even a picture.”
I grabbed his hand to hold the phone steady.
A zing snaked up my arm at the contact. I ignored it.
In the photo, sixteen-year-old me had just been crowned Miss Tomato Harvest, as the wide white sash I was wearing announced.
I remembered searching high and low for the tomato-red dress I had worn.
Not everyone could pull off wearing a tiara with a large sparkling tomato on top of it like I could.
“Let me guess, you got free tomatoes for a year.” He wasn’t wrong but I wasn’t going to admit that. With a knowing smirk, Gilbert pulled his hand away. “Your parents must have been so proud.”
“Yes, they were,” I said. “It was a great honor.”
Back on my phone, I redoubled my efforts to find something sketchy about Gilbert.
Ah-ha, a newspaper article with his name in it.
I clicked on it and greedily read the title, “Two Local Teachers Nominated to be Named Texas Teacher of the Year.” I scanned the article, my heart sinking as I went. There was his name—as a nominee.
“You’re a teacher.”
Gilbert didn’t lift his eyes from his phone. “Was. I left to work as a youth counselor at a community center.” He glanced up, an eyebrow raised. “After I got my master’s degree.”
“Good for you,” I mumbled.
“Look at this, you have a page on the movie database. You do some acting, Eleanor?”
No, he couldn’t find that info. I glanced across the table and gave serious thought to lunging across it and tackling him for the phone.
“ Kangaroo’d Three ,” Gilbert said. “Three? They made three of these movies?”
Actually, five of them. With a groan, I dropped my face into my hands.
“A woman is kidnapped by a giant kangaroo that has been genetically modified in a lab,” he read aloud.
“To escape, she must survive on her wits while living inside the kangaroo’s pouch…
if she doesn’t fall for her captor first.” He smirked.
“Wow. How have I never heard of this? Surely it was nominated for awards.”
I’d been offered the role of the kidnappee three months after moving to Los Angeles.
The script had been terrible. The plot, terrible.
The director, terrible…and weird. But my boyfriend was convinced this would be my breakout role and it was my first paid acting job (a whopping five hundred dollars).
Up until then, I’d gone on about five million auditions.
Just me and every other tall blonde in a fifty-mile radius for a bit part in a cable TV show.
It had become clear even then that making a living acting was going to be much harder than I expected.
No one cared about my success in high school and community theater back in Oklahoma.
Aside from a starring role in a short movie for a film student, mostly to get something for my acting reel, I hadn’t had any luck.
Also, living in LA was expensive. So, I took the role. Spent a lot of time in a human-size wool pouch. When I wasn’t popping out to make moon eyes at my kidnapper.
“Do male kangaroos even have pouches?” Gilbert wondered aloud. I jerked my head up and glared at him.
“I don’t think so, now that you mention it,” Doug said.
“Okay, yes. I was in the movie. I’m not embarrassed.”
Yes, I was. My face had to be five shades redder than a fire truck. I quickly went back to my phone. There was another mention of Gilbert Dalton in an Austin paper. It announced the winners of the National Merit Scholarship in the area. And, yes, Gilbert’s name was on that list, too.
“Chris Sterns is your brother?” Gilbert asked. “ The Chris Sterns? From the Oklahoma Stars?”
I heaved a sigh. Sometimes—scratch that, most of the time—guys got weird when they found out this bit of information.
One of those men made it to the fourth date before I discovered he was a huge fan.
The creepy kind. The kind who had all of Chris’s stats memorized and wore his jersey to bed at night and tried to break into my phone to steal his number.
More than that, I’d lived under the shadow of Chris’s fame for years.
Even before he went pro, he was the perfect son, the perfect student, the perfect football player, the perfect everything.
He was even a freaking Eagle Scout. I loved him; he’d rescued me at one of the worst moments of my life.
But, gah, the pressure to live up to the legend?
“Yes, he’s my brother,” I said wearily. “So what?”
Gil’s head tilted to the side. He set his phone down and stared at me with something like curiosity. He gestured toward me. “What did you find out?”
“I’m still looking.” But every link I clicked that mentioned him, only made him look better.
In high school, he’d rescued a dog from a hot car by breaking the window and had been given a hero’s award by the local animal rescue.
In college, he started a community peer support program between college students and disabled adults.
Last year, he’d been featured in a local magazine for his work with underprivileged youths.
Whatever. Who cared what he looked like online. I didn’t know the guy in real life, and he was not moving into the house. I had Oliver to think about.
“You can’t just uproot your whole life and move here. Don’t you have a job, or something? A girlfriend? A goldfish?” I asked.
“I’m between jobs. We broke up two months ago. And no.”
“How are you going to afford to live then? Electricity, gas, food?”
His eyes darted to the left. “I have some money saved.”
“Don’t you have a lease or a mortgage or something?”
He shrugged. “I have it covered.”
I turned to Doug who was eating what had to be his seventh muffin. “He just has to live on the property, right? It doesn’t have to be in the actual house?”
“I suppose not,” he said slowly.
“What about a tent or a trailer or a sleeping bag on the lawn?” From the corner of my eye, I saw Gil straighten. His eyes drilled into the side of my head.
“As long as it was on the property, I suppose that would work.”
“Good.” I turned back to Gilbert. “You can stay in the backyard.” He opened his mouth, probably to argue with me but I cut him off. “I’m not letting a stranger move into my house.”
I stared at him, willed him to argue. But he just stared back, his big, dumb, National Merit brain working overtime. Finally, his face softened. Just a little. His eyes seemed a touch kinder or at least not as hard and indifferent as they had been. “Fine. I’ll stay in the backyard.”
“Really?”
“I’ve been camping before. I’ll survive.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but it was kind of a huge deal. He grabbed a backpack he’d brought with him and pushed his chair back.
“I…I…” I tamped down the panic again. Was this really happening? How would Oliver handle a strange man living in a tent in our backyard? Oh, who was I kidding? Oliver would take it in stride. I was the one who would freak out. I didn’t know this guy. I wasn’t even sure I liked him.
Even worse, I didn’t think he much liked me.
Here’s a little bit I’ve learned about myself in therapy—I like to be liked.
When I wasn’t liked, I tried harder to get liked.
I felt guilty and apologized for things that weren’t my fault.
In fact, I felt like it was my responsibility to make things right.
Looking back, I understood now it had all led to some pretty questionable choices and relationships where I was the one who did all the work to fix things.
In the end, all that came out of it was disaster.
Sunny said my official diagnosis was Grade A, certified People Pleaser.
It had been two long years of learning how not to take on the burden and responsibility of other people. And it was still there. It didn’t matter how much “self-awareness” I obtained. It would always be a struggle.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Doug shuffled more papers around and held out two envelopes, one to each of us. “Here’s what was left over from the estate after funeral expenses. It’s not much.”
Gilbert tucked the envelope in his backpack without opening it. “I’ll move in on Saturday.”
Holy forks, what had just happened?