Fix You (10 page)

             
“I’m sorry.” She twitched another apologetic smile. “I guess I didn’t want to admit it. But Will coming along…” she shook her head, “I want to spend more time with her. No way could I run off to UGA or Auburn and let her get raised in daycare.”

             
“But if it’s what you really wanted…”

             
“It’s not.” And the proof of how much she meant it was shining in her eyes. “I want my family. I want a
bigger
family – Will shouldn’t be an only child. I want you and me and our kids and Gram and Grandpa a ten minutes’ drive away when we need a babysitter for date nights.”

             
She was smiling, nothing sheepish about it anymore, and Tam went back to shaving, trying to keep his own grin at bay.

             
“I’ve only got one sister,” she continued, “and she tried to get us back together and…I dunno. I think she’s nuts, but she’s family. And I owe her.”

             
It went without saying that the Walker family as a whole was the most important force – the most important
anything
– in Tam’s life. They’d fed, loved and nurtured him; they’d grounded him, had kept him sane, had given him this revered girl he called wife and provided him with his own family. Maybe he was some sad sack, maybe he had too few of his own opinions about the rest of his life, but Jo could have told him she wanted to start a scuba diving school and he would have supported her efforts one-hundred percent.

             
“So,” he said, in a neutral tone, “you wanna buy a dilapidated mansion with your sister and turn it into an inn.”

             
“She’s not wrong about us having great credit. The loan won’t be a problem. Then we gotta hire a construction crew, though. Jesus. Like I said,
crazy
.”

             
Tam finished shaving, rinsed off his face and toweled it dry. Jo was watching him like she wanted him to assure her that no, she wasn’t actually insane. He propped his hip against the counter. “I’m already living the dream,” he said and her face started to fall. “All I care about now is making you and Will happy.” Her smile returned, grateful. “Is this what you really want? Scrap vet school and get into the hospitality business?”

             
She thought about it – even though she’d doubtless been thinking about it all week, she took one last moment to roll it through her mind. Then her eyes latched onto his and she nodded. “Don’t forget the more babies part.”

             
Tam smiled. “Can’t forget that.”

             
“Just not right now. I can’t swing a sledgehammer if I’m pregnant.”

**

              Jess added another sugar cube to her coffee and listened to a light set of feet coming down the stairs. It wasn’t Tyler, who was sitting across from her eating Corn Pops with his hands, which meant it could only be Jo. She hoped that the muffled sounds she’d heard coming through the wall the night before meant her sister was still mellow from whatever it was she and Tam had been doing and that her mood had improved.

             
She came into the kitchen in an excited rush, like she always had as a little girl, the ponytail she’d put her hair into already starting to come loose. She slowed her walk as she went up to the breakfast bar and leaned her forearms across it, like she was trying to look grown up and stoic. “I’m in,” she said, and Jess knew what she meant without asking.

             
“What about Tam?” Jess asked.

             
“He’s in too. You have full Wales cooperation.”

**

             
Jessica Mae Walker
and
Joanna Lynn Wales
in glittering, wet ink on the purchase offer had Beth toying anxiously with her necklace. “Girls,” she said in a low undertone, which wasn’t necessary considering Millie was just shy of deaf. “Are you
really
sure about this?”

             
Jess reminded herself that her mother was asking the requisite responsible question, that it changed nothing, but she shared another fast, uncertain glance with her sister anyway. “Yes, Mom,” she said, but Jo’s eyes were still a little red around the edges because she’d told her boss just an hour ago that she’d only be working until the end of the month.

             
“I’ll take this right to the seller,” Millie said in her bird wing voice, smiling. “And you know,” she added, “there’s no reason to wait the full thirty days for closing unless you just need it. We could bump it up to two weeks, I’m sure.”

             
Jess glanced to Jo again and got another semi-terrified look in return. “The sale’s not contingent on anything now that the financing’s already approved. Do we have to wait?”

             
“We need to line up a contractor,” Jo said.

             
“That won’t take a month. Let’s bump it up.”

**

              “We can’t find a contractor,” Jess said a week later at family Saturday brunch. It was only eleven-thirty but she’d splashed a healthy shot – or two – of Bailey’s into her coffee. “They’re all outrageously expensive and most of them wanted a deposit upfront.”

             
“Contractor?” Randy made a face over his chicken and waffles. “You don’t need a contractor. I told you I’d help. And your brothers will.”

             
“I don’t remember volunteering for that,” Mike protested.

             
“You haven’t seen it yet, Dad,” Jo sounded glum. “We’re gonna need professional help.”

             
“How much needs doing?” Jordan asked.

             
Jess took a fortifying sip of her coffee. “Everything. We had the water turned on today, but most of the plumbing’s not any good. There’s a hole in the roof I can see from the ground. And then there’s the walls and floors and…” She let out a long, loud breath. She felt like Jo had sounded two weeks before: disbelieving of her own mental health.

             
“So lemme at it,” Randy pressed.

             
“Dad, that’s really sweet, but it’s too much for you.”

             
“Why?” His chest swelled, pride now wounded. “You think I’m too old?”

             
“I didn’t say that - ”

             
“’Cause I’m not too old.”

             
“Dad, you’ve broken eight lawnmowers…that I know of,” Walt said and earned a scowl for it. “They should let a pro handle this.”

             
“
Did
I
volunteer?” Mike asked, looking to his wife for confirmation.

             
Delta had Evan in her lap and was letting him eat off her plate with his hands, a glob of jelly on her tidy white blouse, and rolled her eyes. “No, but you
should
have.”

             
Jess could feel the tension mounting around the table, layer by thin layer, her divorce and the aftershocks threatening to impact all of them. And then, with perfect timing, Ellie said, “I have just the contractor for you.”

             
Jo snapped her fingers. “That’s right; you guys finished out the basement.”

             
Ellie nodded. “He does great work and he’s affordable. Really nice guy. I’ll get you his number after we eat.”

             
And unfortunately, Ellie wasn’t the only one with something to share once brunch was over. Jess found herself cornered in the dining room with Walt once again, just the two of them out of earshot of the others, a concerned frown pressing grooves in Walt’s square face.

             
“I talked to Dylan,” he said as she stowed Mom’s napkin rings back in the china cabinet. “He says he’s sorry, Jess. He said he fucked up but you won’t listen to him when he tries to apologize.”

             
She snorted. “Were his pants on fire during this exchange? ‘Cause he was lying to you.”

             
“But that’s just it.” He put a hand against the glass front of the cabinet and leaned toward her. “I don’t think he was.”

             
“And what if he wasn’t?” she challenged, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she flashed a sharp look up to him. “Let me ask you something – if you found out that Gwen had been having some torrid, S&M affair with some hot young guy, would honesty after the fact mean a damn thing to you? If your wife, the mother of your children, had been naked and sweaty and writhing around with someone who wasn’t you, would an
apology
be enough?”

             
His expression grew dark and his adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

             
“No, it wouldn’t,” she said as she closed the drawer with a
thump
. “And he’s so sorry, huh? Has he quit seeing her?”

             
His silent stare was incriminating.

             
“You’ve spent
years
worrying about your siblings’ relationships. Why don’t you worry about your own and then maybe you and Gwen won’t need counseling.”

             
His jaw worked as he shoved away from the cabinet and put his back to her. “Bitch,” she thought she heard him mutter.

             
Truth hurts
, she thought, and reached absently into the back pocket of her shorts for the card Ellie had given her.

Chris Haley

Licensed Contractor

Remodeling – Indoor and Outdoor

              It was probably rude to call on a Saturday, but she didn’t have time to wait around till Monday. And if he became yet another name to add to the list of men who thought she was a bitch, better she find out before she hired the guy.

8

             
“
O
ne’s cool and the other one’s…not so much,”
Jordan Walker had warned of his sisters.
“But I guess I have to give the standard ‘be good to them or so help me God’ thing. So, yeah. Sorry in advance if they drive you nuts.”

             
In the fifteen years that he’d been redoing houses, Chris had never entered a new job with that kind of information. He wasn’t sure if he should be worried, or if he should laugh it off, so he settled for neither and went to a neutral place in his head as his GPS alerted him that his destination was five meters ahead on the right. “Thanks, doll,” he told the automated female voice as he reached up and switched off the Tom Tom.

             
The street was flanked by sprawling, million dollar lake houses, but the drive he turned up was two ruts in the grass, trees crowding close at its edges. It wasn’t the sort of thing he could see as attracting two women, but the house he saw as the forest fell away was. Or, at least, it had been, once upon a time.

             
The lawn looked like it had been too long and wet when it had been cut, all chewed up and clumped with the clippings. The little house off to the right didn’t look half bad, but the mansion – and it
was
that – had been left to decay and die. He’d seen worse, but this wasn’t pretty.

             
There was a late model black Tahoe and a gorgeous, cherry blue Chevrolet in the drive; the small woman with a kid on her hip and another at her side had to be one of the sisters. Chris parked his truck, killed the engine and went to meet her at the foot of the porch steps.

             
She was just barely over five feet, if even, with a shower of wavy, dark blonde hair down her back. The Timberlands were all that kept her white tank top and cutoffs from looking like a Gretchen Wilson song come to life, and the toddler on her hip was black-haired and blue-eyed and didn’t really look anything like her, nor did the little boy next to her.

             
“Chris, right?” she asked, and extended a tiny hand for him to shake. “I’m Jo Wales.”

             
“Nice to meet you.” Her grip was sure and her palm was callused; this was the “cool” sister. “I’m guessing this isn’t Jessica,” he said with a nod toward the little girl.

             
Jo grinned. “My daughter Willa,” she hefted the toddler up higher on her hip, “and Jess’s son Tyler.”

The little boy waved and said, “
Hi.”

“Hey, Jess!” Jo called. “He’s here.”

“Are you gonna fix the house?” Tyler asked, his eyes going out to Chris’s truck.

“
Gonna try to,” he said, and then the porch groaned and his eyes lifted to the door and the other sister.

Wow
was his first, unwanted thought. Thirtyish, she was taller than Jo, her bone structure more defined. Jeans and a loose black t-shirt did nothing to detract from the long and lean lines of her body. With her sun-kissed golden hair, she was the kind of woman that inspired automatic double-takes. She wasn’t sort of pretty, not subtly alluring, not the kind of girl who had to grow on a man. She was traffic-stopping, wolf-whistle, trip-over-your-own-tongue beautiful, and judging by her expression as she looked down at him from the top step, none of that beauty came with friendliness.

“You’re Chris?” she asked, hands settling on her hips.

You’re the uncool sister?
She looked so serious he wanted to grin. “Yeah.”

She nodded. “Good. Jessica.” Her head tilted back toward the house. “Come in and see.”

Jo stepped aside to let him pass, and whispered, “Prepare yourself,” to him under her breath.

As he would later learn, she wasn’t talking about the house.

**

             
Jordan’s contractor wasn’t the stereotypical slob with his ass crack showing, which was at least one mark in his favor. He was either late thirties or early forties, tall and big-shouldered like Mike, clean, his dark hair wanting to stand up on top, goatee neatly trimmed.
“He’s not creepy,”
Ellie had said, and no, he didn’t seem so, though Jess knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

             
He looked in every room, every closet, under every sink, behind every shredded shower curtain, making notes on a clipboard and muttering “whoa” every so often. Things were measured, plumbing was frowned at, old newspaper pages in corners were toed over and more rat droppings were found. In the long, long upstairs hall that was a dark tunnel of peeling indigo wallpaper and big blocks of light streaming through open bedroom doors and patterning the damaged hardwood, Chris tucked his pencil behind his ear. He gave her a cautious look, because, in addition to being generically friendly with her, he was cautious too, and Jess wondered what her lovely little brother had told the man about her.

             
“This is a big job,” he said, “but I don’t have to tell you that.”

             
“No,” she agreed. “Can you handle it?”

             
One of his eyebrows gave a little twitch. “I can if your checkbook can. This is gonna be a huge, expensive reno.”

             
No shit
, she thought, but nodded. “I won’t use sub-par materials, but anywhere we can save money, I want to. You’ll draw me up an estimate?”

             
His expression became apologetic. “I can, but it’ll only cover what I can see. Shit knows what I’m gonna find in the walls when I open ‘em up.”

             
“’Shit knows.’ Informative,” she muttered before she could stop herself, and his eyebrow did the twitch thing again. “Well…”

             
“Look, why don’t you girls talk to your husbands and you can get back to me when you decide.”

             
Jess shook her head. “No – there’s no husbands involved.” His eyes did an up/down sweep of her and she folded her arms across her chest. “Jo
has one
,” she amended coolly, “but this is our venture, so it’s our decision.”

             
He smiled – one of those obnoxious, disarming, little-kid smiles. “Okay, then.”

             
“Yes,” she said, thinking nothing she’d said was funny and warranted his too-familiar grin.

             
He checked his clipboard again; it was full of cramped tiny writing, all the house’s many, many flaws made all the more official. “Tell you what,” he said, “you gimme your email address and I’ll send you a copy of this. You can figure out which rooms are your top priority and we’ll start there and keep going for as long as you can afford to. I sub out plumbing and electrical, and I’ve got a two-man crew, but whatever you and your sister want to tackle yourselves will be stuff you don’t have to pay us for.”

             
Jess nodded. “We’re not afraid to get dirty.”

             
This time the eyebrow twitch and smile were a package deal. “Good to know,” Chris said, and Jess rolled her eyes when she realized her innuendo.

             
“Here,” she reached for his clipboard, “I’ll give you my email.”

             
Board and pen were passed; she wrote and handed back.

             
“If you want to go ahead, I can start next week,” he said, and her stomach was flooded with butterflies for some reason.

             
The house was a ruin, and she had this bright and shiny mental image of what it would look like eventually, but the thought of the transition – of the plaster dust and rat shit and holes in the roof; the rotting floorboards and insidious mold growth in the walls – left her almost breathless with nerves. This was an enormous undertaking, and if she couldn’t even make a relationship work, who was to say she could succeed here?

             
But she had always been proud, too proud for her own good, so she told Chris Haley the spiky-haired contractor “yes” and committed her mind to next week.