The Fixer (The Fixer #1)(4)

“Like hell we can’t!” I bolted to my feet.

My grandfather slammed his palm into the table. “Language, Theresa!”

Just like that, I was me again, if only for the moment.

“Give us a minute, Tess,” Ivy ordered.

“Go on, Bear.” My grandfather looked old suddenly—and very, very tired. In that instant, I would have done anything he asked. I would have done anything to have him back.

I left them alone in the kitchen. In the living room, I paced as the minutes ticked by. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Around the furniture, in little figure eights, from one side of the room to the other.

“You used to do that when you were little.” Ivy appeared in the doorway, hovering there for a moment before taking a seat on the couch. “You’d do loops around Mom’s feet, the coffee table. Other babies learned to walk. You learned to pace.” She smiled slightly. “It drove her nuts.”

Ivy and I had only lived in the same house for that one year, when I was a baby and she was a senior in high school. I wished sometimes that I could remember it, but even if I could, she’d still be a stranger—one who threatened everything I’d worked so hard to protect.

“You should have called me when things got bad, Tess.”

Called her? I should have picked up a phone and called her, when she couldn’t even be bothered to visit?

“I’m handling it, Ivy.” I cursed myself, cursed the guidance counselor for making the call. “We’re fine.”

“No, sweetie, you’re not.”

She didn’t get to come here, after years, and tell me I wasn’t fine. She didn’t get to insert herself into our lives, and she didn’t get to call me sweetie.

“There’s a treatment center in Boston,” she continued calmly. “The best in the country. There’s a waiting list for the inpatient facility, but I made some calls.”

My stomach twisted sharply. Gramps loved this ranch. He was this ranch. It wouldn’t survive without him. I’d given up everything—track, friends, the hope of ever getting a good night’s sleep—to keep him here, to keep things running, to take care of him, the way he’d always taken care of me.

“Gramps is fine.” I set my jaw in a mutinous line. “He gets confused sometimes, but he’s fine.”

“He needs a doctor, Tessie.”

“So take him to a doctor.” I swallowed hard, feeling like I’d already lost. “Figure out what we need to do, what I need to do, and then bring him home.”

“You can’t stay here, Tess.” Ivy reached for my hand. I jerked it back. “You’ve been taking care of him,” she continued softly. “Who’s been taking care of you?”

“I can take care of myself.”

The set of her jaw matched my own. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“She’s right, Bear.” I looked up to see Gramps standing in the doorway. “Don’t you worry about me, girlie,” he ordered. He was lucid—and intractable.

“You don’t have to do this, Gramps,” I told him. My words fell on deaf ears.

“You’re a good girl, Tess,” he said gruffly. He met my sister’s eyes and something passed unspoken between them. After a long moment, Ivy turned back to me.

“Until we get things settled, I want you to come back with me.” She held up a hand to cut off my objections. “I’ve talked to a school in DC. You start on Monday.”





CHAPTER 4

“I’d tell you that you can’t stay mad forever,” Ivy commented, “but I’m pretty sure you’d take that as a challenge.”

I hadn’t spoken to my sister once since we’d checked my grandfather into the facility in Boston. She kept telling me how nice it was, how highly thought of the specialists were, how often we could go to visit. None of that changed the fact that we left him there. I left him. He would wake up in the middle of the night, disoriented, and I wouldn’t be there. He would frantically start looking for the grandmother who’d died before I was even born, and I wouldn’t be there.

He would have good days, and I wouldn’t be there.

If the silent treatment was getting to Ivy, she showed no sign of it as we navigated the DC airport. Her heels clicked against the tile as she stepped off the escalator and glided into the kind of graceful power walk that made everyone else in the airport look twice and get out of her way. She paused for an instant when we came to a row of men in black suits holding carefully lettered signs. Chauffeurs. At the very end of the line was a man wearing a navy blue T-shirt and ripped jeans.

There was a hint of stubble on his suntanned face and a pack of cigarettes in his left hand. In his right hand he, too, held a carefully lettered sign. But instead of writing his client’s last name, he’d opted for: PAIN IN THE *%$&@.

Ivy stalked up to him and handed him her carry-on. “Cute.”

He smirked. “I thought so.”

She rolled her eyes. “Tess, meet Bodie. He was my driver and personal assistant, but as of five seconds ago, he’s fired.”

“I prefer ‘Jack-of-All-Trades,’ ” Bodie interjected. “And I’m only fired until there’s a female you can’t sweet-talk or a law you won’t br—”