Page 80 of The Fix-Up

“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 grownman 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.”

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