Free The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews Page A

started?”
    He laughed. “You’re tougher than you look, aren’t you?”
    “We’ll see.”
    He half-carried and half-dragged my suitcase up what was left of the driveway, cursing softly as branches and vines slapped at our faces and snagged on our clothes. “You’re going to have to get a bush hog in here first thing,” Tee muttered, holding a thick branch aside to let me pass.
    “First you’ll have to tell me what a bush hog is,” I said, standing at the foot of the front steps and staring up at the house.
    “It’s kind of like a tractor,” he explained, stopping beside me. He glanced down at his wristwatch.
    “It’s after six. Full dark. According to my dad, Ella Kate goes to bed with the chickens.”
    “She keeps chickens?” I had a visual image of hens roosting in the rafters of my new bedroom.
    He chuckled. “You really are a city girl. She goes to bed really early. Gets up early too. With any luck, Ella Kate’s already tucked in her bed, fast asleep. And the two of you can have a proper meeting at breakfast.”
    When we got to the front door, I took out the key and fitted it into the lock. The doorknob turned, with some effort on my part, but the door wouldn’t budge. I gave Tee a worried look. “Is there a dead bolt?”
    “Don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. If Dad told Ella Kate you were coming over tonight, she just might have rigged up something to keep you out. I wouldn’t put it past the old turkey.”
    Another poultry reference. Unsettling.
    “Is there another door?”
    “In the kitchen. Around the back of the house. Are you absolutely positive you want to do this? The Econo Lodge has a cocktail lounge. It’s still happy hour…”
    I pushed a strand of hair behind my ears. “This is my family’s property. I have every right to be here. Your father said so himself. You can go. But I intend to stay. You don’t happen to have a flashlight in the car, do you?”
    He sighed and held up his key ring, which held a tiny penlight.
    We left the suitcase and haltingly made our way around to the back of the house. The shrubbery was sparser on the side of the house, but our way was littered with all manner of junk—old garbage cans, garden equipment, wooden crates full of empty Coke bottles, beat-up bicycles, even the rusting carcass of an ancient Volkswagen bug propped up on concrete blocks and draped with kudzu vines.
    “Hey,” Tee said, waving the penlight over the bug. “This looks just like my dad’s old VW. I wrecked it when I was seventeen—”
    “Who’s out there?” A high-pitched voice pierced the darkness, startling both of us. “I hear ya, you know. I’m old, but I’m not deaf. Speak up now, or I’ll get my shotgun. I can use it too.”
    The dog started barking, staccatolike.
    “Christ,” Tee said, under his breath. “Miss Ella Kate! It’s me, Tee Berryhill.”
    “Who’s that? Shorty, hush!”
    The dog stopped barking.
    Tee grabbed my hand and began pulling me toward the back of the house, where a yellow light shone down on a small porch stoop.
    Ella Kate Timmons held up a withered hand to shade her eyes fromthe glare of the porch light. Her white hair stood up wildly around her head, like a barbed-wire halo. She was dressed in oversize men’s blue flannel pajamas, with an old green army fatigue jacket as a bathrobe. In one hand she held the cocker spaniel’s leash, and in the other she held what looked like the shotgun Carter Berryhill had mentioned.
    “Miss Ella Kate,” Tee said breathlessly. “It’s me. Tee Berryhill. Carter’s son. We didn’t mean to wake you up.”
    “Well, you did,” she said waspishly, jerking on the dog’s leash. The dog whined and strained against it.
    We’d been edging slowly toward the back porch. The old lady took a step backward when she caught sight of me.
    “Hello,” I said. “I’m Dempsey. Remember?”
    “What’s she doing here?” she demanded, turning toward Tee. “I don’t want her here. I told your daddy