Family Kitchen Box Set

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Scarlett wouldn’t stop screaming, and Justin didn’t know what to do. He left her in her rickety crib in the room that smelled like maybe something had crawled in between the walls and died—another thing he hadn’t got around to figuring out yet—and dug frantically through the bathroom cabinet hoping there was some baby Tylenol in there or something, and found only dusty cotton wool, a pack of Band-Aids, a tube of toothpaste as hard as cement, and a bottle of Calamine lotion he couldn’t even shift because something had been spilled in there are some point and now the bottle was stuck like glue to the shelf of the cabinet.

He slammed the cabinet shut, rattling the cracked mirror that was set into the door. His stark reflection stared back at him, wild-eyed and frantic. He was losing it. He was f*****g losing it, it was the middle of the night, and Scarlett was still screaming.

Four days.

It had only been four days since he’d got back into town, and he was already proving what he knew everybody thought: that there was no way in hell Justin O’Dwyer could keep those kids together. No way he wouldn’t f**k it up, because everyone in Enterprise knew that the O’Dwyers were nothing but trash and Justin was no different than the rest of them.

From the room next door, Scarlett’s wails sharpened in pitch and Justin’s eyes stung.

“Okay,” he said, hurrying back into the bedroom. Scarlett was sitting in her crib, her thin onesie soaked in sweat. Her fingers were clenched tightly around the bars of the crib and her hair, usually wispy and downy, was plastered to her head as though Justin had just lifted her out of the bath. “Okay.”

A bath.

He could do that. He had vague memories of being sick as a kid, and Mom running him a bath to try to get his temperature down.

Justin lifted Scarlett into his arms, stepping back carefully to avoid his still-unpacked suitcase lying on the floor between the crib and the bed. Scarlett screamed again, her hot little body like a furnace against his chest. She pushed against him like she was trying to get away, and Justin leaned down by the bed and let her go. She flopped against the mattress and cried weakly as he unfastened her onesie and then her diaper. Then he carried her into the bathroom.

He held her on his hip as he ran the water in the bath, shifting from side to side hoping the rhythm would soothe her, but in the cramped confines of the little bathroom her cries seemed even louder than before.

Justin closed his eyes and tried not to hear them.

A week ago he’d had a normal life. He’d been just about to take his GED Preparation Practice Test at the community college in Pendleton when he got the call. Four hours after that he’d been back in Enterprise like he’d never left this shitty corner of Oregon to begin with, looking down at his mother’s body and telling the guy with the forms that yes, that was her. That was his mom, though she hadn’t looked right, unmoving and expressionless and gone in ways that Justin still hadn’t got his mind around. That was his mom with her lank dark hair, her thin mouth, and that faint scar under her right eye from when her cousin threw a rock at her when she was a kid. That was his mom with the track marks up both arms, even though last time he’d spoken to her she’d promised she was clean.

For the baby, she’d said. She was staying clean for the baby. And she’d sounded like she meant it too, so Justin hadn’t pointed out he’d heard the same when Harper was born, and when Wyatt was born. He’d been hearing her tell herself that this time would be different his whole life. It was why he left.

It was why the kids didn’t even know him.

Harper had barely been walking when Justin had packed his bags and left home at fifteen. She said she didn’t remember him, and he didn’t know if that was true or not because she yelled it like an accusation, like a reason to hate him, and maybe it was. Harper was six now. Wyatt was four, and Justin had only met him once or twice before, though sometimes Mom had sent him pictures that he’d saved on his phone. And Scarlett was only fourteen months old, and Justin hadn’t even held her until four days ago.

He didn’t know these kids. He didn’t know how to be a big brother, let alone a goddamn parent.

Scarlett’s screams were all the proof he needed of that.

Justin held her awkwardly while he leaned over the tub to twist the tap off, and then tested the temperature. It was lukewarm, which he thought was right. He lifted Scarlett into the tub and set her down in the water.

Her screams hit a different pitch this time.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He repeated it like a mantra, like it was the only thing tethering him to the scant remains of his composure. He felt like screaming too, but he didn’t get to, did he? His eyes stung again, and he hated himself for the sudden fierce rush of resentment that rose up him.

She was a baby, for f**k’s sake. She wasn’t doing it on purpose.

He scooped water with his hands and dribbled it over her. She threw her head back and wailed. Jesus, she was still burning up, and he couldn’t even take her temperature because he didn’t have a thermometer.

Yesterday he’d filled out a bunch of forms at the DHS Office in town for payments and food stamps and a bunch of other s**t he couldn’t remember now, Mom’s death certificate and his ID spread out all around him while the kids’ social worker talked him through it all. Everything was so f*****g complicated, and Justin still didn’t have any money in his bank account for the kids because everything all took so much time to sort out. But the social worker—Emily—had made some calls and at least got some stuff from the food bank, so Justin had been managing, except now Scarlett was sick and he didn’t know what to do.

Scarlett shrieked and beat her little hands against the water.

This wasn’t working.

Justin turned around to tug a towel off the rail and startled.

Wyatt was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, two fingers shoved in his mouth, staring. Wyatt was dark-haired and dark-eyed like Mom.

“Hey, Wyatt,” Justin said, his voice croaking. “Go and get your coat and your shoes, buddy. We’re going to the hospital.”

Wyatt didn’t move. He just stared.

The police said Harper had found Mom when she got home from school, and she’d dialed 911. Scarlett had been left crying in her crib, and Wyatt had been sitting on the couch with Mom the whole time. The police said it might have been hours. Maybe…maybe if Justin had been living in town still, maybe if the kids actually knew who he was, it wouldn’t have happened like that.

Justin scooped Scarlett out of the bath and wrapped the towel around her. She was still screaming, still hitting that pitch that made his skull rattle. “Wyatt, go get your coat and your shoes.”

Wyatt pressed tightly against the doorjamb as Justin swept past him with Scarlett in his arms.

Justin lay Scarlett on the bed and refastened her diaper. Then he tried to jam her flailing limbs into her onesie again and get it buttoned up. He was pulling her fist through the end of a sleeve when he became aware of the kid standing in the doorway.

“Wyatt—” He turned and saw it was Harper. She had a face like thunder, as wild as her dark coils of hair. “Harper, Scarlett’s sick. We gotta take her to the hospital. Go get your coat and—”

Harper jutted out her chin. “No!”

“Harper, we—”

“I don’t want to!” she yelled at him and stomped back toward the tiny room she shared with Wyatt.

Jesus. Justin couldn’t do this. He couldn’t deal with this. When was it his turn to scream or to yell and stomp or…or whatever the hell it was that Wyatt was doing? He lifted a still screaming Scarlett into his arms, and walked through to the kitchen, the floorboards creaking under his feet.

He grabbed his car keys off the kitchen table. “Wyatt! Harper!”

His voice cracked and he hated it.

He picked up his phone as well. s**t. It was dead. Stupid cheap piece of crap phone. The battery drained like it was a race to the bottom every time, and Justin had forgotten to put it on charge earlier.

Wyatt slipped into the kitchen, a silent little ghost. He was wearing his coat zipped up over his pajamas. His shoes were on the wrong feet.

“Harper!”

She glared at him as she stomped into the kitchen, but at least she was wearing her coat and shoes as well. f**k her temper; Justin was going to take this as a win.

“Okay, let’s get in the car,” he said, wincing when he thought of how the old junker had almost died several times on the drive back to Enterprise from Pendleton. It was pretty much held together with duct tape and prayer, which had been fine when he’d been living on his own. Except now he needed something reliable, right? And something safer.

Just another f*****g thing to add to the list.

The car was parked in the back yard of the house, pulled around onto the dirt because the front door of the house was a pain in the ass and jammed, so everyone used the back kitchen door instead.

Justin ushered Harper and Wyatt down the back steps and pulled the door shut behind him. He locked it, and then carried Scarlett to the car and strapped her into the baby seat. She was still screaming.

Wyatt and Harper climbed in the back.

Justin got in the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition and turned it.

Nothing.

He tried it again.

Nothing, not even a splutter.

Justin blinked, his eyes stinging, and stared through the cracked windshield and up into the dark night sky. His chest ached, and he fought the urge to break down into tears. He just couldn’t catch a f*****g break, could he? Just couldn’t have something go right, just once? And now here he was, sitting in a car that refused to start, in the middle of the night, while Scarlett screamed and screamed and screamed.

Justin had never felt like more of a f*****g failure in his life.

And then, just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, Harper pushed open the back door of the car and ran.

* * * *

The O’Dwyer house was at the end of a dirt road on the southern side of Enterprise. It had been a farm once, way back when, but the land had got parceled out and sold off over the years until it was nothing more than a patch of dirt with the house on it, surrounded by vine maples. There was a shallow gully edged by Pacific ninebarks that ran along the back of the property and filled with water when the snow melted in the spring, but was dry in the summer. There were a couple of rusted out cars down the back of the yard that had been there as long as Justin could remember. He didn’t know who they’d ever belonged to, but he guessed it was the raccoons now.

“Harper!” he yelled, holding Wyatt tightly by the hand. “Harper, get back here!” From the car, Scarlett was still screaming. A part of Justin wanted to slam the doors shut on her just to try to block out the sound. “Harper!”

She hadn’t run back into the house. She had to be hiding somewhere close by, surely? Or she was a braver kid at six than Justin had been to dash off into the trees in the middle of the night. Justin had always been scared of the monsters in the dark.

“Harper! Please! Scarlett needs the hospital!”

Although how he was going to get here there was the next f*****g problem, wasn’t it? He’d charge his phone and call for an ambulance if he had to, but even if he was allowed to ride with them, what was he supposed to do with Harper and Wyatt? How had Mom managed to hold this s**t together for so long when Justin was losing it after only four days?

She didn’t, an acerbic voice in the back of his head told him. You really think she even noticed if the kids got sick?

He remembered the lukewarm bath she’d given him that time, years and years ago. She’d noticed once. She’d been a mom once.

“Harper!” he yelled again, and this time he saw a flash of light color through the trees: Harper’s pajama pants.

Justin tugged Wyatt over to the car while he got Scarlett out of her seat. Then, holding a squirming, screaming Scarlett on his hip and grasping Wyatt’s hand firmly, he set off into the trees after Harper.

Don’t trip, he told himself as he half-skidded into the gully, pulling Wyatt behind him. Don’t f*****g trip.

He was at the end of his tether now, and every one of Scarlett’s wails was like nails on a goddamn chalkboard. He was scared, and he was frustrated, and he was so f*****g angry at Harper right now—and at Mom, because this was all her fault—and hot tears burned his eyes as he strode through the darkness, leaves crunching under the thin rubber soles of his sneakers.

He hadn’t asked for any of this, but he was trying his f*****g hardest, okay? He was trying his hardest, but it just wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough.

All of his anger drained away when he reached Harper at the end of the gully where the sides flattened out and the gully became nothing more than a small dip in the land at the edge of a field. Harper was sitting there beside a tree stump, her back stubbornly turned, and her arms clasped around her knees.

Justin had a sudden flash of memory. He’d been fifteen, and Harper must have only been about two. He could remember packing her teddy bears and her dolls into a bag and bringing them down here. Setting them up on the tree stump so they could all have a picnic together. Drinking water out of the cups he’d brought from the kitchen, and calling it a tea party. And Harper’s face lit up with a grin as she babbled away at him.

He’d left not long after that, because he couldn’t take being around Mom anymore. Mom and her string of “boyfriends”, each one worse than the last. He hadn’t run away exactly. He’d stayed in contact. Just, it was better to crash on some friend’s couch than stay in the house when he and Mom were fighting so much back then.

Harper said she couldn’t remember him, and maybe that was true, but Justin remembered those tea parties at the old tree stump with sudden, stinging clarity.

“Harper,” Justin said now. “We have to take Scarlett to the hospital.”

Harper twisted around and sneered. “How? Your dumb car won’t even start!”

“I don’t…” Justin looked out across the field, to the old Abbot place. There hadn’t been anyone living there in that old farmhouse long as Justin could remember, but it had always been called the Abbot place. Small towns had long memories like that. Except now, through the line of trees, branching shifting in the breeze, Justin caught a glimpse of light. “Is there someone living at the Abbot place now?”

Harper climbed to her feet, brushing leaves off her ass. “Some guy.”

“Okay,” Justin said. “Hold your brother’s hand.”

Harper screwed her face up. “Why?”

“Just do it, please!”

“You can’t tell me what to do!”

Fuck. She was six going on sixteen, and Justin really wasn’t in the mood to deal with her bullshit tantrum right now. Not with Scarlett still screaming in his ear.

“Hold it!” Justin snapped.

Harper glowered and grabbed Wyatt’s hand. “I hate you!”

Justin didn’t bother answer her. He dropped Wyatt’s other hand and grabbed Harper’s instead. She was more of a flight risk than he was.

He headed for the Abbot house, pulling the kids behind him across the field. Harper dug her heels in, and Justin wrenched her to keep her moving. On the end of the line, Wyatt stumbled and fell down onto his knees. He yelped—the only sound Justin had heard him make in the last four days—and that was it right there. That was the straw that broke Justin.

Scarlett was screaming and Harper was throwing a tantrum and now Wyatt was crying—pulling in soft little gulps of air as tears streamed down his face.

“You hurt him!” Harper yelled, pulling free of Justin only to start pushing and punching at him. “You hurt Wyatt!”

And Justin was done. He couldn’t do this anymore. He’d been stupid to think he could in the first place. He couldn’t look after the kids. He couldn’t keep them safe. He was just what everyone in town had always said he was. Just another useless piece of s**t O’Dwyer.

Justin fixed on the light at the Abbot house and headed toward it, still clutching a screaming Scarlett. He looked back once, blinking through his tears, to see that Wyatt was shuffling after him and Harper was holding his hand tightly.

The Abbot house loomed closer. The porch light was on, and Justin stumbled toward it. It looked nice, nicer than he remembered. It had been repainted since he’d seen it last, and there was a porch swing now. The golden glow of the light was welcoming, and Justin felt drawn to it, this beacon in the dark.

He just…

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. He was drowning and desperate and that porch light was the only thing keeping him on his feet right now.

He climbed the porch steps, sucking in a shaking, juddering breath. He pushed the doorbell, and banged on the door for good measure, and all the while Scarlett screamed and screamed and screamed and an awful, dark part of Justin just wanted to clamp a hand over her mouth until she shut the f**k up, and he hated her, and he hated his Mom, and he hated himself most of all.

And Justin didn’t know—he couldn’t know—what sort of person was behind the door, and he didn’t even f*****g care anymore, because all that mattered was that he couldn’t do this.

The door opened slowly, and Justin didn’t even get a look at the man through his tears before he was shoving a screaming Scarlett in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sinking down onto the porch. He buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. Please help me.”

And then he burst into tears.