|
Justin O'Dwyer is 19. Four days ago, his mother died of a drug overdose, and now Justin is back in Enterprise, Oregon, trying to figure out how to raise the younger siblings he's afraid of losing to the foster system. Justin is completely out of his depth. Harper is six, and hates him. Wyatt is four and doesn't remember him. And baby Scarlett, at fourteen months, has never even met her big brother before. When Scarlett gets sick and won't stop screaming, and when Harper runs off in the middle of the night, Justin is at the end of his tether. In desperation, he knocks on a neighbor's door begging for help. Del Abbot is 38, and living in his grandparents' old place in Enterprise after his marriage broke down and he lost his restaurant in the divorce. He's a chef, even had his own show on cable for a while, but now he's looking for a new start, if he could just figure out what exactly that entails. When the O'Dwyer family barrels into his life one night, Del can't refuse to help. What begins as a trip to the hospital becomes a regular child-minding gig while Justin struggles to find his feet. And the more time Del spends with Justin, the more they both want more than friendship. But small town life comes with its own bigotry, and, in Justin's case, that bigotry has always been close to home. When an act of violence threatens to destroy the small family they've built, both Justin and Del need to put aside their pasts and reach for their future together. |
The writing is amazing, the characters wonderfully complex, and the storyline absolutely riveting. This writing duo of Tia Fielding and Lisa Henry is fantastic, taking the reader on one hell of an incredible journey. The character growth is astounding in this hurt/comfort read.
- Amy's (Mostly) MM Romance Reviews
- Amy's (Mostly) MM Romance Reviews
An excerpt from Family Recipe:
Scarlett 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 fucking 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 fuck 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 fuck’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 shit 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 fucking 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 dialled 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. Shit. 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. Fuck 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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.
Scarlett 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 fucking 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 fuck 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 fuck’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 shit 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 fucking 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 dialled 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. Shit. 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. Fuck 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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.