Del got up and left his cell behind. He sipped at his water as he meandered over to the kitchen. It was the only part of the old house he’d actually properly renovated when he moved about a year ago. There were all sorts of kitchen gadgets around, from a pressure cooker to a sous vide immersion circulator to a tabletop BBQ smoker in the corner of the counter.
There was a whole pantry full of other things, anything he could want while trying to write his fucking impossible cookbook.
That reminded him. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” He went to the plate of sashimi and saw the cucumber in the salad had started to weep and now the tuna sat in a puddle. “For fuck’s sake!”
He grabbed the plate and scraped everything into the trash. Then he cleaned the counters, and took the most delicate items he needed to handwash to the sink.
There were lights on at the O’Dwyer house past his backyard and the gully. He wondered idly what was going on there. A few days ago, he’d seen flashing lights headed to the O’Dwyers’. It wasn’t the first or the last time, not with how the sketchy people in town seemed to congregate there sometimes.
The last six months had been more active in that regard. It was hard not to notice when the only way to the O’Dwyers’ was the same road Del’s house was on.
There were kids there, which worried Del sometimes. They weren’t that old, although his mother had said something about an older boy that had left years ago.
Sighing, Del rinsed the dishes and dried them. It wasn’t his problem, those children. That was what their mother and the CPS were for.
He should’ve fixed himself something to eat for dinner, but he didn’t feel like it. Part of him wanted to start a big pot of the Stew out of spite, but he didn’t have any Guinness in the fridge. It wasn’t Stew without Guinness.
Instead of cooking, he wandered over to his living room and plopped down on the couch. There wouldn’t be anything on TV, but suddenly the silence of the big old house felt too much, so he turned it on anyways.
* * * *
A few years into their marriage, Del had said he wanted kids, eventually. Clyde had laughed it off, saying Del already had Trim, and that Clyde himself wasn’t father material.
Then, about two years ago, Del had brought it up again. He was ready to have someone else run his kitchen and settle down, make a family. He wanted to adopt, knowing that there were a lot of kids in the system that needed families.
Clyde had told him that he wasn’t going to take on anyone else’s children, and that he didn’t want kids, anyway. Then, in another sentence, he’d added that he thought they should open up their marriage, because he didn’t feel fulfilled with Del’s long days in the kitchen.
The next day, their hostess, Jamila, had come to Del and told him she couldn’t hold it in anymore, she just had to tell Del what was going on behind Del’s back between Clyde and Diana.
Everyone had known, except Del. It had gone on for almost a year at that point. Right under his nose, his husband he loved dearly, who he considered love of his life, was fucking their financial manager and friend.
Del’s world had shattered into pieces. He’d fallen into a pit of despair and depression and only the fact that he’d immediately had a place to hide had helped with that and prevented him from digging that hole deeper.
At first, he’d gone to stay at a hotel with Clyde’s money. He’d made sure Trim would run until he got his life back in order. He managed to hold on to his wits and his sanity with the help of Paul, but once the divorce was final, he escaped to Enterprise, because that’s where he’d felt safe as a kid.
The house was his grandparents’ place, originally. The thought of that his Irish grandma, Nanna, had cooked her version of the Guinness stew in this very kitchen decades ago made something in him settle. His mom had grown up in this house, along with her six siblings.
Del’s childhood home was on the other side of town, in a slightly nicer neighborhood, but since his parents had moved to Colorado to be closer to Bernie’s family, they’d sold their house and Del had bought Nanna’s house for safekeeping.
From the moment he got the final paperwork for the divorce, it took Del three days to walk up the stairs of Nanna’s house and start fresh. Bernie and Abigail had come to help him out with making the house livable.