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 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. 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.