“He’s here, actually.” Before Bernie could jump into conclusions, Del added, “They all managed to squeeze into the guest room last night.”
“Oh…well, can you put him on?”
“Sure.” Del held the phone to Justin. “She wants to talk to you.”
The sheer panic in Justin’s eyes would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been so real. “Why?” he mouthed.
“It’s okay,” Del mouthed back and thrust the phone closer to him.
Justin took it like he might’ve held a tarantula and put it on his ear. “Uh, hi, this is Justin.”
Del drank his coffee and watched Justin go through a gamut of emotions, rarely speaking, other than answering some questions like what size might the kids be. The expression on his face was heartbreaking, and at one point tears spilled from his eyes, and he angrily wiped his cheeks.
“Y-yeah, all right. I…yeah, you can send it to Del’s. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”
He ended the call and put the phone on the table with shaking hands.
“And that,” Del said, “is what it feels like to have a real family.”
* * * *
Justin insisted on taking the kids home that day, so they left with a new old toy each. They actually walked, another thing Justin insisted on. Del let them go.
They’d told the kids to put away the other toys that were now in their crate under the living room window. Del sighed and rubbed his face. He was already so in over his head emotionally with Justin and his siblings. He couldn’t help it, though.
It broke his fucking heart to let them go back to that horrible house of theirs, when Del’s house was an actual home. Maybe he should ask them all to move in. It would make lugging the kids around easier, too.
He was pretty sure that Justin would say no, though. He didn’t want handouts, and people being kind to him overwhelmed him. All because he was an O’Dwyer, and that was a name everyone in town knew and half of the people actively despised. Maybe it was for a good reason, after all Del could remember the worst of the lot from his own youth.
There had always been O’Dwyers, barely going to school no matter what the grade, ending up in petty theft, drugs, pregnant before they should’ve been, dealing drugs, selling their bodies once everything else was gone, neglecting their children…It had been an endless cycle for most of the O’Dwyers for generations now, and frankly Del didn’t blame Justin a bit for wanting to do anything he could to keep the little ones from falling into that lifestyle.
He idly wondered if there were a lot of young people like Justin who were suddenly put into this sort of situation. People too inexperienced having to take care of siblings or maybe ill parents, a house, all the chores and feeding their people and—wait…
Del blinked. Justin didn’t know how to cook, he’d said as much. There had to be a lot of people who didn’t know how to cook and ended up feeding their charges unhealthy things, right?
There were people who did boxed mac and cheese because that was the easiest and cheapest thing. It wasn’t the healthiest, but that was all they could afford, right?
And there was Del who had just made the kids what Justin had called “fancy mac” and they’d loved it once they got used to the taste of the fresh ingredients. When you looked at the total cost, it wasn’t that much to begin with, but Del could probably cut more of it if he put his mind to it.
* * * *
Twenty minutes from that thought, he was on his way to the biggest grocery store within an hour’s distance. It was luckily attached to a mall, so he could do his food shopping and a bit more than that from the same location.
He found his way to the bookstore first, knowing that he wanted to check out the potential competition. Sure, there was a lot of it, but he could still do his thing his own way. Hell, he still got fan emails from his cable show days and that show hadn’t run for more than one season anyways.
He picked up some cookbooks that were close to what he was considering doing, a couple of kids’ cookbooks for the little ones, and of course, a selection of actual children’s books. He found age appropriate ones with the assistance of a very enthusiastic salesperson, who hopefully got some sort of commission for it, because frankly the money Del spent there was a bit obscene. He’d also picked up a book for Justin, but he wasn’t completely sure about giving it to him. Maybe, if he felt Justin was in the right mood to take it as a present and not a criticism.