‘All right, this is rigged.’ Jeremy frowns. ‘I should be worth more than Sam. I cook! I specifically made you a salted caramel latte last night.’
‘But I don’t have one right now,’ Moxie says. ‘So it doesn’t register on this scale.’
Jeremy shoves back his chair and heads for the kitchen. ‘Blackmail.’
Moxie doodles a butterfly on the whiteboard, humming softly to herself. Monopoly forgotten, Jack looms behind her, all folded arms speckled with house paint.
His glare levels mountains. ‘Why are you rating Sam so high? Do you have a crush?’
Sam’s unpicker slips and he nearly stabs his own hand.
Moxie’s lemon frown is back. ‘The real question to ask, Jack, is why are you so annoying?’
‘I still love you despite your faults, dearest,’ Jeremy calls from the kitchen, popping the lid off the cocoa powder.
‘Shut up, Jeremy.’ Jack’s mouth tips down at the corners and he looks surprisingly like Moxie. ‘This scale is complete bull—’
Their father’s voice thunders from upstairs. ‘Jack.’
Jack slams his hand against the wall. ‘THIS HOUSE IS BUGGED.’
Upstairs, the baby wakes up with a howl followed by flying footsteps. Mr De Lainey, wearing pyjama pants and huge reading glasses, materialises at the top of the stairs like a force of power. He’s all muscles and sinew and Sam decides he’s still terrified of him.
‘Jack,’ the De Lainey father snaps. ‘My room. Now.’
‘I get in trouble for everything.’ Jack storms towards the stairs. ‘You lot could murder someone and stuff their guts in the freezer and get away with it.’
‘There go my weekend plans,’ Jeremy says.
Jack angles his body so his father can’t see and shoots his siblings a rude gesture. Then he stomps upstairs.
Jeremy reappears with a tray full of mugs, steam curling over the rims and marshmallows bobbing. He grins like a delighted Cheshire Cat. ‘Soooo … who has a crush?’
‘Shut up.’ Moxie takes a mug and sits next to Sam.
Jeremy and Grady exchange smirks.
‘Sam is a lovely shade of red,’ Grady says.
‘Is your brain the size of a pea?’ Moxie stabs material. ‘He’s sunburnt.’
She cuts a sideways glance at Sam. He wants to whisper, do you have a crush? But his tongue is stuck, his breathing shallow. It’d be so much worse if she did.
Boys like him don’t get the girl. They go to jail.
Sam sits on the floor, tangled in patterns and pins, with a measuring tape around his neck like a scarf and a bowl of cereal perched precariously atop several bolts of fabric. It’s seven thirty in the morning. He wears Moxie’s jeans and one of Jeremy’s shirts and Moxie specifically wrote honeyed oat granola on the shopping list because it’s his favourite.
He’s so caught up in wrestling a pattern piece on to the right fold that he doesn’t notice someone’s stumbled down the stairs until a bone-rattling sneeze startles Sam into looking up.
Mr De Lainey has sunk to the bottom step, one hand on the banister and another clutching a tissue to streaming eyes. He’s a mountain of a man, but flus don’t discriminate. Sam’s usual response to seeing Mr De Lainey is to quietly vanish, but this time he has a twinge of sympathy.
Mr De Lainey catches his eye and croaks, ‘You’re here early.’
I never left.
Sam is saved from fumbling an excuse as Moxie stomps downstairs with the baby on her hip and a brittle frown.
‘Dad,’ she says, ‘we’re totally out of food. We’re on the verge of starvation and – wow, you look awful.’
Mr De Lainey proves her point by sneezing. ‘Sorry, sweetie. I meant to go … go …’ He’s lost to the rapidly disintegrating tissue and another sneezing fit.
‘That,’ Moxie says, hand on hip while the baby chews her necklace, ‘is because you don’t take care of yourself. Lemon tea and bed.’
‘Moxie, I’ll be fine—’
‘Seriously, am I the only voice of reason around here?’
Sam collects his empty cereal bowl and makes for the kitchen. He hesitates, caution towards adults battering against wanting to do something nice for a man who’s only ever been kind, and then he stuffs his nervousness in his back pocket and puts the kettle on. He fetches teabags, lemon and ginger, and Mr De Lainey’s favourite mug. Moxie smiles at him, surprised and entirely pleased.
She should’ve realised, by now, that he’ll do anything for a De Lainey.
‘I’ll go shopping.’ Moxie tries to put the baby down but it squawks at her, so she sighs and shouts up the stairs, ‘JEREMY! Drive me to the shops!’
Silence.
Moxie mutters something about lowering his usefulness rating until Jack appears, hair like a cyclone and wearing a black shirt with a skull on it.
‘Jeremy cannot return your calls right now,’ he says.
Moxie narrows her eyes. ‘Did he come home last night? Tell me he’s not trying to get back with his ex-boyfriend again.’
Jack makes a wild cutting motion at his throat, but Mr De Lainey – flu or not – has an all-seeing eye.
‘Right, he’s grounded.’ He sneezes. Moxie hands him the whole tissue box. ‘Where’s Grady?’
Jack bounces downstairs. ‘He left super early to, and I quote, “prevent inevitable murder if I have to stay in this house one minute longer”. I guess he’s with his girlfriend.’
‘If Grady wants to murder you,’ Moxie says, ‘he should totally live that dream.’
‘Shut up.’
Sam brings over the tea and Mr De Lainey accepts gratefully. ‘You’re brilliant, son, thank you.’
Sam looks away quickly to hide the flush of pleasure.
‘Then Jack can go shopping,’ Moxie says.
Panic lights Jack’s eyes. ‘What? No way.’
‘There’s literally no food.’
‘There’s not actually a lot of money for groceries,’ Mr De Lainey says, sipping tea. ‘I just … as soon as the house we’re building sells, we’ll be fine. But I’ve sunk a lot into it. Too much.’ He rubs his reddened eyes. ‘Jack, can you grab the emergency cash in the office? Top drawer.’
Sam’s heart skips a beat and then