Family Recipe

Chapter 2-3

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 f*****g 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.

After staying there for a year, it was looking lived-in and cozy, and—if Del was honest with himself—a little rundown in a few places. He didn’t have the energy for the upkeep for an old, sprawling 3,000-square-foot house. He needed to hire someone, but somehow, he hadn’t.

He told himself that he was focusing on the cookbook right now, but that wasn’t exactly true. He still felt unanchored after leaving Clyde and Trim behind, like he was just drifting through life.

Paul’s words rang in his mind. What did he really want from life?

Right now, he didn’t know, so he soldiered on, trying to come up with new ways to spin some old recipes for fine dining food that could be made at home. Trim had been a success because of him. Hell, just before he’d left, there had been murmurings of a Michelin star in the imminent future.

The thought of returning to a restaurant kitchen seemed daunting at the moment. Especially if he wasn’t the owner of the said kitchen. He hadn’t worked for someone else in a decade.

He’d had a short-lived cooking show on cable too, a handful of years ago. That had been fun, sort of, even though he’d hated being directed and how it all was about the “right angles” and how he looked. Maybe that had come through, the way he didn’t like that the producer had wanted to concentrate on him more, and that was why they’d axed the show after ten episodes.

The cookbook had been Bernie’s idea. She loved celebrity chef cookbooks, and when Del had asked Paul to help out, he’d found a great potential publisher that was very interested. Del just had to find it in himself to write the f*****g book first, though, and he wasn’t…inspired.

* * * *

Del fell asleep on the couch. His body was long ago used to not being nourished the ways he should’ve been. He’d lived too long on whatever he tasted as he cooked and scraps from this or that.

Not eating caught up with him when he jolted awake at the pounding on his door some hours later. The TV was on low, but the wailing sound of a baby would’ve pierced a higher volume for sure, based on how efficiently it cut through the heavy wood of Del’s front door.

He got to his feet, instinctively alarmed, and then swayed wildly when his low blood sugar caught up with him. “Whoa…” He managed to make it to the door, his brain still scrambling on to what might be going on. When he opened the door, he suddenly had his arms full of a wailing baby.

He stared in confusion at the scene in front of him. Two more little kids and a young man that all but collapsed on his porch, pleading for help and apologizing in a tone that could only be described as defeated.

“Okay,” Del said, automatically feeling the toddler’s forehead which was burning up. “All right, it seems like we have an emergency here.”

He turned and walked into the house, calling after his shoulder. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?” he asked as he looked around for his car keys. The baby was hot enough for it to be alarming, and he needed to get her into a car and to the hospital as soon as possible.

“The baby’s sick and Justin’s piece of s**t car didn’t start,” the oldest of the little ones, a girl with horribly unkempt natural hair said in a tone that was surprisingly aggressive for a kid.

“All right. You’re—” He thought for a while but couldn’t remember the name of their mother, so he went with “The O’Dwyer kids, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m Del. What are all your names?” he asked as he maneuvered on his shoes while holding the baby.

“I’m Harper, that’s Wyatt, and the baby’s Scarlett.”

“And Justin is your big brother?” Del guessed, making Harper nod solemnly. “Okay. Let’s get my car, it’s in the garage.”

Harper grabbed the little boy’s hand and kicked Justin’s sneaker pointedly.

Del didn’t stop to wait and see if Justin could collect himself enough to get up. Instead, he took the lead and hoped everyone would follow, because now Scarlett had gone quiet, and that wasn’t a good sign at all.