CHAPTER ONE
Caitlin
“ Forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s been
paid” –Irish proverb
In a week, it will all be over.
In a week, the pieces of my family will be
scattered like dandelion seeds in a hard wind and there’s not a
thing I can do about it.
Deep down, I know that. I know this time the
Cooneys are so screwed there will be no sweet-talking our way out
of trouble. Still, I keep shifting the bills around on the scarred
kitchen counter and punching numbers into my calculator, hoping to
find a way to keep the balls in the air and the kids out of the
system.
But the state doesn’t care that I’ve been
running this family since I was seventeen and doing a pretty good
job of it until now. My father’s the legal guardian. All it will
take is a hard look in our direction—the kind of hard look that
will come when we get kicked out of the house and the kids start
going to school smelling like they’re living in a van—and it will
become obvious that Chuck is an unfit parent. Before you can say
“throw the baby out with the bathwater,” the four underage Cooneys
will be scooped up by the Department of Human Services and trundled
off to separate foster homes.
All of that could be avoided, of course, if
the taxman would give me a break. But the government doesn’t care
that my father dropped all our mad money at The Sweet Pickle last month, paying off his bar tab before the owner’s grandson,
Hal, made good on his threat to beat the money out of Chuck. The
taxman wants the delinquent taxes, and the kids, whose lives that
measly twelve hundred dollars is going to ruin, be damned.
You’d have the cash if you’d stood up to
Chuck and kept your mouth shut about where the money was
hidden.
“Right,” I mumble to myself. “And let a guy
with a metal plate in his shoulder get beaten half to death.”
“You talking to me, Caitlin?” Danny calls
out from the living room, where my twelve-year-old brother has
settled in to play one of his bloody video games while the baby is
watching Sesame Street upstairs.
“No!” I shout. “And turn that down. I can’t
hear myself think.”
Danny ups the volume in response. I grit my
teeth and shift the electrical bill to the back of the queue—it’s
April and still cool, we can make do without air conditioning if
the electricity gets shut off—but that only frees up another
hundred and twenty bucks. I can snag a bag of groceries from Sister
Maggie down at the church, but that won’t feed this crew for more
than a few days.
Three boys between the ages of eight and
twelve take down a lot of food, and even Emilie is starting
to put away her share. Emmie’s always been on the small side so I’m
glad she’s putting on weight, but at the rate these kids are
sucking down mac 'n cheese there’s no way I’m paying the property
tax without somebody going hungry. Unless a rich old aunt from the
old country dies and leaves me her fortune, that twelve hundred,
seventy-three dollars, and two cents I need by next Wednesday might
as well be twelve million.
My gram always said you couldn’t make a silk
purse from a sow’s ear, and I don’t even have a sow’s ear. I’ve got
three little brothers, a two-year-old niece I’ve raised since she
was two months old, a father who hasn’t held down a job in six
months, a hundred bucks left in my bank account, and bills.
To say this is not the way I was hoping to
spend my twentieth birthday would be an understatement.
“Well, look at you.” Daniel breezes into the
kitchen, video game controller still in hand, to grab a fistful of
pretzels from the bin on the counter. He munches as he looks me up
and down, taking in my skintight black jeans and shimmering gold
tank top with a curled lip. “Looking slutty. Where you going?”
“Out with Sherry,” I say, with a glare. “And
watch your mouth.”
With his dark blonde curls, green eyes, and
ski-slope nose, Danny and I resemble each other more than
Caitlin
“ Forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s been
paid” –Irish proverb
In a week, it will all be over.
In a week, the pieces of my family will be
scattered like dandelion seeds in a hard wind and there’s not a
thing I can do about it.
Deep down, I know that. I know this time the
Cooneys are so screwed there will be no sweet-talking our way out
of trouble. Still, I keep shifting the bills around on the scarred
kitchen counter and punching numbers into my calculator, hoping to
find a way to keep the balls in the air and the kids out of the
system.
But the state doesn’t care that I’ve been
running this family since I was seventeen and doing a pretty good
job of it until now. My father’s the legal guardian. All it will
take is a hard look in our direction—the kind of hard look that
will come when we get kicked out of the house and the kids start
going to school smelling like they’re living in a van—and it will
become obvious that Chuck is an unfit parent. Before you can say
“throw the baby out with the bathwater,” the four underage Cooneys
will be scooped up by the Department of Human Services and trundled
off to separate foster homes.
All of that could be avoided, of course, if
the taxman would give me a break. But the government doesn’t care
that my father dropped all our mad money at The Sweet Pickle last month, paying off his bar tab before the owner’s grandson,
Hal, made good on his threat to beat the money out of Chuck. The
taxman wants the delinquent taxes, and the kids, whose lives that
measly twelve hundred dollars is going to ruin, be damned.
You’d have the cash if you’d stood up to
Chuck and kept your mouth shut about where the money was
hidden.
“Right,” I mumble to myself. “And let a guy
with a metal plate in his shoulder get beaten half to death.”
“You talking to me, Caitlin?” Danny calls
out from the living room, where my twelve-year-old brother has
settled in to play one of his bloody video games while the baby is
watching Sesame Street upstairs.
“No!” I shout. “And turn that down. I can’t
hear myself think.”
Danny ups the volume in response. I grit my
teeth and shift the electrical bill to the back of the queue—it’s
April and still cool, we can make do without air conditioning if
the electricity gets shut off—but that only frees up another
hundred and twenty bucks. I can snag a bag of groceries from Sister
Maggie down at the church, but that won’t feed this crew for more
than a few days.
Three boys between the ages of eight and
twelve take down a lot of food, and even Emilie is starting
to put away her share. Emmie’s always been on the small side so I’m
glad she’s putting on weight, but at the rate these kids are
sucking down mac 'n cheese there’s no way I’m paying the property
tax without somebody going hungry. Unless a rich old aunt from the
old country dies and leaves me her fortune, that twelve hundred,
seventy-three dollars, and two cents I need by next Wednesday might
as well be twelve million.
My gram always said you couldn’t make a silk
purse from a sow’s ear, and I don’t even have a sow’s ear. I’ve got
three little brothers, a two-year-old niece I’ve raised since she
was two months old, a father who hasn’t held down a job in six
months, a hundred bucks left in my bank account, and bills.
To say this is not the way I was hoping to
spend my twentieth birthday would be an understatement.
“Well, look at you.” Daniel breezes into the
kitchen, video game controller still in hand, to grab a fistful of
pretzels from the bin on the counter. He munches as he looks me up
and down, taking in my skintight black jeans and shimmering gold
tank top with a curled lip. “Looking slutty. Where you going?”
“Out with Sherry,” I say, with a glare. “And
watch your mouth.”
With his dark blonde curls, green eyes, and
ski-slope nose, Danny and I resemble each other more than
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