Like Patty had said, there was a large Tupperware container full of delicious smelling pizza slices.
The door squeaked just as he was biting into the first slice he’d picked.
“Hey, Izzy, you moved in yet?” Justin smiled as he went to wash his hands at the sink. Then he poured himself a mug of coffee and raised the pan in question.
Izzy swallowed his mouthful of food. “Thanks, I’ll take some. I got fixated on the pizza and didn’t even think to get a drink yet. I came in to see if there were any leftovers so I don’t starve while grocery shopping.”
Chuckling, Justin fixed them both some coffee and brought both mugs to the table.
“Wyatt was stress-baking, I think. He takes after his Dad like that.”
“So how does this all work? I mean, Lettie and Wyatt call Del Dad but he’s your husband and you’re their brother?” Izzy hadn’t asked it all before, not quite so bluntly at least.
Justin let out a little chuckle and went to get himself a slice. Then he sat down and smiled in the way people did when they thought about someone they loved.
Izzy was expecting the his next words to be nice ones because of that smile, and was surprised by what came out of Justin’s mouth next.
“I was nineteen when I got the call that my mom had overdosed.” Justin said it casually enough, but his smile faded and his gaze hardened and Izzy wondered if it was the reason he was even anti-weed. It explained a hell of a lot. Justin continued. “The kids were little, and only Harper really remembered me. I hadn’t ever met Lettie, she was just a baby. So I guess I have been more of a parent to them than a brother, or at least that’s how it’s had to be, you know?”
Izzy nodded, trying to figure out what Justin at nineteen would’ve been like. “That must’ve been hard on you all.”
“Oh yeah. Lettie got off easiest, she doesn’t really remember anything. Wy and Harper are a whole different deal.” Something about Justin’s expression suggested that there was much more to the story, but Izzy wasn’t about to push. “Our family was known in town for the kind of stuff mom did. Like drugs and shit. And for the kids having different dads. None of us four have the same dad, you know, and none have ever been in the picture.”
Ah, that sort of family. Izzy knew of those, even though his had been better at least on the surface level.
“But then you met Del?” he prompted, because it was obvious the family thing was a hard thing to talk about to Justin.
“Yeah. He’d moved next door and started to help with the kids so I could work part time. And when we moved to California to get away from it all, we decided it was easiest for the kids to call him Dad.” Justin rubbed the fingers of his one hand with the other and frowned, as if experiencing some sort of ghost pain.
Maybe Izzy wasn’t as careful as he thought with the staring, because Justin smiled tightly and said, “I got bashed by my uncle. Still have some pain in my fingers after fifteen years, and I’m still on insulin because they had to cut out my pancreas.”
“Right,” Izzy managed to get out. “I’ve seen you have the less sugary stuff here.”
“Yeah, it’s not as bad anymore, I guess my body adjusted over time a little. I can have some sugar but nothing like most people can.”
“I’m glad. That you all got out of that old life. You have it so well here.”
“What’s your family like?” Justin asked, sipping at his coffee.
“Eh…My parents were both immigrants, Hungarian and Greek. I guess they clung to each other and she got pregnant and they were stuck together. Then she started to want more and divorced him when I was nine. She moved us to California from Nevada, and for some reason my dad didn’t fight it. I saw him a few times after that. No siblings, until my mom had twins with my stepdad when I was fifteen. I left home when they were still toddlers. My stepdad…” He shrugged, even though he could feel his own ghost pains along his back right then.
“Not a good situation?”
“You could call it that.”
“Your siblings are what, early teens now?” Justin asked, then took a bite of his pizza.
“Yeah, I think they’re like thirteen, fourteen. Something like that. I haven’t seen any of them since I was nineteen.”
“And you went to prison at…twenty-four?”
“Yeah. I had friends. Girlfriends, guys I hung out with. It wasn’t a family, but it was something. Enough to keep me going. Even if it was the wrong direction.” Stupid direction, too. At least that’s what his stepdad had told him after he’d wrenched the phone from Izzy’s mom when he’d called her after he got arrested and then again after sentencing. None of them had come to the trial.
“Yeah…I guess that’s something more normal these days. People are starting to realize that blood isn’t everything.”
“Not thicker than water?” Izzy huffed.
Justin laughed. “Actually the original saying is something like ‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’ so it means the complete opposite of what we think it does. Or, it did mean a different thing. I think it was about soldiers being bound together closer than families are. I can’t remember anymore. Lettie had a bit of a fixation on quotations a few years back.”
