“Candy!” My siblings go feral.
“You have a candy room?” Hawthorne is appalled. “How old is this candy?”
“You kidding me? Sugar doesn’t go bad. That’s why they preserve things in sugar. Jam keeps for, like, decades.” We follow the herd of kids into the candy store, as I affectionately call it.
“That’s not accurate.”
I shrug. “I was homeschooled.” I unwrap a giant lollipop for one of the kids.
“Okay, let’s not touch the wallpaper—that is hand-painted.” I hook one four-year-old with my foot to keep him from smearing sticky fingers all over the wall.
Greg moves to grab one kid who’s about to choke on a Jolly Rancher.
I scoop up my baby niece. Breathe in the soft hair. Small. Warm. Perfect.
“Hawthorne tells me you’re thinking about settling down, having some little ones of your own.” Greg comes back with the sticky candy. He winces and cleans off his fingers.
“Yeah, I want twenty kids.”
My niece coos sleepily.
“And I’m going to name them all after me.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“Pizza’s here!” Isaac calls.
There’s a stampede into the living room.
“Where are Ophelia and Kiki?” Greg asks, fighting one middle schooler off the soda. “Drink some water. You had too much sugar.”
“I don’t know.” I’m trying to keep four kids from fighting over a saliva-covered scrap of crust. “There is literally more food than you can eat. Share.”
“I didn’t find her,” Kiki announces, wandering back into the dining room.
“Who?” I give up on the pizza boxes. “Fight to the death for all I care.”
“Faulkner says you have a girl locked up in your penthouse.” She kicks one of her half brothers in the shin and grabs the entire box of sausage-and-green-pepper pizza.
“You have a woman—” Greg is livid. “What the—where is Salinger? How is he just letting you all run fucking rampant?”
“Not anymore, apparently.”
“Faulkner, fuck off.”
“You said a bad word,” the kids chorus around their pizza.
“Language.” Greg holds out his phone.
“What?”
“You have to pay. Cash or credit.”
“For a fucking swear word? Just put it on my tab.” I help one kid open up the garlic sauce. “I never had anyone here. I swear. I’m on the straight and narrow. Faulkner’s just trying to start shi—stuff.”
Greg glares at me for a minute then turns back to the kids.
Phew. Thank God none of them stumbled upon my sex dungeon. That would have been really difficult to explain away.
