The Wrong Family

by Tarryn Fisher

Juno found it a bit maddening—why marry a man and then serve loyalty to the family you’d left for that man? As far as Juno was concerned, when you got married you started a new family with the person of your choosing: leave and cleave. You had to fight it out together, figure it out as a team. And when the extended family tried to get involved, as they usually did, you were to tell them to mind their stinking business.

She didn’t like snooping in Sam’s room, and she didn’t do it often,

“What my baby wants, my baby gets!”

Sarcastic

blood was thicker than water.

But Winnie had other blood to consider.

Dinner parties were the one night she never got on him about drinking, though she liked to keep tabs.

“No. You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to steal someone’s infant—”

Winnie had never understood how men could fall asleep in times of emotional crisis.

“The addition that would be making us money if you let me rent it out!”

Juno liked how the information made her feel. Like she wasn’t without all the things that made up a person: a family, a home, history. Just to hold theirs for a few moments left her heart racing. She wasn’t doing it again. No, that’s not what this was. She shook her head, narrowing her eyes at her own inner voice, that old liar. The last time, she knew she’d been wrong: she’d allowed herself to get too involved and it had cost her everything. But this time, she didn’t have anything to lose; this time, Juno could throw herself into the project. And the project was the Crouches, who needed her help.

So she rested, listening to the voices of the family she had been watching for months while lying beneath the hems of their abandoned winter gear and Halloween costumes.

Failure as a mother should hurt. It should feel flat and dull and never-ending. Juno would take all the pain in the world, carry every single bit of it, for one chance to see Dale again and tell him how sorry she was.

She’d never hated herself more than she did in that moment; not in prison, and not on the street.

And then, her fingers pressing compulsively into the little grooves the pen had dug into the paper, Winnie was suddenly sure her husband was cheating on her. Nigel, she thought. Could he...? Winnie spun around in her chair so that it was facing the family room. She was being silly and irrational. Why would she think Nigel was cheating on her just because a woman’s name was written on her notepad? There could be a perfectly good explanation.

Lisa was never found. Twelve years later, and her mother still held Facebook Live vigils for her every Sunday. Winnie stood abruptly, ripping the sheet of paper from the notepad and crumpling it in her fist. No, no, no, she wanted to say, but her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth, dry and useless. How could he? Or more importantly; why was he? And why now?

No. Sam was not supposed to be like his parents; she believed very strongly that nature could overpower nurture and vice versa. He was becoming like them,

Sam parents were drug addics and that is why Whinee saved sam...

She’d been innocently looking for nail clippers when she’d found those journals; she hadn’t even been trying to snoop.

Yeah right

Bracing herself, Juno wrinkled her nose as she tented it, hoping to see something else, but when she looked inside the second, there were not one, but six bloody pieces of cloth.

What if no one knew Sam’s mother had even been pregnant? What if Winnie was the only one who knew? Juno had been looking for a stolen baby, but perhaps the real truth lay in finding the mother.

What she really wanted was to turn back time, go back to the night she’d made the worst mistake of her life, take it all back like it never happened.

And maybe he’d be right, or maybe he’d be gaslighting her; she was fairly certain she did her fair share of gaslighting herself.

They have an unhealthy relationship.

The thought of some stranger in her house, watching her, terrified Winnie.

He wasn’t lying. But omissions were the same as lies in Winnie’s opinion.

Why couldn’t he just answer her? It was yes or no—that simple. Everything had to be a snarky little game with him. If she’d said that to her own mother when she was Samuel’s age...

Drunks seldom looked inward, and when they did, they usually ended up drinking more.

She’d meant to—as soon as she got the baby safely to the car. But that’s where everything had gone wrong, so wrong...

To fuck with his cable box was to fuck with his precarious mental stability. But that’s what Juno wanted—everyone unstable, so she could get some answers.

When you’re an adult you can control who you allow into your life, but you can’t control how they’ll behave once they’re there.”

In youth, people were plenty stupid—mostly because they thought they were so smart.

In that moment, she made her decision: she would find these people, the Russels. She needed to see what type of people they were.

A baby had been taken. Like hers had been taken from her.

After all the years of hoping, all six miscarriages she couldn’t bring herself to let go of, despite the heartbreak they caused her. She’d even secretly kept scraps of the clothing she’d been wearing when she’d miscarried all those times, as morbid as that probably was.