One Year Later

Tehachapi, California

---

“Where the hell are the Frosted Flakes?”

“Rosemary, don’t say hell.”

“We just have Cornflakes.”

“Okay, who drank the last of the orange juice and put the carton back in the fridge?”

“Why don’t you just sprinkle sugar on the Cornflakes, it’s the same as Frosted Flakes.”

“These aren’t even Cornflakes. They’re called Flakes of Corn. We can’t even afford real Cornflakes.”

“Did you know that Cornflakes were invented to stop masturbating?”

“April! Not in front of Callum.”

“What’s masturbating?”

I close my eyes and try to will myself back into the happy peaceful place that the yoga and meditation YouTube videos have been telling me about. I’ve been using them for months now to help my stress and anxiety, and I think I have to face facts that my happy peaceful place just doesn’t exist.

“Guys, everyone shut up,” Pike says in his deep voice, making everyone in the kitchen hush. “You’re going to give Maggie an aneurysm.”

A brief pause.

I can hear the grandfather clock in the hallway tick on.

Finally, Callum asks. “What’s an aneurysm?”

I open my eyes and can’t help but smile at my youngest brother. He’s only seven but he’s bright and always asking questions. Always getting into trouble too, which I’ve been discovering lately.

“It’s what I’ll get if you guys don’t behave.”

“Then what’s masturbating?”

“It’s what you do when you can’t get laid,” April says under her breath.

“April,” I reprimand her, but she doesn’t shrink at all from my glare. She never does. Pisses me right off.

I sigh and mix up some instant oatmeal into the boiling water on the stove and the kitchen dissolves into chaos again.

I never asked to be the legal guardian of my siblings. I never asked for my parents to be brutally murdered in the very home that we’re all in. I never asked to give up my dreams of a career and a better life to come back here to Tehachapi and pick up the pieces of all the lives that were completely shattered.

I never asked for any of this. None of us did. But I’m here and I’m doing the best I can every day to ensure a brighter future for my brothers and sisters.

But…shit. It is hard as hell. I was close with my mother, though we had many years of ups and downs as all mothers and daughters do. But I never once thought about how hard it must be to raise us all. I knew she worked her ass off, I knew my father did too. I knew that we always just scraped by. I grew up in a world where if something broke, you either fixed it or waited years for a replacement that wasn’t much better. Where bargain bins and thrift stores and generous neighbors were our only real source of goods.

But I never realized how emotionally tiring and complex it is to actually raise a family, especially one of this size with so many different, and often times conflicting, personalities.

There’s Callum, who is the youngest. But when I say he gets into trouble, I mean the moment you tell him not to do something, he’ll do it. And as bright and curious as he is, he’s struggling at school and getting in fights with kids. He may smile a lot and have big sparkling blue eyes but I can see the pain and frustration underneath.

There are the twins, Rosemary and Thyme (yeah, yeah I know), who are eleven years old. Despite their names, which makes many eyes roll, the twins are smart, hard-working and diligent. They don’t “match” either–Rosemary is a jock-in-training, Thyme is a goth-in-training. Contrary to what you might think, Thyme is the outgoing one and Rosemary can be competitive and sullen. But other than Pike, they’re the biggest help to me in this house.

April is fourteen, boy-crazy, pretty—and she knows it—but angry too. All of that combined makes for a lethal force. My biggest fear for her is that she’s going to get pregnant at some point, or maybe start doing drugs if she hasn’t already. Maybe something worse. I worry about her the most and she seems to hate me the most, so I guess that’s kind of how this relationship works.

Then there’s Pike. Now eighteen and out of high school, Pike is old enough to be their legal guardian, so we kind of share the duties. He was all set to go to university on a scholarship except our parent’s death threw his last bit of high school out of whack and he pretty much bombed all the classes he needed to ace. He won’t even try again. He now has his sights set on being a tattoo artist instead of the paleontologist he originally wanted to be. Talk about a 180. He’s quiet, doesn’t talk much, and spends a lot of his time smoking cigarettes and putting ink on himself.

My family was always kind of complex before my parents died, so you can imagine that everyone here, including me, is still deep in the thick of it, each trying to deal with the loss the best we can.

“Hey,” Pike says, coming over with some papers in his hand. “R and T are going on a field trip to the air force base and need a signature. Oh, and Callum’s teacher wants us to have a meeting with her.”

I sigh, stirring the oatmeal vigorously. “Why are we doing this now? Where were those papers last night?” I glance at the clock. I have to drop them all off at their schools before I head into work.

“Rosemary forgot,” Thyme speaks up, looking sheepish.

“Oh and you didn’t?” Rosemary says snidely.

I don’t even bother looking at Callum. I know he’s got a mischievous grin on his face. Don’t know why he loves being in trouble so much.

“You know you can sign these,” I tell Pike, snatching the papers from his hands and, oh jeez, I think he just added knuckle tattoos. “What are those?” I gesture to the fresh tattoos.

“Ink,” he says simply, handing me a pen. “And they’re hieroglyphics.”

“Of what?”

“What are hieroglyphics?”

“Oh come on, Callum, don’t be a dummy, you know what those are,” Rosemary says to Callum.

“Rosemary, don’t call him a dummy,” I tell her and then raise my brow at Pike. “Just promise me you won’t start tattooing your face. You have a nice one.”

He gives me a rare smile. “I do?”

“Don’t get a big head about it but yeah. You’re the only hope this family has to go off and marry a sugar mama. Or daddy. We won’t judge as long as you pass the coin down our way.”

“What’s a sugar–?”

“Callum, stop asking so many questions!” someone yells.

I quickly sign the forms and then stride over to the calendar on the fridge where I make a note of an after-class meeting with Callum’s teacher.

“Do you want to go or should I?” I ask Pike. “It’s in the evening.”

He shrugs. I know he doesn’t want to go and I also know that he will if I ask him. But he just started a job as a mechanic at a local garage and he’s often exhausted. And the kids are legally my problem, not his.

“I’ll go,” I tell him.

“You sure?”

I give him a tired smile. “We could both go together but we don’t have money for a babysitter.” And someone refuses to babysit, I finish in my head.

He nods. He doesn’t even have to look at April to know she’s who I’m talking about. If I was a better mother–scratch that, I am not their mother—but if I was better at setting down rules and discipline, then maybe I could convince April to watch her siblings.

But I’m not those things. With this family now, I have to pick my battles.

“Are you both still talking about me?” Callum asks innocently.

I give him a look that I hope would freeze him in his chair but like April, he’s immune. He shovels corn flakes–or No Name Flakes of Corn–into his mouth and smiles, the milk dripping out of the ends.

I roll my eyes.

“Your teacher is unhappy with you, Callum,” Pike says, pouring himself a cup of coffee and sitting down next to him. “Again.”

Callum shrugs, eats more cereal, smiles.

Kid is going to grow up to be a sociopath.

“Maggie,” April practically snarls as she dumps her plate in the sink. “We’re going to be late.”

I glance at the microwave clock. She’s right.

I quickly get half my oatmeal down, grab an apple and then yell, “Okay everyone, the bus is leaving now!”

When my parents died, we all inherited money. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t have a lot of money in general and didn’t get the best insurance plan. I got my money six months ago and it was only enough to buy us a much-needed minivan to take place of the broken-down piece of shit we had before, plus a little extra to put into savings. Pike also put his money in savings after buying himself a used motorcycle, which he then fixed up. Everyone else has to wait until they’re eighteen to claim theirs, though I have a feeling April’s will be for a one-way ticket out of here.

I don’t blame her.

Thankfully the mortgage on the house is fully paid and even though the big sprawling place is run down and sits on a hill above both Highway 58 and busy train tracks, providing rumbling and endless noise all hours of the day and night, it’s home. Plus, the property taxes are cheap and manageable.

The twins fight over who gets shotgun, with Rosemary winning out in the end because of her supreme elbowing, while Thyme, Callum and April climb in the back. I honk goodbye to Pike, then wave at our closest neighbors, the Wallace’s, who are out gardening. They’re old as sin and now that it’s May and the scorching summer weather is already here, they can only be found outside in the early morning hours.

I drop off Callum first since his grade school is closest, then the girls, and take a deep, long inhale before I head to work.

After I got the news about my parents, there was no more university, no more journalism degree. I grabbed the first flight out back here and had Sam ship all my stuff back home. Good friend that she is, she even came a few days later with most of it, to be my support during the funeral.

The minute I arrived back in Tehachapi, chaos carved a permanent place in my heart, sometimes overshadowing my grief. Sometimes they would tag team me together and on those days I just wanted to lock myself in the bathroom, get in the bathtub and cry. I did that a few times, wanting to drift away to a place where the pain couldn’t get me, where sorrow didn’t reside in my bones, where I wasn’t always so overwhelmed.

But I couldn’t do that for long. I had to hold it together for the sake of everyone around me. There were meetings with lawyers and insurance companies, police and coroners, teachers, schools, funeral homes, neighbors. While my parents were always just getting by, they were well liked in the community, and everyone was grieving.

I don’t feel like I even had the chance to grieve. I went to a therapist here in town but even that was a bit much since she was friends with my mother. So I’ve just dealt with their death the way I’ve been dealing with it.

Including breaking down in tears between dropping my siblings off and getting to work. It’s only a ten-minute drive from one end of town to the other, but I feel it’s the only time I have time to myself, time to think.

Inevitably, my thoughts turn to my mom and dad and all that I’ve lost. In some ways, it’s good to be insanely overworked and busy at all times because you don’t have to feel the grief as much, but when I do find those moments alone, in the car or in bed at night, sometimes it can overwhelm me. Instead of a slow trickle, it’s a tidal wave.

This morning though, I’m running late for work. I have no time to reflect and feel sad or wallow in self-pity. I got my old job back as a housekeeper at the local La Quinta hotel but at least I’m a step above where I used to be when I was a teenager. Actually, I’ve taken over my mom’s old position, which is totally morbid, but hey it keeps food on our table.

I park the van in my usual spot, grab a spare uniform I keep shoved in the glove compartment (because of course I forgot mine in the wash at home), then climb into the backseat and get dressed. I’ve become a pro at this, like Clark Kent changing into Superman in a phone booth, except I’m turning into a maid in a minivan.

Then I’m rushing into the hotel through the back entrance, hoping to head straight into housekeeping without being spotted.

Of course, I run right into Juanita, my boss.

“Five minutes late, Maggie,” she says to me in her no-nonsense voice. “This better not become a problem.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” I tell her, frantically tying my hair back. I hate that this has happened so often.

“You really oughta get that brother of yours to be dropping off the kids,” she says, the stern features of her face melting into sympathy. “I honestly don’t know how you do it.”

“I barely do it and you know that,” I tell her wryly. “Also, I wouldn’t be able to do it without this job. So thank you, it won’t happen again.”

She just nods and I get out of her way and right to work.

As one can imagine, there has been a gargantuan learning curve when it comes to my new life, but thankfully everyone has been really supportive and understanding, Juanita included. I just know that their sympathy won’t last forever. In the end, I’m either cut out for something or I’m not.

I’m still not sure what the verdict is.

I just know I can’t afford to fail.

Even though being a housekeeper at a hotel isn’t a glamorous occupation, especially a no-frills one by the highway that counts their breakfast waffles as a selling point, I don’t hate it. Okay, that’s a lie. There are many parts of it I hate, but they aren’t what you think. The whole cleaning up after people, washing the shit out of the sides of the toilets (literally), finding used condoms, dealing with the overall grossness of errant body hair and fluids and whatnot, that’s tolerable. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a big family, maybe it’s because I used to have this very job when I was a teen.

What I do hate is something that didn’t even cross my mind when I was younger. When I was younger, being on the poor side didn’t affect me as much as you would think. This isn’t a prosperous town and there are many families struggling to make ends meet. My story isn’t anything new.

But now that I left, that I’ve lived in New York, that I’ve seen the world out there, the world I could have had…I hate how society looks down on people like me. Housekeepers, cleaners, waitresses, blue-collar jobs, we’re only given a fraction of the respect that we deserve.

This is most apparent when you have brazen businessmen (and women) treating you like dirt when you’re on the job, making snide comments, giving you dirty looks when you’re just trying to get by, complaining about a non-existent mess that maybe another housekeeper did and then, of course, not tipping.

Today I work as quickly and efficiently as possible, keeping my mind free of distractions as best I can and just lose myself in the process. I have to admit, there is something rewarding about it, the fact that when you step into a room that looks like a bomb went off and you manage to make it look completely new again, you’re able to see the process. And at the end of the day, I can look upon the work I’ve done and feel like I’ve accomplished something.

I’m at the last room in my section on this floor and knock quickly on the door.

“Housekeeping,” I say loudly.

No response.

I knock again and notice there is no “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob. “Housekeeping,” I say again, getting out my key.

I slide it in and the door opens with a beep.

I step inside to do my overall inspection, just to make sure that there isn’t anyone inside. Happens more than you’d think.

And as I do so, I nearly run into a man walking out of the bathroom.

A tall man. Like, a fucking giant.

A giant, naked, beast of a man.

I freeze on the spot and gasp and the guy keeps walking away from me down the room. He doesn’t seem to hear me. In fact, I swear he’s got swagger. Hot, naked-guy swagger.

I know I should quickly run out of there before he turns around and spots me. This might even be one of those encounters that I’ve heard about from other housekeepers, where there’s a naked guy who “pretends” he didn’t hear you knocking and your best bet is to leave immediately.

But this guy…

I can’t take my eyes off him.

I really, really should but he’s just so…tall.

Large.

Smooth tanned skin, impossibly broad shoulders, sinewy muscles that ripple down his back.

Then his ass.

Oh my god, his ass.

The fact that there’s a bit of a tan line against his tawny skin makes it seem extra firm, like a juicy peach I just want to get down on my knees and bite into and–

He turns around.

I barely have enough time to remove my eyes from his neither regions and bring them up to his face where I glance those damn wireless earbuds in his ears.

He’s listening to music.

Of course he is.

And he’s staring at me, these beautiful, sky-colored eyes open wide in shock.

“I’m so sorry,” I blurt out, fighting like hell to keep my eyes at his level and not at his dick, which he’s attempting to hide with his hand and even though it’s only in my peripheral, and he has large hands, his attempt is futile. You cannot hide that thing.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” he says loudly, a hint of an accent on his words, and then he takes out his earbuds with his hands, leaving his dick to hang freely.

Don’t stare, Maggie, don’t stare.

Instead, I gawk.

That’s one hell of a dick.

I swear I even see it twitch under my gaze, this long, dark meaty looking python that has me wishing this was a porno so I could drop to my knees and suck him off with abandon. I’ve never had a penis that large and beautiful near the vicinity of my mouth before but I bet I could figure out what to do with it.

And while I’m staring dumbly at it, my key card slides out of my hands and onto the floor.

“Shit.” I snap out of it and bend over to pick it up.

Just as he bends over to pick it up.

Frightened by the proximity of his giant penis, I flinch and straighten up.

Banging the top of my head against his jaw.

“I’m so sorry!” I yell again while simultaneously backing up, holding the top of my throbbing head.

He’s even more dumbfounded than before, grabbing his jaw with one hand, staring at me in confusion.

“I’m so sorry!” I say again, aware that I’m yelling and I manage to turn around and head toward the door before I can assault him again.

“Uh, Miss,” he says just as I’m almost free, “your key.”

Fuck!

I turn around and see him walk toward me, that fucking dick of his swinging freely like a battle-axe, holding out my key between his long fingers.

I slap my hand over my eyes so I can’t see anything at all, manage to grab the key from his fingers and then quickly turn and scuttle away. I’m pretty sure I mumble something like “I’m sorry,” or even “penis” as I go, but thankfully I make it to the hallway and pull the door shut.

“Holy shit,” I mutter to myself before pushing my housekeeping cart down the hall as fast as I can, my face burning up. “Holy shit.”

God, I hope he doesn’t lodge a complaint. Says that I’m some maid that tried to see him naked or something. There was no “trying”–I couldn’t not see him even if I tried.

You should have tried harder.

And I’m right. I should have. I guess it’s a testament to either how lonely or horny I am. My sex-life, my love-life, it’s all been put on the backburner ever since I moved back to Tehachapi. It wasn’t even anything great in New York, but at least then I had gone on a few dates, gotten laid a few times. Now, I’ve been a sex camel for the last year and I think it’s starting to weigh on me. Apparently strange, naked men are enough for me to lose my fucking mind.

But he wasn’t just some average man. He was well over six feet, with hands bigger than my face and a body that looked sculpted from bronze. He had eyes that reminded me of the sky on a summer day, an accent that spoke of a refined upbringing somewhere far more interesting than here.

He was honestly the most gorgeous, beguiling man I’d ever seen and that’s not even including his penis.

I lean against the wall outside the housekeeping room and try and shake some sense into myself, shooting up a silent prayer. Hopefully that’s the last time I see that guy.