Modicum

Two

"But if we have to go now, I guess there's always hope that some place will be serving after hours."

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Finn, as usual, managed to find himself in stressful situations before breakfast.

The squabble over breakfast should've been his first hint. Their father, Tom, was a heavy drinker and came into the room with a hangover and a throbbing head.

His siblings were throwing bits of bread at each other, giggling and attempting to douse each other with orange juice. He had warned them countless times before not to pull stuff like that when their father was around. He knew that kids didn't always listen, but he hoped anyway.

When James, who was five, tried to throw Sophie a raisin across the table, he accidentally threw the piece in their father's direction instead, hitting the man in the nose.

He was instantly furious and ordered the children back into their rooms, not allowing them to finish breakfast.

Finn defended them. "They didn't know what they were doing, dad," he said, trying not to sound too angry or disappointed with their father. It was just like the man to lash out at his children over something minuscule as a raisin for an excuse to get angry.

"That's the problem, see," Tom drawled, staring at his son through the haze of the alcohol in his head. "They're supposed to know what they're doing. You're supposed to teach them shit instead of watching this circus show every morning."

Finn couldn't bring himself to answer. He loved his father, no matter how wretched the man had become. He allowed himself to hope that one day, this phase would pass and they could all go back to being a normal family.

Only his cousin Jo brought some normalcy to the house, but she wasn't always around and Finn knew better than to depend on other people to do something he knew he could figure out by himself.

Tom left the house soon after that episode, leaving Finn to take care of the kids and urge them to eat breakfast (to no avail).

The kids' babysitter didn't show today either, which cost Finn his early shift at Starbucks and half of his morning classes at the university.

He started to loosen up when Jo finally came around noon, after receiving his panicked texts and voicemails. As he got up to leave, she pulled him to the kitchen and asked, "Are you okay?"

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

She sighed, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. "Look, I owe your mom a lot. You know that right?"

"Yeah, I know," he said. "Sorry, I'm just preoccupied with work and all."

"You work too much. Are you even studying properly?"

"Everything's fine, Jo. Honestly," he gave a small smile.

She gave him a searching look, trying to figure out how she could help him, but knowing that Finn's sadness went deeper than he let on. More than concerned, Jo was also afraid of Finn. He'd lost his mother seven months ago in a car accident, causing his father to spiral into alcoholism and his older sister to flee in order to escape from the suffocating misery.

Finn had been left to take care of the kids after that. Later on he had to find a job when his father lost his.

Jo, though only adopted, was one of the first to help him recover. It was more than Finn could ask for.

She was found abandoned outside the church where his mother, Therese, used to volunteer. Their relatives in Somerville, who were having a difficult time trying to have a baby, decided to take her in and raise her as their own while they tried to find her family.