"Mum?" At eight years old and quite overweight for a child of his height, Gallagher was well aware of how cold and distant his parents acted both to himself and to each other. The only person in the household that he had a remotely emotional connection to was the cook, who had always saved a few pastries for him to chew on after the depressing meals he'd share with his parents to cheer him up a little.
The door creaked open just enough for Gallagher to fit his round face through the gap. He didn't like going into the rooms where his mother occupied in the afternoons, as the rancid stench of spilled alcohol and cigarette smoke sometimes made him gag and cough for hours afterwards.
"Yes, dearie?" His mother was lounging on the chaise in a loose silk gown with a glass of wine between her fingers. A few bottles of expensive brandy and bourbon were scattered on the carpeted floor around her, all of them emptied of liquor. The woman's bleary eyes hazily swept over Gallagher's face before settling somewhere off into the distance.
"Dad's back." Gallagher shrank back behind the door a little more.
"That's nice, dear…" The woman drained her wine and dropped the delicate glass onto the floor with a heavy sigh. "Hmm… this calls for another sip of brandy… be a dear and bring me a brandy from the cab?"
Gallagher held his breath and scurried into the heavily-perfumed room. The closest bottle of brandy in the cabinet was about the size of his head.
"Thank you, my darling boy." When given the alcohol, the woman uncorked the bottle and reached down for the wine glass she'd dropped. The motion tilted the brandy bottle too far and sent a gush of brown liquor onto her chest, soaking the thin material. The woman giggled, high and airy and drunk beyond comprehension. "Oh my, what a mess!"
Gallagher dashed towards the door, a ball of familiar disgust starting to form in his stomach and curl up his throat as his mother continued giggling senselessly. When he'd crossed the doorframe, his mother called out for him inbetween her uncontrollable fits of giggling.
He shut the door behind him and kept on walking – this time, towards his father's study. Gallagher slowed down, however, and hesitated by the closed door to the study when he heard his father's raised voice through the door. The man had only been back for less than an hour and he'd already gotten into another shouting match on the phone.
The boy's fist hovered above the door to his father's study for a moment before lowering. Gallagher turned away just as there was a loud crash of glass shattering against the wall.
Gallagher eyed the door before taking off with a sneer, running down the expensively-décored hallway as fast as his fat little legs would allow.
The brightly-lit kitchen was a welcome sight for sore eyes, not to mention the delicious smells of food being cooked and pastries being baked.
"Oi, there you are, brat!" A dark-skinned woman with a red apron tied around her waist and an equally-red headscarf grinned when Gallagher skidded to a stop next to her. "I was just thinkin' of getting a lil' help for the tarts! Take one and tell me howzit, since it's a new recipe that I came up with last night."
The nearest pastry crammed into Gallagher's mouth the moment the cook finished her sentence. Gallagher chewed furiously with stuffed cheeks and a happy grin.
"Ith goothd. Whassit?"
"Don't tell your mama, but I put a bit o' spiced rum innit. Tasty, yeah? My lil' niece Allysse suggested that I use it in the batter to give it more of a kick with the star fruit."
"Shimone, Canth I haf som in muh lhunch box thoo?" Gallagher reached for another tart.
"Boy, you ain't gonna have any if you eat all of them right now." With a raised eyebrow and a smile, the cook knocked away the boy's hand with her wooden spoon after he tried to take a third pastry. "And that's Missus Simone to you, brat."
Gallagher leered at the cook with his mouth open to show the disgusting mush of the chewed pastries.
"Nasty brat!" Simone shooed away the boy with a laugh. "Now, unless you're volunteerin' to scrub all the pots, you might as well as get your behind out of my kitchen!"
Definitely not interested in doing the dishes, Gallagher promptly scurried away to leave the cook to her duties.
In all of his eight years of living, Kain had never hated anything so much in his life more than the little town of Colhen – except, perhaps, the baggy-eyed social worker that was currently taking him to his fifth foster home in two years.
"Kid, keep yer chin up. Colhen might not be like Malina, but it's a bit bigger an' got more places innit. You'll find somethin' t'keep y'busy."
With his skinny arms crossed over his chest, Kain stared out of the moving car's window with a serious frown that made him look much older than he was. The car stopped at a red light, and the right-turn signal light ticked loudly in the silence. The social worker sighed and scratched at his beard, his leathery face wrinkling into a sympathetic expression.
The car rumbled down a street and into a residential street lined with aging brick buildings leaning almost despondently into each other as their noisy residents side-eyed everyone and anyone from between moth-eaten curtains and yellowed blinds. Rusty waist-high chain-link fences separated each tiny dirt-and-weed lawn from each other. The social worker's single beady eye – the one not covered by a tacky eye patch – squinted at the poor kid sitting in the back seat through the rearview mirror when he pulled the car up to a house that looked just as dilapidated as the others save for a relatively recent coat of white paint.
"Well… we're here. C'mon, kid. I'll get your things from the trunk."
Kain's young face hardened into a practiced blank look of politeness as he unbuckled his seatbelt and slid out of the car. The social worker rounded the car a few moments later, carrying a ragged backpack holding some school supplies and a half-empty garbage bag filled with ill-fitting hand me downs. The man sighed again when he saw the expression on Kain's face.
"Kid, look at me."
Kain looked up into the lined face and squinting black eye staring down at him.
"Call me or Silberin if anythin' happens. Anytime, even in the middle o'the night, and we'll come right ov'r and get you then and there. Me and him ar' always gonna have yer back, 'kay?"
Kain hesitated for a moment, his amber eyes flickering from the social worker, to the decrepit house, and then back to the older man. He nodded once.
"Right. Let's meet Father Torrin, then."
There was no doorbell, so at the social worker's nod Kain knocked on the door a few times. After a few sounds of some locks unlatching, the door opened to reveal a tall and thin older man with a trimmed goatee and dressed in a faded priest uniform. A wooden rosary necklace with a celtic cross hung from around the man's neck.
"Ah, you must be… Kain, I believe. It's nice to finally meet you, young man." The old man leaned down to extend both a gentle smile and a bony hand out to the boy, who shook it with a guarded look. "Come in and sit down, child. Ingkells, you can put his belongings upstairs. Second door on the right."
The social worker, Ingkells, grunted in acknowledgement before shifting the garbage bag over to his other hand. His free hand went to fondly ruffle Kain's messy hair before he turned away.
Torrin led the boy over to the kitchen and gestured for him to sit down on one of the chairs by the countertop island.
Kain stared warily at the old man as he bustled about the kitchen, pulling out a glass, a jug of milk, and a single-serving package of cookies.
"Child, you must be weary after such a long trip from Malina. It's not quite lunch time yet, so I do hope you will accept these in the meantime. The other children do seem to like these quite a bit."
Kain stared at the cookies, and then at the old man. His fingers hovered uncertainly over the package.
"Go on. They won't bite." The old man's modest smile never seemed to leave his face, even when a shrill shriek started up from the floor above. "Ah, it must be Tieve's feeding time."
The old man reached into the refrigerator once more and pulled out a prepared bottle of infant formula. He quickly heated it up on the stove and not too soon later quick footsteps thundered down the stairs.
"Torrin! Tieve's hungry!" A black-haired child just about Kain's age barreled into the room, barely holding onto the wailing toddler with a worried look on his face.
"Keaghan, thank you for bringing her down." Torrin handed over the warmed bottle to the boy. The toddler girl, upon being fed milk, quieted immediately. The boy beamed and then made his way back up the stairs, although more carefully than before.
Not a moment later, Ingkells tromped into the kitchen, having to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe, and smiled briefly when he spotted Kain sitting at the counter slowly eating a handful of small cookies piece by piece.
"It figures that a bunch o' sugar would be th' first thing I'd see you willingly eat in 'bout three days, kid."
Kain responded by hunching protectively over his cookies. Ingkells snorted and ruffled the boy's hair again.
"I didn't say that I'd take any ov' em, did I?" Leaning against the counter, Ingkells accepted the glass of water that Torrin offered him and gulped it all down. "Now, what I'd giv' fo' a good ol' iced strawberry brandy…"
"None of that in my house, Ingkells, and certainly not around the children." Ever-vigilant, Torrin swatted at the one-eyed man's head with a rolled up newspaper.
Ingkells batted away the newspaper with a roll of his eyes. He turned to smile genuinely at the wide-eyed boy sitting next to him. "Father Torrin's a good man. A better one than me, probably. Keep yer nose clean, kid, and you'll have a good time. I'll see you in two weeks."
Ingkells was just about to turn to leave when a pair of skinny arms latched around his waist and a head buried into his chest. Stifling his surprise, Ingkells rested his hand on the top of the boy's head for a long moment before he pulled himself away.
"Remember, call me any time. I want to know what yer up to, alright?"
The boy turned to look at the glass of milk sitting innocently on the countertop, putting his back to both adults, and Ingkells felt no need to draw attention to the wet spot on his shirt.
"I'll see you out, Ingkells."
"Thank yeh, Father."
Once back in the driver's seat of his car, Ingkells forced himself to not look back up to the house, where a pair of mournful amber eyes was watching him leave through the kitchen window and silently begging to take him to a real home.