The oven door creaks as Lenora reaches inside. She curses softly under her breath as her forearm brushes one of the racks. Softly, because every day she burns herself in that same place. She is used to that jolt of electricity, that jolt of fire that shoots up her arm. You would think she would stop reaching inside without oven mitts, but Lenora never learns.

“Dinner,” she shouts upstairs, half hoping it won’t be heard.

“Coming,” Jason yells back.

A nine-year-old blur crashes down the stairs. “Dad says he’s coming!” Tina says hurriedly. “Need any help?”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah, I heard him. Well, Teeny, I’d appreciate it if you’d get out some forks and napkins. Where’s Lissy?”

Tina sighs. “Still crying.”

Lenora’s eyes widen. It’s been hours since Alice, Tina’s twin sister, has received news that her best friend is moving away. Lenora has let ‘Liss skip school today, but just today. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if the child is still inconsolable tomorrow morning.

Lenora smiles calmly. “She’ll be okay. I’ll talk to her after dinner.”

Tina stares up at her older sister with big eyes. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

A minute later, Veronica walks down the stairs slowly, eyes glued to her phone, almost missing the bottom step. “What’s…for…dinner?” she asks, with long pauses between each word. Not for a moment does she look away from her Instagram feed.

“Pork chops and steamed broc. We’ll split a Hershey’s for dessert. Now…” Lenora snatches the phone out of Veronica’s vice-grip and places it in her pocket, “no screens at the dinner table. You know that. It’s not good for you to be staring at that tiny thing all day anyways.”

At the sound of Hershey’s, Tina begins bouncing in her seat. Veronica, on the other hand, rolls her eyes dramatically. “Pork again? And–” she scrabbles at Lenora’s pocket, “–don’t you dare touch my phone!”

“Ronnie!,” Tina screeches.

Lenora just stares. “Yeah, Ron. Take it easy. And as long as you’re under my roof, you’re eating my pork chops.”

Veronica laughs spitefully, an over-exaggerated snort. “Please. We grew up side by side. Stop trying to be my mom.”

“Ronnie!,” Tina turns back to Lenora in a flash. “She was kidding-”

Lenora just shakes her head and turns away to lay out plates.

It has been ten minutes since Tina came downstairs.

“I’m so hungry! Can I start, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-”

“No,” Lenora immediately barks, more harshly than she intended, “we wait for Cole and Jason. You know that.”

“Ugh. Shut up,” Veronica snaps. “COLE,” she bellows upstairs. “Get down here! I’m hungry and having an extra heavy flow! Don’t piss me off, Cole!”

“Language!”

Sure enough, the fourteen-year-old’s mop of brown curls appears at the top of the stairs. “Oh, please. You finished your period over a week ago. And Len – just let her curse. It’s just words.

Veronica busts out laughing, and Tina’s lower lip starts trembling. “ENOUGH!,” Lenora shouts, and it is at this moment, as she bursts forward, that her hands slip, and the pitcher of iced tea she’d been carrying to the table drops. It smashes with excruciating noise on the floor, spilling all over the bleached white tiles.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?”

Everyone goes dead silent.

There is Jason. Their father. His bloodshot eyes are accentuated by the red towel his lower half is wrapped in. And the near-empty beer bottle in his right hand.

“Lenora!”

“Yes, father.”

“You dropped the freaking…” he searches for the word, “the tea!”

“I’m sorry father. It was an accident.”

Cole shakes his head with angry downcast eyes. “It was my fault, Dad. I pushed her.” The iced tea spreads across the floor but no one dares move to clean it up.

Jason shakes his head in return. “You all disappoint me.” Then, silently, wordlessly, he walks around the room, and, reaching Lenora, slaps her hard across the face.

She doesn’t even flinch. Not anymore.

“Dad…” Cole murmurs. 

He growls, whipping around, plucking rail-thin Cole from his seat and slamming him against the wall. “Don’t talk back to me, kid. Make sure you don’t catch none of your sister’s attitude, or you’ll be out alone in no time.” Cole gurgles until his father drops him.

Veronica, like always, has retreated into the background, a tear rolling down her well-contoured cheek. Tina sits there, silently sobbing. He bends down, snarls at her, and she covers her face, rocking back and forth in her seat.

“Ey,” he mutters to himself, as if realizing that there was one punching bag missing, “where’s Alice?”

“Upstairs,” Lenora volunteers quietly. “She didn’t go to school.”

“SHE DIDN’T GO TO SCHOOL?!”

Lenora shakes her head. “She was totally heartbroken by the phone call this morning. She couldn’t stop crying, and I didn’t think–”

But their father is already halfway up the stairs. “YOU-YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE GIRL! I PAY FOR YOUR SCHOOLING, AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME?”

“You know very well Len pays for everything,” Cole spits scornfully at his father’s back.

Lenora’s eyes are growing wider and wider by the second. She looks around. “Guys,” she says, after what feels like an eternity, “there are bags in the car.”

“Huh?” Veronica stares blankly.

“Everything is in the bags, in the car. Birth certificates, cash, passports, legal documents — everything’s in the car. There are bags in the car.”

Slowly, Cole nods.

Even more slowly, Veronica does too.

And then Tina, with a trembling lower lip and a tear-streaked face asks what all four are undoubtedly thinking.

“B-but, what about L-L-Lissy?”

The three teenagers look at each other. They can hear their father upstairs, throwing things, possibly the child herself, against the wall repeatedly. Lenora looks up. There is screaming. There is cursing. There are thuds and cries for mercy. And at this moment, all Lenora wants to do is to run upstairs as fast as her legs can carry her and intervene. Save her sister. Her poor sister. She alone among them could do something.

But then she looks back.

At Cole, who is truly just a gangly kid, but trying so desperately hard to be the man of the house, at fourteen.

At Veronica, who is only a sophomore, but has been chased into anorexia, depression, and self-harm.

And lastly, at little tiny Tina. Who just misses Mom.

And Lenora knows precisely what she has to do.

“Teeny?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to come back for Lissy very, very soon. Okay? But we all have to go. Right now.”

She sniffles. “Promise?”

The screams from upstairs have largely stopped, and Lenora doesn’t want to know what that means. “Promise,” she smiles, with a pained heart.

They will be alright.

And someday, Tina will forgive her for this.

And perhaps, sometime very far off from now, they will get Lissy back and explain why they just had to go and Lissy will maybe also forgive her for this.

But not all promises can be kept.