She liked the checkered black-and-white floor that Nigel was eager to trade for fabricated wood. She glanced back once more to check the state of the kitchen, wondering who was going to clean up the mess. At sixty-seven there were few pleasures in life, but Juno considered reading one of them. She’d started a book a few days ago, and she wanted to get back to it. She ate faster, hurrying to wash her fork and dry it, then she tiptoed around the deceased casserole dish, making a face at the mess. She’d run over-schedule, and that meant no time for a shower today. The clock above the doorway read ten seventeen. The wine had been knocked over seconds later. They’d been fighting about the house, and then money, and then Winnie had slammed the casserole dish on something-presumably not Nigel’s head, since he was alive and well as of this morning. She ate it cold, sitting at the tiny dinette that looked out over the back garden. She could just take a little, skim off the top. Prying the lid off the container, she sniffed at its contents. She’d tried to name the ingredients just by their smell: basil, onions, garlic, the tender green pepper Winnie grew in the garden. Juno held this one longer she had smelled it cooking last night from her bed, her stomach grumbling. It looked dried out and clumpy: they’d toss it tonight. She pulled the only two Tupperware containers from the shelf, holding them up to the light. They had a child to feed, Samuel, and thirteen-year-olds ate a lot. She tried to remember the last time they’d come home with bags of groceries, Winnie’s reusable sacks sagging as badly as Juno’s tits. She pressed two fingers to her lips and sighed into the fridge. Except today, she thought, looking back at the slaughtered dinnerware. The shelves were mostly empty-clean, but empty, Juno noted, the essence of this house and everything in it. The old GE hummed as she opened it, the condiments rattling in the door. Juno eyed all of this with mild curiosity as she arrived at her destination. When she rounded the island, she saw a green wine bottle lying on its side, a U-shaped crack spilling wine in a river that flowed beneath the stove. She couldn’t disturb them, and she definitely couldn’t cut herself. She’d heard the fight, but now she was seeing it in white porcelain shards that lay like teeth across the floor. She wore only thin socks, and as she stepped gingerly from a black tile to a white, it felt like she was playing a human game of chess.

She eyed a safe-ish route through the largest shards of glass that led past the island. But before she could eat, she had to make it to the fridge without cutting herself.

The wrong family tarryn fisher summary