My girlfriend and I don’t have kids, so we constantly hear the same line from my cousin who has four: “Must be nice having all that free time.” Lately she’d been taking it even further, laughing about how we should “help her out” because she’d booked a cruise with her new boyfriend.
We thought it was just talk. Absurd, dramatic humor. We laughed it off and didn’t take it seriously for a second.
Then one morning at 7 a.m., someone started knocking on our door.
Not a normal knock either—persistent, like it was urgent. We weren’t expecting anyone, and it definitely wasn’t the postman. I went downstairs half-asleep to see what was going on.
And when I opened the door, I just froze.
It was my cousin’s four kids, standing there bundled up, looking tired and confused. No adult. No note. No warning. Just them.
I brought them inside immediately and asked where their mom was. One of them said, totally casually, “She told us you’d take care of us while she’s on her cruise, so we took the bus and came here.”
My jaw dropped.
They had taken a bus on a cold winter morning—alone—because she told them we’d be their babysitters. She didn’t even drop them off. She didn’t even check if we were awake.
I called her right away—phone off. I called her new boyfriend—straight to voicemail. Then I called my aunt, and she sounded shocked but said my cousin told her I’d already agreed to watch the kids.
So now I’m standing there with four children in my living room, realizing my cousin basically abandoned them and invented a whole story to cover it.
I’m honestly furious—and scared. I keep thinking about what could’ve happened to them on the way here. At this point I’m seriously considering calling child services, because this isn’t “a joke.” This is reckless.
