Work Text:
Lisa'd been feeding two people off one salary for a long time, but Dean fed three with no real income at all since she was tall enough to reach the front burners on a stove, and she was just better at stretching the food. It took a while to get used to having everything at once — a freezer and a stocked pantry and utensils meant just for cooking — but she caught on eventually. She'd been there for three months when Lisa looked up from her online banking page and said, "It doesn't make any sense, but somehow we're spending less on groceries, even with more of us here."
Dean had shrugged and made a vaguely surprised noise, but she started finding other ways she could save Lisa money. No more paying to have her oil changed, and that was good for forty bucks every few months. No more going to the mechanic in general, really, because Dean could handle all the routine maintenance on Lisa's car, and probably most emergency things as well.
She fixed the pantry door, so it didn't stick any more, and rewired the stereo system at the yoga studio, and planted a garden in the back yard, figuring flowers couldn't be too much harder to grow than herbs. She took Ben to school on the mornings Lisa taught early classes, and picked him up when she taught late. She had at least started by the time Lisa came home, and she kept the house locked up tight, salted and chalked so nothing would get in unless she wanted it to.
She wound up with a routine somehow. Three months in, she was settled, calmed, enough to start getting bored in the afternoons. She napped, she ran, she watched bad cable, and none of it proved distracting enough to keep her from looking up new texts on Hell, and on the various ways to get in and out.
Three and a half months in, she started looking for a job. A real job, over the table, under her own name — well, the name she'd decided to use for the rest of her life, anyway, and that was as close to real as she'd get here.