Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“I get it.”
“If you feed them, I’ll take you for dim sum tomorrow in Chinatown for lunch.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I have a meeting in the morning for Sutter that will be done right before noon, so if you meet me there, I’ll feed you and drive you back to your office.”
“Only if we can walk around after.”
“Oh, that sounds nice,” she said with a sigh. “I’m keeping Jake, because he wants pizza, and he was up all last night studying, so he’s going to sleep while I play my game.”
I chuckled. “I like the sound of that.”
“And we’ll be over there Friday after school to stay with Chilly and Dobby over the weekend while you and Dad are gone for his birthday.”
“Thank you, love.”
“What are you going to make them for dinner?”
“Chicken katsu, a big salad, and kimchi fried rice.”
Seconds of time ticked by.
“What?” she whined.
“I got some kimchi from––”
“No,” she moaned.
“Enjoy the pizza.”
“You’re mean.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said with a sigh. “I love you.”
“I love you back,” she huffed and then hung up.
When Sam got home, later than usual, right after seven, he looked at the extra people at the dinner table and in the living room, and groaned.
“Stop that,” I warned him as I set the timer for the frying I was doing. After you cut the fat off the chicken and pounded it flat and then breaded it with panko, there were precise times for how long it stayed in the pan before flipping. After making it so many times over the years, I had it down to a science. And mine wasn’t as good as in a Japanese restaurant, but it was pretty close. I had the screen to put over the pan and had on my heavy-duty apron that went crisscross across my back. When I was baking, I wore my half-apron to wipe my hands on. Sam had a thing for that one.
“I wanted it to be just us.”
I squinted at him.
“I like it when it’s just us.”
“You do,” I said, lifting for my kiss. “But you also love your son and his friends, and something is brewing because Wick seems really agitated for some reason.”
Once Sam gave me my kiss, greeted the children, boys…men, whatever, he went upstairs to change. As I had before, I noted that Harper and Kola were sitting at the dining room table and Wick and Finn were in the living room, on the couch, watching television.
Now, when I wrote the part about the oven last month, I made a glaring error that my brother corrected me on. Due to this mistake, my memory on many, many things has now been called into question. Have I ever told you all that my brother can be insufferable? He can! But really, I have no one to blame but myself. As Dane pointed out, he and Aja lived in our house up until right after Robert was born, before Gentry came along. So when I said they never lived here, I forgot. I feel like the house was always meant to be ours, never theirs, which is why, I suspect, I made the mistake. But the fact is, they did, in fact, live in our house. And Bertha was theirs before she was mine.
But…
Even though Aja did a lot of cooking, she did her baking in one, or both, of the double ovens that are now a microwave on top, oven below, and warming drawers under that. She used the range/stove part of Bertha but never the oven. Unlike me, she had no idea Bertha had a crappy handle and felt terrible when I related the story.
“We should have replaced the stove when we left,” she’d told me, looking a bit distraught.
“Uh no,” I replied, chuckling. “We should have replaced it at some point in twenty or whatever years.”
“Not my fault,” Sam had said as he walked through the kitchen.
“Yes, I know,” I snapped at him. He had offered to get me a new stove many, many times.
She gave me lots of compliments on Lucinda Darkly. “Oh, Jory, she’s lovely.”
Of course hers, in her penthouse in the sky, had one of those vents that rose from the back of the stove and then lowered. The oven door also retracted underneath, and then with the push of a button came back out and closed. Automatically. She had no business oohing and aahing over mine, but it was very kind. Hers belonged in The Jetsons’ kitchen.
This is just like the time I forgot Sam’s mother had cats while he was growing up. What can I tell you, I’m getting old.
“You’re not old,” Sam assured me when he kissed and hugged me. “Who can be counted on to remember everything?”
He wasn’t wrong.
But now, when Sam came downstairs, changed into shorts and a T-shirt, he went straight to Wick and Finn and asked them what was wrong.