Isabella stared after her not knowing if she should follow when Sally reappeared dragging, with some difficulty, a stepping stool.
“She’s mental,” Jason muttered from behind Isabella and Isabella turned her smile on him.
He blushed.
She turned away from Jason, strode forward and helped Sally set up the stool by a counter in the kitchen.
“Get up on the stool, honey, you’re going to flour the chicken,” Isabella told her.
“I am?” Sally breathed, like flouring chicken was akin to walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards.
“You are,” Isabella confirmed and got out the marinading sliced chicken br**sts and the Ziploc bag of seasoned flour she’d prepared earlier. Then she started to open and close drawers, looking for tea towels. “We just need a few tea towels in case it gets messy.”
“Third drawer down, by the sink,” Jason mumbled and Isabella’s head jerked to the side.
He’d joined them and was slouched in a stool across the counter from Sally. He was feigning disinterest but Isabella wasn’t deceived. His eyes (and, incidentally, his eyes were exactly like his father’s) were on the Tupperware of chicken. There was a spark of interest in them, not much, just a spark, but it was something.
Isabella figured boys liked food and not just takeaway.
She was pleased he’d joined them. She didn’t show this, however.
She wrapped a tea towel around Sally’s waist and one, bib style, around her neck and showed her what to do.
“Now, if you’ve got the buttermilk marinade on your fingers, don’t get it near your eyes. It’s got salt and Tabasco in it and it’ll burn,” Isabella warned.
“Okay,” Sally said, carefully pulling out a chicken slice and making a face at the squishy feel of it.
“If you don’t want to do it –” Isabella started.
Sally interrupted her by shouting, “I wanna do it!”
“All right, sweetheart,” Isabella murmured on a grin. “Have at it.”
Sally stuck her little tongue out the side of her mouth while she concentrated on wiping off the marinade before she tossed the chicken slices in the flour mixture and Jason watched her doing it.
Isabella moved away and started preparations for the rest of dinner.
Then, for some crazed reason that was beyond her to understand, she asked, “Is that your Mum’s guitar?”
Then she wished she could take the words back.
What was she thinking?
Why’d she ask that?
Why?
“How’d you know that?” Jason’s voice was gruff.
“It just looks like the one she used to lug around all the time,” Isabella mumbled, her mind tripping over itself to find another topic of conversation.
“You knew my Mum?” Jason queried, sounding surprised.
Oh Lord, now what had she done?
Of course they didn’t know about her, the awful American who screwed over their father before he met and fell in love with their mother.
That likely wasn’t bedtime story material.