Arranged

Chapter-4

"Why are you still here?"

The question was directed towards Katie, who sat across from Kelly at the seven-seater dark brown wooden dining table and was munching on a bowl of chocolate-flavoured cereals. The elder of the two looked up from her breakfast and smirked, the way she did whenever she wanted to play with Kelly's questions.

"And why are you not staying over at your boyfriend's place during the weekend?" she countered cheekily. Kelly scowled and stuck her tongue at her.

"Very mature, Pig!"

Kelly searched her mind for a suitable comeback, but her possible lame retort was stopped before it could leave her lips when her mother arrived at the table with her own plate of sandwich and a bowl of fruit pieces. She placed down both the utensils with significant noise to end a potential quarrel, and smiled sweetly from one daughter to another.

"If the mood of the table gets ruined, honeys, you know what happens," she sugar-coated her voice to the point where both Katie and Kelly shivered. They, after all, knew exactly what happened if they did not follow their mother's dining table rules, which would just be a single rule - keep your quarrels, worries and moodiness away from the Table of Harmony and Love. Her daughters - even the littlest one, Lucy - rolled their eyes every time the THL came into the conversation. Interestingly, while Katie never developed morning sickness throughout her pregnancy, the mention of THL would do the trick all the time. Without fail.

Which is what Kelly suddenly remembered and said, keeping a straight face, "Yes, Kay, Ma is right. The Table of Harmony and Love should not be a battleground."

Katie immediately dropped her spoon into the half-filled bowl, making drops of milk to spill out and on the wooden surface, and covered her mouth. She cursed something from behind her hand as she stood up from her chair with care and rushed to the hall bathroom, but her words went unheard and unintelligible. Kelly grinned with triumph and even pumped her fist through the air. Her mother watched in amusement and remarked, "I am beginning to like Luke more and more."

"What do you mean?" she asked happily, her mind drunk in the glorious victory she had achieved.

Her mother shrugged, picking up a piece of apple from the bowl and stuffing it in her mouth. "Nothing, dear. We are just happy you finally found your love."

And just like that, the hangover washed away and Kelly pondered over her mother's comment in silence, pushing the last piece of her omelette around her plate with the fork. Love? Really?

She escaped out of the room soon enough - one, because she sensed her mother bring up the one thing she wanted to avoid, which was the topic of "When are we going to meet Luke?", and more importantly, Katie had returned from the bathroom, looking like a ghost from a horrible horror movie with terrible visual effects. Nevertheless, Kelly knew her sister would fan the flame of their mother's curiosity, even as revenge, and she skipped out of the room. The little piece of omelette went cold on the plate she left behind.

"Wash your dishes, Kelly!" her mother's voice called out as she climbed up the stairs, two at a time.

"Kay can do it!" she shouted back just as she reached the landing. She made a beeline to the second room on the left and knocked on the door twice.

"Enter at your own risk," Lisa drawled from the other side. Kelly shook her head at her dramatics and turned the knob. She closed the door behind her and looked around the overstuffed room to find the occupant hunched over her study table, her eyes wide open and merely an inch away from the bright laptop screen, and her bum seated at the edge of the chair. Kelly approached her cautiously from the side and before Lisa could peel her bespectacled eyes away from the screen, she tickled her under the arms. Lisa squealed and jumped up, knocking her chair backwards. She would have landed on top of it as well, but Kelly caught her around the waist. Lisa turned her head to glare at her sister, who had broken out laughing already.