Home Sweet Home? (fK&C fanfic)

Chapter 4 - Dinner at the Smallbone's

29 Days Since We Left Home

Brooke Keye's POV:

    The door opened to reveal Joel. He grinned when he saw our family on the doorstep.

    "Come on in!" he said, opening the door wider and stepping back. "Moriah is adding the last touches to dinner in the kitchen. Just step on into the living room..." 

    I was the last to step through the door and Joel closed the door behind me. Before I could follow my family to the living room, he placed his hand on my shoulder and steered me towards him. 

    "How's it going, love?" he asked softly. "Anything new?" 

    I shrugged him off, saying, "It's going." Then I kept moving towards my family.  If I had turned around, I would have seen the pity in Joel's face. If I had turned around, I would have told him to never pity me. 

    I don't need anyone's pity - I'm dealing with this on my own. 

    I was about to squeeze myself beside James onto the couch when Merriweather came barking into the room. I settled onto the floor then and Merriweather nearly bowled me over with her huge body. Laughing, I braced myself for her next rush onto me. She, however, quickly noticed that there were other new people in the room and decided to go for them instead. My mom, of course, was extremely happy about seeing Merriweather. She treated the dog as if it was a small child - cooing over it and I watched Merriweather just bathe in the praise.

Mreow. I glanced behind me and saw Adelina watching me from a corner, her gaze darting over to Merriweather and changing to displeased and annoyed. I called her over, making soft clicking noises with my mouth. Adelina bounded over and settled herself into my lap. 

    Suddenly, Moriah walked into the room with a broad smile on her face. She walked up to my parents and introduced herself. She came to me last of all and said brightly, "Joel told me you would probably already know who I was, but I'll introduce myself anyway. Likewise, Joel has told me about you, but I'll let you speak for yourself. I'm Moriah!" 

    I flushed slightly at her remark on me already knowing who she was - even though it was true. "I'm Brooke, it's nice to meet you, " I said, trying to sound casual. 

    Joel walked in and immediately noticed Adelina on my lap. "Told you Adelina liked Brooke better than me!" he said to Moriah. Moriah laughed and I smiled. For the next several minutes, Moriah and Joel chatted with my Mom and Dad and I just petted Adelina - listening in on the adult conversation. 

    It was sometime when the adults were talking about how high insurance had gotten over the years that Kyle came over and plopped himself down by me. He started petting Adelina but Adelina moved her head away from him and just examined him for a while while I continued petting her. Kyle made a pouty face and moved away to Merriweather who was all too happy about the attention. There were several minutes of just this with the adult's voices in the background until finally, Moriah invited us to eat. 

    We all crowded into a decent-sized kitchen with a dining room attached. There were so many sweet aromas that were floating around the room!! Merriweather got so excited that Joel had to let her outside to chill off. When he came back, he said a prayer over this time and over the food and then we dug in!

    My family and I found out that Moriah was an excellent, but humble, cook while Joel was all too happy to eat the food she had prepared and boast over how good a cooker his wife was. We sat at the dining room table and I found myself seated in-between Moriah and James. At a point during dinner, I felt something brush up against my legs and scared the crap out of me. I looked down and saw Adelina looking up at me expectantly. I smiled and bent down to pet her. She licked my fingers then settled on top of my feet.