Free A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1) by Kim K. O'Hara Page B

still had the four objects in her pocket. She pulled them out and showed them to Jored.
    “What are those for?” he asked.
    “Why don’t you try to guess? I’ll set them up here on this shelf where you can see them, and you can tell me later.”
    “The knife’s over here, when you’re ready,” said Kat. “We saved the onions for you.”
    “Of course you did.”
    “Hey, Dani! Do minions like onions?” asked Jored.
    “Minions love onions. And they love Joreds, too! Yummy!” Leaving the knife on the counter, she ran after him with her tickle hands ready.
    He ducked around a corner or two, but let her catch him. This was their game. “The onions!” he managed to get out between bouts of giggling. “They need you!”
    Dani stopped suddenly and managed to assume a very serious expression. “Oh. You’re probably right.” Her abrupt change brought new giggles from him, but she maintained her solemn demeanor as he followed her back out to the kitchen.
    “Onions,” she announced. “The onions need me.”
    Kat smiled and handed her the knife. They chopped and sliced companionably for a while, Marak on the beef, Kat on the peppers, and Dani on the onions. Then Dani thought of something.
    “Skewers,” she said. “The skewers need Jored.”
    “Oh, they absolutely do,” Kat agreed. “Jored, they’re over there on the counter. Here’s a plate of what goes on them. Just separate the beef chunks with layers of peppers and onions, and be careful not to poke your finger.”
    “I won’t,” he scoffed. “I’m not a baby.”
    “Even older people can get poked, son,” said Marak. “I don’t know if you’re ready for this.”
    He struck a stage pose and assumed a W.C. Fields voice. “Why, I remember when I was a lad of, oh, eighteen or so…” He whispered parenthetically to Jored, “before I ever met your mother,” then continued, “I poked myself a time or two while I was making this very recipe!”
    “There he goes again with one of his silly soliloquies.” Kat rolled her eyes.
    “It’s the way they communicate,” Dani observed in a whisper.
    “There I was, standing all innocently in the kitchen of my own domicile…”
    “What’s a domicile?” Jored was intrigued.
    “A house,” explained Marak. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
    “Not.”
    “Oh, well, okay. On with the skewering, then.”
    In another ten or fifteen minutes, they were finished. Marak told Jored, “These kebabs are ready to be shished! Or maybe it’s these shishes that are ready to be kebabed. Anyone have a dictionary with etymologies in it?” He was still talking as he moved out of earshot to put the shish kebabs on the grill.
    “Set the table, Jored, and then Dani can show you what she brought for you.”
    Jored was already opening drawers and cupboards. Marak came back in to help him reach the plates, and Kat helped him get the places set.
    Dani went to get her bags and folders, and remembered to retrieve the four objects that had been part of her morning presentation. That seemed like a world away, now. She was eager to talk to Kat and Marak, but first she would milk every moment of joy out of the time she got to spend with Jored. She adored him, and she didn’t care who knew it. She set them on the far end of the table.
    “Here are some more of those touch-and-color pages. You can do those whenever you want,” she said, as she brought out the pages, then reached for the game cards. “But I think you’ll really like this new game. It’s a holographic matching game. In each brown box, you touch the little blue circle in the center, and you might see a 3D image, hear a sound, or smell something. You can set it for sights, sounds, smells, or all three. Your goal is to turn over two that match at the same time, then you get to keep them turned. Otherwise, they flip back to the brown boxes.”
    “Will you play with me?”
    “Sure! We can take turns. Marak? Kat?”
    Soon the whole family was playing. Jored