Chapter 4
Birthday at the beach. First couple weeks of school. Work, family life, and football. Meals in the brooks house are grab and go or Sandy makes some attempt and cooking and ends up with tater totts, BBQ hot dogs and a couple of bags of salad. Not a great cook. Jeramie longs for home cooked meals. Will drive for 45 minutes to an Amish restaurant just to have stuffed chicken breasts, mashed potatoes and gravy, succotash and fresh baked bread. Casey has a sit down dinner in her room every night. There is a closet in the little area where her sink is. She doesn’t keep cloths in there, It’s full of craft boxes and accessories. She set it up so you walk into the closet to get to the shelves to the left. There are shelves on the right but they are conceiled behind a long hanging shoe rack. She slides the shoe rack to the other side to reveal her small kitchen. Microwave, toaster oven, coffee pot, hot plate and mini refrigerator. It’s a tight fit but once she is in the closet with her mini appliances she is able to make some pretty impressive meals. The closet was originally set up for a washer/drier so there was a lot to work with. Drier exhaust. Lots of electricity. The hard part is keeping this part of her life secret. She was never careless. Even if someone were to move the shoe rack all they would see is more boxes. She covered up all her appliances with fake boxes, like tea cozies. The boxes were labeled with things like, School reports or purses. She was young but very crafty. The boys were grounded one whole summer for messing with stuff in her room so they stopped going in there. It was her mom she was hiding the kitchen from. Her mom would understand the want of that kind of meal and the need for that kind of solitude.
Lewis and Mabel have a very calm and routine oriented life. Matt has dinner with them every night. Matt does not do sports. Helps his grandfather eearly in the morning with chores. Matt can sew as well as Mabel, Keeps it a secret from his macho friends. Casey knows but Matt doesn’t know she knows. Matt also plays the recorder. They had to learn it in third grade and he never stopped playin it. He plays the recorder and Mabel plays and old upright. She keeps it very polished.
