8 Stay Beautiful

The next day during dinner.

Daniella's family and Selena were sitting in the long dining table in the dining room quietly. The food they have on the table was nothing like before. It was not the usual feast they used to have where most of the food will be thrown out instead there were only three different dishes and one of them was a soup with burned onions in it.

Alexa and her brothers looked at each other secretly, their father had warned them to not bring their pets in the dining, therefore, they hide it under the table before their parents arrived in the living room.

The food was prepared by their mother, even though the look of the food were nothing like a normal food should have, it was still eatable, the hoped.

Their uncle Matthew often says that their mother was used to be a good cook but after marrying their father, her cooking skills became sloppy.

It's been so long since the last time they tasted their mother's food, and based on the meat's states, seems like their mother had averted all of her anger to the meat, even by the distance, they could see how burned it was.

When Alexa felt her monkey that was hiding under the table patting her legs, she stretched her hand to get one of the burned meat.

She put it on her plate and looked at her parents. When she found the chance to sneak the meat, she quickly grabbed it and handed it to her monkey.

Minutes later, she felt the monkey's hairy hand once again.

(She's still alive?) She asked herself.

The meat she gave to the monkey was the most burned out of all the meat on the table, it's almost like a coil. When she felt her hairy hands on her legs again, she lowered one of her hand to signal her to shut up.

Out of nowhere, Ethan spoke up.

"Mommy, why is this burned?" he asked while staring at the piece of meat in his fork.

"It's not burned!" his mother denied.

Then the triplets and Selena rhythmically said, "It's burned"

Suddenly, Louisa stormed out of the dining room, and that's when they all realized that she was the one that cooked it.

Their mother immediately got up and rushed out of the room but before leaving, she turned to the triplets and Selena and said, "You could have faked it." Then she finally left.

The triplets then stared at their father, they watched him as he ate the soup with burned onions in it.

When they saw him taking one of the meats to his plate, they decided to wait for his reaction.

Leo was trying to hold his laugh when he saw that his father didn't need the knife to cut the meat, it was almost like a coil so when the knife lay on it, the meat split in a half by itself.

His father looked at them and then to the meat. Then he turned his sight to the door and then to the meat again.

"Ethan throw the meat, quick!" their father said in rush.

Ethan immediately got up and threw the meat in the garbage. As soon as he sat down, their mother came back with Louisa.

"Who threw the meat out?" Daniella asked with a frown on her face.

The triplets with Selena pointed a finger at each other, no one dares to snitch Evan out.

And with that, Daniella's face went flat.

She sighed and looked at Louisa.

"Don't worry honey. Your sister will teach you," Daniella said and accompanied Louisa back to her chair.

Alexa looked at her sister with flat expression and said, "Yes, Louisa. I will teach you how to burn not only the meat but the house," her remarks made her mother looked at her with her face wrinkled in anger, and with that Alexa bites her lips to shut her mouth.

Selena on the other side doesn't know what to do. She can't eat the food but she also doesn't want to hurt Louisa's feeling so, she took a spoonful of soup and shove it in her mouth.

When the liquid ran down to her stomach, she felt as if her organs broke down. The soup was so salty that she felt like she just drank a whole drum of seawater. When ate another spoon, she felt a soft and round thing running down to her throat. Her body frost, she then realized that she just ate the eyes of the fish.

She swallowed hard and looked at Louisa, in a soft and sweet voice, she called the little girl's name.

"Isa, you know how much I love you but did you just use the seawater to cook this food and the fish honey, before cooking you need to cut the head off, I think I just swallowed the fish eyes" she tried to say it in the nicest way as possible so when she saw Louisa's expression didn't change, relief flooded in her body.

Then, the girl started writing in her pad, when she was done, the girl showed what she had written to them.

"I didn't use seawater. I just simply use the water in the pond."

Everyone in the room including Daniella and Evan started drinking their water. Evan who just ate a whole bowl of soup looked at his daughter and said.

"Louisa, you meant aquarium right?" he asked, hoping that Louisa only misunderstood the difference between the pond they have in the garden which was full of frogs and the aquarium in the living room.

Instead of answering, the girl took a spoonful of soup and showed them the meat.

And then she used one hand to write, "It was the pond because I also cook the frog, and I cut the fish head, the eye that Selena ate was from a frog."

Everyone was dumbfounded. Just like the wind, the triplets and Selena rushed out of the dining except for Daniella, while Evan grabbed one of the whiskey in the kitchen cabinet and drank it from the bottle. He remembered that he also ate the eyes since he thought it was a fish.

"Honey, I thought you don't like to see animals getting hurt. Then why did you cook the frog or frogs? Oh my god!" Daniella's face was painted in sour as she imagined the taste of the soup.

The girl took her pad one more time and wrote.

"Because mommy hates frogs so I cooked it,"

Those words made Daniella's heart to melt. She looked at her daughter with soft expression over her face while her hand patted her hair.

"You are so sweet, honey. So do you want to eat it?" she asked.

The girl's expression suddenly became flat and wrote down, "No, it's disgusting," and her answer made Daniella speechless.

She blows a sighed and yelled, "Everyone! get your clothes on. We are eating outside,"

Then, she smiled at Louisa and said, "honey next time you will cook something disgusting. Don't tell us what's in it. All right?"

The girl nodded and grabbed the sandwich she hides in the refrigerator and ate it in front of her mother.