Family dinner

"I'm home! Hope I'm not too late."

"No, no, we just finished setting the table." Mom's smile was radiant, as always.

She was always the homemaker between her and Jua, always the one that pulled us all together to spend time as a family.

"It smells great," I gave mom a kiss on the cheek as I passed her, "What magic have you cooked up this time?"

"Hey, I helped too." Val protested, giving me a considering look. "Chicken Parmesan. I made the roasted veggies."

"Cut out of work early?" That wasn't like her.

"Hey, it's family dinner. What's my flexible schedule for if I don't use it?" Val defended, than leaned over and squeezed my shoulder, giving me a curious look. "You have definitely been working out. You look bigger than this morning for Christ's sake."

Huh. I hadn't noticed that. Luckily, the flow of conversation skipped past that quickly.

"I just got home a few minutes before you, so I guess you and me are stuck with clearing the table." Mami winked at me, then took a deep breath, luxuriating in the smell of mom's and Val's cooking.

It wasn't exactly a fair distribution of household chores, since we had a state-of-the-art sonic dishwasher, but mom loved cooking, and the rest of us loved eating it.

Jua wasn't a bad cook herself, but more specialized than mom. Both her machaca and menudo were to die for.

Mom steered the conversation as we filled our plates, making small talk about her day at the flower shop, the rest of us groaning in appreciation as we dug in.

"You've outdone yourself again, honey," Jua commented to quick agreement from me and Val, making mom blush prettily.

"Roast veggies aren't bad either, damn. Marinated?" I added, making sure my sister got some appreciation as well.

Val looked pleased with herself, happy to explain. As her culinary secrets went in one of my ears and out the other one, I smiled and nodded in all the right places, but I was definitely the least talented chef in the house. And probably the least interested in improving.

"How was your day, honey?" Mom directed it at Jua, once we'd all settled into the comfortable atmosphere.

Mami loved talking about her work, at least the parts of it that weren't privileged information. She was working an environmental protection case, trying to salvage some wetlands from corporate development and pollution on the grounds that a few near-endangered species were part of it's ecosystem.

It wasn't the most glamorous work, nor the most well-paid, but she made enough to keep us in Manhattan fairly comfortably, and kept in line with her principles.

When it was Val's turn, we got a fairly vague description of how she thought she was nearing some breakthroughs in biotic implant tech that wouldn't just make it more effective, but also ease the implantation process for customers.

It was a new field of research for Ariake, but it'd already been reported openly to investors and in the press, so she could be slightly less vague than her iron-clad contract usually allowed.

"How about you, honey? Everything good at school?"

Right. My day.