Chapter 44: Chapter 44

Anna authoritatively pushed Wayne into the kitchen.

“You should spend more time with Matthew. Look how happy he was when he was playing with Tammy. Your servants taking care of him said that he had never been this happy before. That’s crazy.”

While Wayne was blaming himself again because of Anna’s words, Anna suddenly put an apron in his arms, “Put this on so that you won’t get flour on your clothes.”

His eyes twisted when he saw the pink apron. When he was about to say something, Anna suddenly urged him, “What are you waiting for? Go wash your hands. It’s five o’clock. The kids are starving.”

He somehow followed her orders, put on the apron, and washed his hands. Then he started to make a dough according to Anna’s instructions.

“Usually, we can make cookies in all kinds of shapes. Round, square, whatever. But kids don’t really care about the flavor. They pay more attention to the appearance than the taste of the food. Therefore, we can use a cookie mold or make some animals with our hands when making cookies.”

Anna tried to show him and extruded the dough on the baking paper.

“Look, now we have a little duck. Remember not to put too much dough on one cookie, because it will expand in the oven, and it will eventually look too fat.”

Anna was very serious when teaching Wayne. She stared at the baking paper, and soon there were all kinds of animals on it.

Wayne stood by her side and stared at her face, suddenly having a strange feeling.

He suddenly found she interesting, much more interesting than the women he met before.

She was not vain or highfalutin. She was excellent in work and in life. She was kind, brave, and straightforward. And she was patient with children.

“Uncle Wright, what do you think of marrying my mommy?” Tammy’s sentence that he took as a child’s babble suddenly struck him. His hand shook and suddenly extruded too much dough. A weird ugly thing appeared on the baking paper.

chocolate dough, I’m sure no one would like to eat a cookie that looks like poop.”

Wayne’s face froze. He looked at his work in embarrassment and put down the things in his hands.

“You can do it yourself.”

“Don’t be upset.” Anna raised her eyebrows and gloated over the thing he made,“ Come on, it’s not the end of the world. We can still save it.”

Then she picked out a tiny cranberry from the bag and put it on the poop-shaped cookie and used a toothpick to stretch one end of the cookie.

“Now it looks like a little snake.”

Wayne took a look at the “little snake” that she made. It lay lazily on the baking paper, with a cute cranberry eye that gave a glow and a long thin tail in the behind.

His eyes were first fixed on the cookie and then moved to Anna’s face. Her satisfied look somehow pleased him.

At dinner, Matthew was much happier than usual. His active attitude today surprised Wayne. It had always been a big problem to make Matthew eat. If no one fed him, he would rather stay hungry. Even if someone did, he would only eat a little. He looked thinner than other kids at the age of five.

“Matthew, can you eat by yourself?” Wayne couldn’t help but ask.

“Of course, he can. He’s five years old.” Anna said in an exaggerating tone, “Matthew can do a lot of things, can’t he?”

Matthew nodded and gave Wayne a scornful look as if he had been hiding his abilities from Wayne.

Both angry and amused at Matthew’s look, he could do nothing but put more food on Matthew’s plate and said gently, “It’s my fault not to pay enough attention to you. Have some more food.”

After the meal, Anna wanted to leave since it was getting late, but Tammy wouldn’t go and kept saying that she wanted to play video games together.

There was a big screen TV in Wayne’s living room, and there was a tank game in it. They could play the game together, each one holding a game pad.

Five minutes into the first round, Wayne had occupied the territory of other three. Game was over.

Anna was frustrated, “This is not fair. This is your TV. You must have played for a lot of times before. Not fair.”

“It’s my first time, too.” Wayne said with no expression, “Don’t try to find excuses for your crushing defeat.”

Matthew immediately kicked Wayne, stood up, and waved his hand for a long time. But no one understood him, so he took his sketch board and wrote, “Daddy is bad.”

Wayne was dumbfounded. He touched Matthew’s head and asked, “I’m bad because I win? That’s not right. We have to be gracious losers.”

Still displeased, Matthew lightly pushed away Wayne’s hand and sat there angrily with his arms and legs folded.

Wayne didn’t know how to make Matthew happy and could only suggest that they play another round.

This time, he carefully played with them for almost half an hour and waited until the last minute to fight back. However, Matthew kicked off the gamepad in his hand in the nick of time. Meanwhile, Anna broke in his camp in a tank and instantly overwhelmed his “Yay, we win! We win!”

Tammy stood up and shouted cheerfully. She tore off a slip of paper and stuck it on Wayne’s forehead with a snap, “Punishment!”

Wayne asked, “Why weren’t you punished last time?”

“It was a try last time. We weren’t really playing, so we shouldn’t be punished. This round is for real.” Anna said naturally.

Wayne turned to his son, who nodded and took Anna’s side. Wayne was speechless. You little boy. Do you still remember who your father is?

They played a few more rounds. Wayne wanted to win, but he could do nothing when the two kids disturbed him. At last, his face was covered by slips of paper, which would dance up and down whenever he breathed out. They could barely see his face. Anna laughed so hard that she had to hold her belly and lay on the mat. She shouted, “I’m afraid we can’t play any longer. There is no room on your face for more paper.”

The two kids clapped their hands and jumped on the couch. Tammy even let out a hearty laugh.

“OK, it’s really late. We should go.” They had laughed enough and played enough. Anna supported herself on the sofa and stood up. She reached out her hand to Tammy, “Tam, we should go. It’s almost ten o’clock. It’s too late. We can’t stay any longer.”

Tammy immediately stopped laughing and pouted, “No, mommy. Why don’t we stay here tonight? It’s so late after all.”

Anna’s face changed.