Coming home to roost #2
Which was an expertise that sadly did not help with the task at hand.
Kendrick had told her to give the dogs rice and eggs with their dry food.
Indecisively, she opened various kitchen cupboards, trying to figure out which supplies were kept where.
Certainly not in the freezer, that much was a given.
During her half-hearted search, Orla and Higgins didn’t take their eyes off her for a second.
They followed on her heels, and Higgins nudged her gently with his muzzle.
“I know you’re hungry,” she said and stroked his shaggy head.
“I’m doing my best, I promise. It can’t be too hard to cook rice, can it? ”
Eventually she found the right cupboard and several packs of rice: basmati, jasmine, arborio, wild, black, brown and even pudding.
“What the?!” she cursed quietly. She was just looking for plain old rice!
Who needed all this variety? And which one was right for her purposes?
The dogs probably didn’t care, and she could only rule out the pudding and probably the arborio?
! And then there was the question of how to prepare it.
She looked at the different packets and realised the instructions were drastically different, and that was only for the packaging that actually had instructions in the first place.
What was the difference between the ‘water in rice’ and the ‘rice in water’ methods?
Didn’t you always use rice and water? Another packet suggested letting the rice ‘soak’, whatever that meant.
And then all these confusing quantities!
How much rice would she need for the dogs?
She rummaged in her bag for her phone as she considered ringing Isla.
It was Monday and her sister’s day off. So she should be free to give her a quick rice cooking tutorial.
Then again, Shona could vividly imagine her sister’s snarky comments.
Given that she made fun of Shona’s non-existent cooking skills often enough, Isla would never let her live this down.
No, she couldn’t take that right now. And seriously, how hard could it be?
Instead of asking her sister, she went online and typed ‘how to cook rice’ into the search bar.
A moment later, Google showed her a gazillion recipes and explainer videos.
The task certainly looked doable. Shona took a large pan from the cupboard, filled it with water and put it on the hob.
As she still didn’t know one kind of rice from the next, she chose the basmati because it had the shortest cooking time, and her top priority was to make sure the poor dogs didn’t have to wait any longer than necessary.
As the water boiled, she simply poured the entire contents of the packet into the pot.
That seemed appropriate as she was about to feed a pair of very big, very hungry dogs.
While the rice cooked, she rummaged in another cupboard for the large stainless steel bowls Kristy used for preparing dough.
She had dog bowls on her mental shopping list, but until she got round to getting some, these would have to do.
She filled one with water and placed it on the floor.
Orla gave it a sniff, but didn’t drink. Apparently, they weren’t thirsty. Huh.
She went back into the hallway where her father had left the horse blankets and the kibble earlier.
She would need to get some real dog beds too.
She grabbed the blankets, took them into their small living room and looked for a suitable place for the dogs to sleep.
Nessie had always slept on the carpet in front of the empty fireplace.
She was about the same size as one of the dogs, but somehow she seemed a lot smaller.
And where to put dog number two? She placed one horse blanket on the rug in front of the fireplace and the other between the bookshelf and the sofa.
Not an ideal solution, but she couldn’t think of another, let alone better, spot.
And how often did they really go to the bookshelf?
She looked around, satisfied with the arrangement.
Aye, that would work. Now she just had to make it clear to the dogs where they were supposed to sleep.
Strangely enough, there was no sign of them.
At that moment, a loud crashing sound erupted from the kitchen, followed by a startled yelp. Crap! Surely they hadn’t …
Shona suddenly remembered the full baking tray Kristy had placed on the countertop earlier.
She rushed back to the kitchen and saw Higgins and Orla wolfing down the freshly baked pies.
The two made such quick work of the pies that she couldn’t even intervene.
This was definitely not the stomach-friendly fare Kendrick had in mind for them, and Kristy would freak out for sure.
“I knew it!” she promptly heard her cousin’s upset voice from the stairs. Kristy came hurrying out of her room – no doubt startled by the commotion – and surveyed the disaster, her expression one of dismay.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t think to ...” Shona gave her cousin an embarrassed glance.
“Bad dogs,” she scolded the two half-heartedly, but they seemed unbothered and instead rather pleased with themselves.
“I guess they just couldn’t resist. Who knows when they last had a meal, and I ...
” She didn’t get to finish her excuses, because at that exact moment the pan lid started rattling, followed by the loud hiss of boiling water hitting the stove.
“And what’s that supposed to be?” Kristy asked, hurrying to the cooker, where she took off the lid, turned the temperature down and pushed the pan from the ring.
“Rice. For the dogs.”
Kristy looked dumbfounded first at the pan of rice, then at the dogs and finally at Shona.
She shook her head and suddenly seemed disheartened.
“Shona, you’re family and one of my best friends,” she said in a surprisingly calm and firm voice.
“I love you like a sister, and sometimes even a little more than my actual sister. But this has to stop. I admit I overreacted a bit earlier. I had a bad day, which is not your problem, and I didn’t mean to make it yours. ”
“It’s fine,” Shona muttered, relieved that Kristy was apparently back to her usual self.
“That said, we can’t go on like this for much longer. If we want to continue to share this place, we have to be a real community. You pay rent and that’s all you do.”
“But ...” Shona wanted to interrupt, but Kristy didn’t let her get a word in.
“Big decisions like whether to have pets or not have to be made by the three of us together. The same goes for parties.”
“But ...”
“But what? You think that being pretty and cute and always in a good mood is enough? Or that your ideas are always better than mine or Hailey’s?
Or do you just assume everyone has to do you bidding because it’s been this way since you were born?
Shona Fraser, you’re the biggest spoilt brat I’ve ever met.
It’s time to grow up! For heaven’s sake, you’re twenty-seven years old and you can’t even cook rice without making a mess! ”
The calm determination was gone from Kristy’s voice and had given way to barely suppressed irritation.
And she wasn’t close to being done. “When was the last time you did anything around the house? When did you clean or go shopping for anything but your disgusting frozen pizza? Hailey and I do all that. We just carry on as if it were still just the two of us, and you take all of that for granted and don’t lift a finger. Don’t you realise how unfair that is?”
“But ...” Shona tried again. She couldn’t believe it!
Granted, Kristy’s accusations weren’t entirely unfounded, but why had her cousins never said a word?
They seemed thrilled when she moved in and were happy enough about a third person sharing the rent, but they had never asked anything of her.
Fine, she could have cleaned without prompting, but whenever she thought of doing some housework, someone else had already done it!
Also, she always brought whisky and gin home and paid for the food and drinks they served at their parties.
Okay, most of those had been her parties, but that wasn’t the point, was it?
“But nothing! I don’t want to hear any excuses or justifications. I don’t want to hear anything! I’ve had enough and I just want you to move out!”
Move out? Shona’s heartrate accelerated. Was her cousin throwing her out? “But where should I go?” she asked miserably.
“What’s going on here?” another voice interrupted their heated conversation.
Hailey had finally come home. She looked a little dishevelled but dazzling, as if she had spent the last twenty-four hours in bed with a hot lover – which was probably exactly what she had done.
“Whose dogs are those? And why are you shouting?”
“I’m telling Shona that we want her to move out,” Kristy explained in a firm voice, and the look she gave her sister spoke volumes. If you’re not going to take my side, you might as well look for a new place yourself, it said.
Hailey swallowed and cleared her throat. “But we had agreed to discuss this calmly,” she said, looking back and forth between Kristy and Shona in utter confusion.
“You’ve been planning to throw me out? Since when?” Shona shouted, on the verge of losing her cool entirely.
“For a while now,” Hailey admitted, “but somehow it was never the right time to talk to you. The alpaca really stressed us out. Didn’t you ever notice?”
Shona shook her head.
“We had to clean up after her all the bloody time. It’s bad enough that we clean up after you, but Nessie too … It was all too much.”
“But why didn’t you say something?” Shona retorted. “I really thought she was housetrained. I was just confused because it only worked at home but not at the distillery.”