We pressed in closer. Dad kept talking, chuckling like it was some kind of joke. “I mean, if she had better tools, maybe her food wouldn’t taste like cardboard. You get what I’m saying?”
Jake and I stared at each other in stunned silence. Our mom—the woman who stayed up past midnight to make sure our uniforms were ironed and never missed a school event—lazy? That’s what he thought of her?
The thing is, Mom doesn’t even like cooking. She does it because she has to. Because no one else will.
That night, Jake and I sat in his room, fuming. But we didn’t just stew in silence—we made a plan. We called it Operation Outplay.
