Free Lucky by Rachel Vail Page B

voice. “Chill!”
    I turned to shrug at Gosia, expecting her to grin at me knowingly. She was pale and serious. “Dinnertime,” she said, and walked toward the back door.
    Following her inside, I grabbed a sweatshirt off a hook and turned to go to the kitchen, but nobody was there. He kissed me, I was thinking. Gosia was holding open the dining room door, looking down at her ballet flats. Beyond her, my sisters and my parents were all sitting at the dining room table.
    I almost asked what we were doing, if company was coming—but their quietness erased the smile off my freshlykissed lips. I squeezed into my chair next to Allison without pulling it out first.
    There were plates of salad in front of us all. Nobody had touched a fork. I didn’t know where to look.
    “For this and for so much else,” Mom quietly said, “we are very grateful.”
    It’s how we always used to start meals when I was younger. It was Daddy’s thing, that we should have moments of gratitude before meals and other rituals, too. Daddy likes rituals. The first Saturday every month he goes at 6 A.M . to give out food at the homeless shelter; at least twice a year he makes us gather up all the stuff we don’t wear anymore and he brings it to the Salvation Army; every fifty-six days he gives blood at the blood bank. When he kisses us good night he says, “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.” Or he used to. I don’t know if he still does; maybe after I’m sleeping he comes in and kisses my forehead. We hadn’t started a meal with “For this and for so much else” in a long time.
    He smiled slightly at Mom, who was grinding pepper on her salad.
    We all abruptly tried to eat. I did some cutting but when I got mesclun leaves into my mouth they felt like play food: rubber, unswallowable.
    Mom put down her fork and knife. “I was fired today,” she said.
    We all put down our silverware, too, and looked at herwith our hands under the table.
    She took a deep breath. Her eyes were clear and her voice was steady. “What happened is, I have been doing research for years on a pharmaceutical company named Galen. You might have heard me mention it?”
    We nodded.
    Mom continued, “It’s a small company, but well capitalized, very exciting stuff in the pipeline. Well, it ran into some snags this week and I lost a lot of money on it. A lot of money. I still think I was right to take an aggressive position on it. I still say you’ll see it hit twenty-five or even thirty before year-end. But it’s not enough to be right. You have to be right at the right time.” She forced a small smile. “Because the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
    I glanced at my sisters to see if this made any sense to them. It was hard to tell. They were focusing on Mom with serious faces so that’s what I did, too.
    “But I think this can be remedied,” Mom said. “I’m setting up a meeting with the principals, and I think I can make a case to them. Everything is going to be okay. I don’t want you girls to worry.”
    My sisters nodded so I nodded, too.
    “I would like this all to be kept as private as possible,” Mom continued.
    “Of course,” Quinn said immediately.
    “Absolutely,” Allison said.
    “Absonitely,” I said, not wanting to copy but changing to “definitely” mid-word, too late.
    Mom smiled at me. “Thanks. So, how was everybody else’s day? Anything interesting happen?”
    My sisters shook their heads so I shook mine, too, and then Gosia came in with turkey and rice and broccoli, which we all forced down as quickly as possible. I didn’t think it was the right time to share the fact that only a few minutes earlier, I had been making out in the pool house. Although that certainly qualified as interesting, I was pretty sure it wasn’t what Mom meant. I felt like I had to tell somebody, and almost said something to Allison on our way upstairs. But then I didn’t. She and Quinn were both being so