Page 63 of The Statistically Unlikely Reunion

Unfortunately, my mother gets to it first.

She messages me while I’m in a meeting with K. Parth Patel—whose lab I would kill to get into. Not only because the research is exciting, but also because it’s a name my father will be impressed with.

Taking the girls shopping for necessities!

I see the message preview on my phone screen, and it’s the exclamation point that worries me, but I can’t do anything about it while K. Parth Patel is asking me about my familiarity with the Church-Turing thesis and whether I’ve read his paper on error models and thresholds.

Because even though yes, I’m passingly familiar, and also yes, I’ve read several of Patel’s papers in preparation, I have to focus to hold my own in this meeting. The long minutes pass. By the time Patel nods, the corners of his mouth coming down a little as he considers my candidacy, telling me finally that I can join their weekly lab meetings, almost an hour has passed.

I call my mother, but it rings twice before I’m sent to voicemail. I text, but my mother has her status set up as Do Not Disturb. Whatever money there is (or was), will be gone by the time I get home.

I almost reschedule Lucas, who now comes twice a week, and whose help I need in diagnosing our dishwasher, which isn’t draining and bubbled at the sides. But he’s already borrowed his mother’s car so he can bring his tools. Aurora, Wren, and Harper have already mentioned it’s a Lucas night tonight.

“I should warn you—” I stop, not sure what, exactly, I want to say. That my mother took my sisters shopping and I’m angry about it?

“Yes?” Lucas is a supernaturally calm driver, even in the Greater Los Angeles area, where the homeless are regularly pushing shopping carts across dividers and there are fender benders and people arguing at least once every other trip. He stops completely at every stop sign (even when there’s clearly no one around) and signals patiently, drumming the steering wheel to some invisible beat.

“It might be a difficult night.”

“Did Aurora’s science project not go well?”

I can’t help but look askance at him, which Lucas catches. “You’re not supposed to play favorites,” I say.

“Wren and Harper are great, but they’re too young to be curious. And I’m not playing favorites. Aurora’s tied with Leno and Levi.”

“Tied. Meaning if they were all drowning, you wouldn’t save her last?”

“She’s the only one who would need saving, Leno and Levi are strong swimmers.” He turns toward me, a micro-frown on his face. “You should let me teach Wren and Harper.”

When I’m silent, because what’s the point in talking about arranging access to swimming pools and scheduling, Lucas shakes his head before resting his hand on my thigh. “What are you hoping to warn me about?”

“I—”

But we’re already here, and Lucas is already parallel parking in that precise way of his, the one where he can’t really focus on anything I’m saying, and so I shake my head.

Perhaps my mother remembered Wren and Harper need new underwear. Maybe Wren asked for the blanket she’s been wanting. Maybe there’s enough left over for Aurora’s potential laptop.

As I open the apartment door to the chaos and wreckage of our living room, I quickly realize that not a single cent has been spent on actual necessities.

My mother lounges on the couch while Wren and Harper are seated on the floor, the three of them nearly buried under shopping bags, soft tissue paper, ribbons, and fanciful boxes boasting brand names we can no longer afford. In a not-insignificantly-sized pile near the center of our worn rug are a stack of cut price tags, meaning returning even a small portion of these purchases will be difficult.

“Look what Mummy bought me.” Harper twirls in a circle, modeling a beautiful half-lace dress with layers of flouncy underskirts, cut at different angles.

It is exquisite and also fragile in a way that’s completely inappropriate for my barely four-year-old sister.

Before I can formulate an appropriate response, Wren comes toward me. “Mine is better!” she declares, running toward me in a floor-length dress embroidered with constellations and planets. Wren trips the moment before she gets to me, falling and tearing the delicate outer layer, leaving a gauzy hole near where Saturn had been stitched in.

It’s still wearable, but a prescient reminder that five-year-old girls aren’t meant to be dressed in these kinds of intricate, delicate clothes.

“Oh no.” Wren’s lower lip is already jutting out, and because I don’t want her new dress to have both a hole and a layer of snot, I move quickly, grabbing at the tissue paper in the nearest shopping bag.

“Wren.” My mother is shaking her head even as she remains seated. She’s not going to bother looking at the damage; she’s too engrossed in opening her own packages. “I told you you’d have to be careful if I bought you that dress.”

“The tear is barely noticeable. With some black thread I can—” But even as I speak, I admit to myself the gauze doesn’t look fixable. “Why don’t you go to your room, change for dinner.”

“Mum said she was going to take us out to show off our refinery.”

“Finery,” I correct, my smile tight, my face stony. “I was hoping to have a nice meal in.”