By the Numbers Read Online Free

do once we finally realized that all we had was each other.
    I’m thankful for a thirty-three percent success rate with offspring who have a fondness for me. He’s such a good kid, through and through. Levelheaded and fair and honest. (My genes, obviously.) I have to wonder if he’s cut out for the world of high finance—I certainly wasn’t. How long did I last? A minute? I’m surely the only person who looks back on Black Monday as one of the best days of her life.
    As for today? Not such a good day. I wonder how many times I’m going to replay this mortifying scene over again in my mind. A lot, I predict. Perhaps this gaffe will replace my stress-dreams where I’ve forgotten to study for my accreditation exams or show up for them naked.
    â€œPenny can tell you when you’re going to die because she beats the odds for a living.”
    I snap out of my reverie. Chris, who’d been seated at the polar opposite end of the room from me—at my request—is now standing. (Actually, my request was that he not be here at all. Ignored—thanks, Marjorie. All the decades she considered him beneathme, now she has to come around?) For a second I don’t even realize it’s him; he just seems like some handsome stranger attempting to dissipate the awkwardness and not like the person I’d most want to kick in the thorax.
    Honestly, he doesn’t look terribly different from when we met so many years ago. There’s a fair amount of salt and a dash of pepper mixed in with his short blond curls, and there’s considerably more wear and tear than when I spotted him for the first time in my tenth-grade speech class, but overall, he’s not so changed. If he were a car, he’d be considered classic and not a junker. He’d have one of those fancy vintage license plates the State of Illinois issues.
    Chris is still tall and ruddy with eyes the color of faded jeans and a quick smile. He’s a bit weathered from spending so much time outside at job sites, and I can tell that Stassi isn’t on him about diligent sunscreen application or cutting down on nitrates, which is a shame.
    However, his health is no longer my problem or my responsibility. Although melanoma is the fifth most likely occurring cancer for males and his probability for contracting it is increased dramatically since he’s over fifty. And he stands a sixty-seven percent higher chance of contracting pancreatic cancer than those who consume the fewest processed meats.
    But again, not my business.
    He continues. “See, she’s not a bookie or a psychic—she’s an actuary. She uses mathematical theory to assess risk. She was making a joke. Y’all need to laugh or you’re going to make her feel bad, and then she’s going to lower
your
life expectancy.”
    There’s something about his still-boyish charm that warms the room and breaks the mood. People chuckle and raise their glasses to me. My mother nods toward Miguel, the headwaiterwho’s been working here for as long as we’ve been members. He’s been my buddy ever since I was a little girl, always serving me extra cookies or the biggest cinnamon roll at the annual Christmas brunch or the end cut of triple-chocolate cake with the extra side of frosting. Foster, my older brother, used to get so jealous of the blatant favoritism Miguel showed me at meals. However, I’m convinced he felt sorry for me because I was perpetually in some kind of cast or brace or cervical collar. I suspect he worried my mother was abusing me . . . at least until he witnessed me playing a game of mixed doubles and realized I actually
was
that uncoordinated.
    Miguel’s the one who finally convinced me to start swimming in the club’s pool. “Maybe you don’t hurt yourself so much in water,” he’d suggested. Turns out I was a strong swimmer, which is how I eventually came to work here as a