By the Numbers Read Online Free Page B

that’s what’s important.
    Seems like grooming would have been one area where I could have enlisted Jessica’s help, but she’s so distant and oppositional. If I’d even mentioned the idea, she’d have taken the counterpoint, despite having written a whole treatise on waxing on her SinclairSartorial blog. Per Jessica, everything below the eyelashes must go. Everything, even the tiny blond hairs on the pinkie toes. (Without my reading glasses—thanks, middle age—I can’t see well enoughto be sure I even have hair on my pinkie toes, but I shave them diligently anyway.)
    I observe Jessica and Marjorie working their salads in unison, removing every morsel that contains calories or carbs or pleasure, forming a pile of croutons, dried cranberries, bacon, cheese, and nuts on the side plate between them, nothing but desiccated leaves remaining. When he thinks no one is watching, my father, the esteemed Maxwell Sullivan Bancroft, Centennial Hills Club gold-standard member and CEO emeritus of Bancroft Custom Cabinetry, snatches and then quietly mixes all their salad castoffs into his own.
    I want to tell Milo’s family to please relax and feel at home here, and that for all the pomp and circumstance of this stuffy place, ol’ Sully and Margie Bancroft weren’t exactly to the manor born. Had he not been a hardscrabble carpenter with an entrepreneurial spirit and she not been a looker, none of us would be eating signature salads right now. (And P.S. if Miguel is on his game tonight, he’ll diplomatically remove breadbaskets and extra butter bells before the whole lot of them mysteriously find their way into the backseat of my father’s car. Again.)
    The thing is, we’re all going to be family now, so I guess Milo’s people and ours have the rest of our lives to learn each other’s secrets.
    After I finish my salad, Miguel clears my plate. “Hi, Miss Penny. You look so pretty tonight. I like your nice pantsuit. You are like a young Hillary Clinton.”
    â€œHey, Miguel, thank you. You’re looking quite distinguished yourself.” He preens, smoothing back his pomaded silver hair and straightening his bow tie. “How are you? What’s new? Haven’t seen you in ages.”
    I know,
I know
, it’s horrible and classist and exclusionary that this gracious older gentleman who has been my friend for decades has to call me “Miss” and I’m to call him by his first name. There’s a reason I never wanted any part of the whole country club nonsense, and it’s not just because I was bad at all terrestrial sports.
    â€œEverything is so, so good! I will retire this year, and I’m gonna live winters back home in Puerto Rico and summers I will live here.”
    I have no idea what Miguel’s job might be like, or the challenges he faces having to kowtow to the upper middle class on a daily basis, yet I’ve never seen him without a smile. His eyes are perpetually set to twinkle, which delights me, especially given that longevity is absolutely linked not just to quality of life but also to quantity.
    â€œThat sounds amazing. But why not stay there full-time? Who’d want to be in the boring old Chicago suburbs when you could be on the beach?”
    â€œMy granddaughter Alicia, she goes to University of Illinois at Chicago. Hey, you know, she studies to be an actuary, too. I bet she is going to like your joke. I will tell her tonight.”
    Before the next course is served, I’ve already set Alicia up with HR to join our summer internship program. Yes, I pulled some strings, which is something I never do. In fact, I wouldn’t even help my own daughters secure summer jobs with my firm. However, if Alicia is anything like her grandfather, then my consulting firm will be lucky to have her on board. (And let’s be honest, far better off than they would have been with Jessica or Kelsey.)
    As I glance around the