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Mark joined them in dry clothes. He sat as far away from Dad as possible, which meant hehad to wait for each platter of scrambled eggs, sliced ham, and poppy seed coffee cake to get to his side of the table. “Can’t you guys pass a little faster?” he complained while Martha struggled with the mechanics of getting a spoonful of eggs on her plate. “Everything’s gonna be cold.”
    Martha pouted. Mary Clare was ready to jump up and help her but Mark got to her first. He smiled at Martha to show he wasn’t mad at her. He heaped way too many eggs on her plate and then, seeing the surprised look on her face, put half back. Martha laughed.
    “I’m wearing underpants now,” she reassured Mark.
    “Good,” Mark said, and smiled at his youngest sister a second time.
    By the time brunch was over and cleanup complete, the rain had stopped. It was still far too wet and sloppy to set up a table outside, and Mary Clare had pretty much given up on selling cookies when a few neighborhood kids started showing up. Mary Clare sold six cookies sitting behind the kitchen table. Thirty cents. Not even enough to cover the chocolate chips she’d bought. Still, she had pulled together $10.55 out of the $12.50 she needed.
    She ended up giving cookies to everybody in the family, and because she felt desperate about the $1.95 she still needed, she ate a few herself.
    When Mary Clare went to her room to rest off the awful feeling of too many cookies and monetary doom, all of her glow-in-the-dark statues were lined up on the dresser glowing. At first she was irritated. She wondered how the little kids had gotten up to the shoe box she kept them in on the highest shelf in the closet. But as she looked at them all lined up, Mary Clare had a brilliant idea. Forget selling cookies. She could have a different kind of sale—a private sale—where she’d invite only the kidswho would benefit most from owning one or two of the glow-in-the-dark statues she’d gotten from the nuns over the years. It would be both a sacrifice and “good works.”
    The Healy twins would be good candidates. They were Catholic but surely neither had ever gotten an A in conduct, and she remembered Billy eying one of her statues wistfully. That was a while ago—maybe in third grade—but they still might want to buy one. But it was the public school kids in the neighborhood who she thought would most benefit. There were Tina Anderson and Becky Turner. Neither was Catholic but they were in the same grade as Mary Clare. They lived down the hill with just one house in between each other. Then there were the DeLuca kids, who lived across the street in the Southern-style white house with the rambling porch and didn’t go to any church at all. She considered Joannie Marino, who was also in her class and did go to Saint Maria Goretti School. She probably had tons of glow-in-the-dark statues because she was so shy she hardly ever opened her mouth. If Mary Clare was selling angels from her collection, she’d consider contacting Joannie. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t. She loved them too much.
    Mary Clare surrounded the lamp on her dresser with the statues and turned it on so they’d glow even brighter. Then she ran downstairs to the kitchen and started making phone calls. The Healy boys were gone, but she got hold of both Tina and Becky. She invited them over for cookies and they said they’d be right up.
    Mary Clare ran downstairs to find that somebody had gotten into the cookies she’d hidden in the pots and pans cupboard. And she had given the kids a whole plate of cookies! At least they’d left enough so she could still serve her friends. Mary Clare placed the last of the cookies on a plate as the front doorbell was ringing.
    “Who rang the doorbell?” Mom hollered from the basement.
    “It’s Tina and Becky for me. We’ll be in my room for a while.”
    “Okay,” Mom said. And the three girls were off to her room.
    “Wow!” Tina exclaimed when she saw how the