Read By the Numbers for Free Online

good call.”
    Truly, a gift like this would have changed the game for Chris and me. If we’d even been granted a taste of what my parents blew on the wedding we didn’t want, our early life together would have been so much less stressful. For example, we might have slept better once we brought baby Jessica home had perpetual rain in the upstairs bedrooms not been a problem due to our shoddy roof. Although we adapted, I wondered if things would have turned out differently had our paths not been set in motion back then.
    I continued. “Starting off on a solid foundation can only help you in the long run. Not to sound all ‘PBS,’” the name the kids call me when I cite too many statistics, partially due to my initials, butmostly because they say I’m more boring than Pledge Drive Week, especially when I start quoting figures, “but the percentage of marriages that fail due to financial stressors is immense.”
    Kelsey bobbed her head and then tapped a flurry of words into her phone. Ugh, really? Had I
already
lost her interest? I’m not sure what kind of reaction I’d expected from her, but I’d hoped for some elation or gratitude . . . or maybe an invitation to go dress shopping?
    Instead, I got typing.
    She texted back and forth for a full two minutes before responding to me, her face finally wreathed in a rare smile. She sure was a lovely girl when she wasn’t scowling, pouting, or grimacing. Grimacing was more Jessica’s territory, but Kelsey was known to curl her lip on occasion as well.
    Patrick says Jessica’s the bitch and Kelsey’s the baby, but he also claims they will swap roles whenever the mood suits them. I’ve told him many times not to mock my offspring, to which he always replies he’ll stop mocking them as soon as they stop
making
him.
    She told me, “Milo and I will opt for simple so we can keep the difference to fund our new life.”
    â€œAw, Kels, that’s terrific!” I said, so pleased that Kelsey actually wanted the option that came with delayed gratification for once. I’ve never known Kelsey, given the choice, not to eat her ice cream first. “We can still have a wonderful party on a budget. We’ll go on Pinterest to brainstorm ideas. We’ll just roll up our sleeves and do a lot of it ourselves. That will save us loads of money.”
    She wouldn’t meet my eye as she picked at a loose thread on her cutoffs. “Yeah, thing is, we don’t actually want a condo. Property ownership is kind of bourgeois, you know? Who can even sayif we’ll be into Chicago in a couple of years, right? No, we’re going to buy a second food truck with the money. We’re thinking biblical-themed stuff this time, like maybe Fishes & Loaves or Garden of Eatin’ if we do mostly salads? We could have, like, Easter-egg salad sandwiches or Red Sea scallops or something really decadent, like a burger with a fried egg
and
bacon
and
avocado
and
three kinds of cheese would be a Sodom and Gomorrah? We’re still playing with the ideas, but I feel like this truck would be mine to run.”
    Sweet Caroline’s, Milo’s first food truck, inspired by the work of musician Neil Diamond, was currently beating the grim odds for success in a highly competitive marketplace with offerings such as the Cherry, Cherry Danish, Forever in Blue [Berry] Scone, and Girl, You’ll Be a Waffle Soon. (The Madagascar vanilla–laced whipped cream really added something special to the dish, I will admit.) However, I suspected Kelsey was less interested in managing her own line of business and more interested in distancing Milo from all things “Caroline,” seeing how the truck was named for his previous girlfriend, who’d come to Chicago with him from Ohio.
    Of all my kids, I worry about Kelsey the most. While she’s proved to be savvy and talented in many respects, graduating at the top of