Storms 01 - Family Storms

water glass is empty,” Kiera said.
    The bottled water was right in front of her. Mrs. Duval picked it up and put some in her glass. I waited to hear her say thank you, but she simply drank her water. Mrs. Duval looked at me and then went back to the kitchen. I started on my meal. It was delicious. I remembered the lobster Mama and I had had, but it was nothing like this.
    “What did your mother do before things fell apart for you?” Mr. March asked me as he ate.
    I looked at him.
Fell apart?
Did he mean before the accident or after Daddy left or before she met Daddy? I didn’t know what to say.
    “Before you were out on the street,” he added, seeing my confusion.
    “She was a waitress and she did her calligraphy.”
    “Really? Calligraphy?” He turned to Mrs. March. “You have something from our trip to China five years ago, don’t you, Jordan?”
    “It’s in our bathroom,” she replied.
    “Right. So your mother did that sort of thing?”
    “Yes. There’s one hanging on the wall in the Grave-diggers bar,” I said proudly.
    Kiera laughed. “Gravediggers. What is it, a bar in a cemetery?”
    “I’ve heard of it,” Mr. March said, and Kiera lost her smile.
    “Well, what kind of a place is that for whatever she called it?”
    “She called it ‘heaven,’” I said.
    “The bar?” Mr. March asked me.
    “No, the word she had drawn and painted, the calligraphy. She would tell me that people go to the Gravediggers to see heaven.”
    He stared a moment and then burst out laughing. “That’s really clever,” he said.
    I looked at Kiera. She pressed her lips together and dug into her food as if she hated it and wanted to kill it first. Mrs. March laughed, too. “It is clever,” she said. “Can you do calligraphy?”
    “Yes,” I told her. “I often did it with my mother, just as she had done with hers.”
    Mr. March’s eyebrows rose.
    “Well, we’ll have to get you what you need so you can do some,” Mrs. March said.
    “I thought you said you sold lanyards on the beach,” Kiera quipped.
    “I did,” I said. “My mother sold calligraphy.”
    What have you sold,
I wanted to ask her,
besides unhappiness?
    But I didn’t. I looked down at my food and continued to eat, thinking only of Mama and how pleased she would be to see me having such a wonderful dinner in so elegant a dining room with what was obviously expensive silverware and dishes.
    She would have said, “You’re in the pink, kiddo.”
    I was sure I heard it.
    “What’s so funny?” Kiera asked.
    “What?”
    “You’re laughing. What are you laughing at?”
    I shook my head. I hadn’t realized I was smiling so widely.
    “Well, there you are,” Kiera said, nodding at me. “Smiling like an idiot. May I be excused, please? I have an important phone call to make.”
    “You haven’t had dessert,” Mrs. March said. “Mrs. Caro has made a very special cake in honor of Sasha.”
    “I don’t need it. This was fattening enough,” she said, pushing her plate away. There was at least half of her meal left. I had eaten every bit of mine. “Daddy?”
    “Go ahead,” he said. Mrs. March widened her eyes. “She’ll only spoil our enjoyment pouting there, Jordan.”
    Mrs. March glanced at me. I could see that she wanted to respond but lowered her eyes instead.
    “Thank you, Daddy,” Kiera said. She rose and went over to give him a kiss. She looked at her mother and then brushed past me on her way out.
    Both Mr. and Mrs. March were very quiet.
    “You made a very nice choice of something to wear tonight, Sasha,” Mrs. March told me.
    Mr. March looked at me. I could see in the movement of his eyes and his mouth that he was just realizing that I was wearing one of Alena’s outfits. I waited to see if he would say something, but he shifted his eyes down quickly and then turned to Mrs. March.
    “I can’t put off that trip to Hawaii any longer,” he told her. “It’s too big an opportunity for us to lose. Are you or are you not coming along?”
    “I can’t just now, Donald,” she said, nodding at me.
    “You have doctors, tutors, servants looking after her, Jordan.”
    “I just can’t,” she said.
    Mrs. Duval came in with the cake. It was chocolate with raspberry and looked scrumptious. Mrs. Caro had drawn my name with the raspberries. Now I was glad Kiera had left. She would probably have thrown it up later.
    “How beautiful,” Mrs. March said.
    After we had dessert, Mr. March said he had to make some calls and