A Family Affair Read Online Free PDF

over my care until I was old enough to go it alone and be on my own. We’re very close, even though she lives at one end of the country and I live on the other end. We talk daily and try to see each other at least twice a year, sometimes three times, depending, of course, on our finances. Air travel across the country is expensive.
    “Soraya, can we stop at the consulate so I can register? My sister made me promise I would do that.”
    “It has already been taken care of, Trish. Malik filed the papers the day you said you would accept his invitation. I had one of the servants place the papers in your suite. You, of course, can call the consulate yourself when you feel like it and speak to your people. We can even stop by if that will make you feel more comfortable when we do our tour. Malik wants you to see everything. ”
    “I’m beyond excited,” Trish gushed. “Between us girls, I wasn’t sure if I should come or not. My friends encouraged me. It seems like I should be doing something for your brother, instead of the other way around. I don’t know if he told you this or not, but if he hadn’t found me when he did, I would have died out in the cold. I will never be able to repay him for saving my life. And yet, here I am. It isn’t quite computing in my head.”
    “That’s Malik for you. He’s a wonderful person, even if he is my brother.” This last comment was said with a wink of the eye. Trish laughed.
    “It is not much farther, Trish. I know you must be tired. Air travel is wearying. Perhaps you would like to take a swim or a nap. It’s the heat of the day, and you aren’t used to our weather here yet. Tell me, what is it like to be a dancer? How is it you decided to do this?”
    “It’s exhausting, but I love it. I always wanted to be in show business. Ideally, I wanted to be a movie star, but I simply wasn’t good enough. I have always loved to dance and took lessons all my life. Las Vegas was the closest I could come to fulfilling my dream. All the girls in the chorus are friends. We’re like our own little family. I can’t imagine doing anything else, but I do work part-time sometimes when I need extra money for something or other that is not in my budget.”
    Soraya leaned forward. “Budget? What is that?”
    Trish laughed. “Living within your means, not spending money recklessly. I have a mortgage payment, and my car is old. I paid that off, and now I have to get a new one. That’s going to be a huge bill, so I’ll be working weekends again. Normal household bills. I had to budget rather harshly because I needed to buy a new bed. It took me ten months to save up for it, and I had to work in a department store weekends. I did that because as an employee, I got thirty percent off anything I bought in the store. I guess you don’t live on a budget.”
    “No. I must try that. Malik lived like that when he was going to school. He did not call it a budget, though. He just said he lived like the other students. He had a ledger with a list of his expenditures. It made my father crazy that Malik wore jeans with holes in the knees and sneakers that looked like they were soaked in mud. He bought food in a store and listed in great detail strange goods. My father would have to look it up to see what he was buying. My father’s eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw that Malik had bought something called a rattletrap. He asked me what that was, and I did not know. It’s a car, but we only figured it out when he called Malik to ask. He paid three hundred American dollars for it. My father was appalled.”
    Trish burst out laughing. “Sounds just like my car. A lot of college kids drive rattletraps. I’m sure your brother just wanted to be like his friends, so he would, as the saying goes, blend in and not be different.”
    “But Malik drove it himself! He had to learn how to do that. Rashid was supposed to drive him wherever he wanted to go, but Malik would not hear of it. My poor