The Bargaining Read Online Free PDF Page A

releases me and trots inside with Rob close behind, her sandwich board and rolling briefcase filling his arms.
    â€œShe’s making chicken Kiev,” he says.
    â€œI didn’t know she cooked,” I say.
    â€œShe doesn’t,” he says.

    I’ve never really been susceptible to the discomfort of silence. People talk about that awkwardness that follows long breaks in conversation, but I’ve never seemed to notice them.
    Until now.
    â€œCould you pass the salt?” my dad asks, his water glass lodged firmly in his paw, his lumberjack body hunched in an effort to make up for his size at such a small table. He sips from it every few seconds. My mom used to tease him that no one was going to steal his water. And he would laugh andkeep holding on to it. Clearly, there were things she said that Dad never fully believed.
    â€œIt’s good, Mom,” Rob says. He’s lying, of course. We’re all lying just by eating it. We’re only encouraging her to keep doing this, but it’s obvious none of us is going to be the first to get honest.
    â€œI never realized how relaxing cooking can be,” she says, her face still glowing and damp from the steam of the kitchen.
    â€œMmhmm,” Dad says behind his water glass. I can’t tell if it’s agreement. Dad’s one of those men who would be horribly intimidating to a guy I brought home. If I were the type to bring a guy home to meet my dad. If I were the type to have a dad at home at all.
    â€œAnd it’s so simple when you have a recipe,” she says.
    I suspect it’s even simpler when you follow the recipe, but I don’t dare thicken the silence by bringing that up. I just shove my plate away instead.
    Dad notices, but his eyes don’t get past my plate. I try very hard to remember the last time he looked at me. Not at my arm or my sweater or the hair caught in my earring. At me.
    â€œWe had a great turnout for the broker’s open today,” April says to the table, but the only one really listening is Rob.
    â€œCool,” he says.
    â€œYeah, it is,” she agrees. And her enthusiasm is genuine, which is what has always puzzled me. Not because she loves her job. It’s great she loves buying shitty houses and fixing them up and selling them for tons more money. It actually sounds more exciting than Mom’s job, which has something to do with surveys. What surprises me about April’s enthusiasm is that it’s everywhere. She gets excited about lots of things.
    When my dad dropped the bomb that he was getting remarried, and that The Other One had a son a year younger than me, a ready-made family for Dad to plug right into, I thought I’d hate them all. It was easy to hate from a few states away. Dad had already given me ample reason, and April made it pretty simple with her birthday cards signed “Your Evil Stepmother”—as though she got me. I suppose her being a mere seventeen years older than me lent some credibility to that assumption. And then there was the replacement kid—Rob. April’s son that she had super young, so Mom says, who never made an appearance in my life outside of the annual family picture they’d send me, with Rob always looking a little confused.
    â€œI have some other news,” she says.
    None of us asks her to share it because we know she’s going to anyway. My dad is still staring at my plate in the middle of the table.
    â€œMy bid on the Carver House was accepted!”
    April slaps her hand down on the table in victory, but she only succeeds in jolting Dad and me out of our respective meditations.
    â€œHot damn, it feels good to win!”
    â€œIs that the one near Tacoma?” Rob asks her, and I hear his teeth close around something crunchy. I don’t know much about chicken Kiev, but I know it’s not supposed to be crunchy. He seems to know that too, because I can see his hand curl around the napkin by his