Free Food for Millionaires Read Free Page B

sheltered between the fingerlike bones of her ribs. But no matter what, Tina adored her sister. Even now, as Casey stood in front of their father, awaiting a painful judgment, there was an obvious grace in her erect posture. All her life, Tina had studied Casey, and now was no different. Casey’s white linen shirt hung casually on her lean frame, the cuffs of her sleeves were folded over as if she were about to pick up a brush to paint a picture, and her narrow white wrists were adorned with the pair of wide silver cuffs she’d worn since high school—an expensive gift from Casey’s boss, Sabine.
    Tina whispered, “Casey, why don’t you sit down?”
    Her father ignored this, as did Casey.
    Joseph lowered his voice. “You don’t know what it’s like to have nowhere to sleep. You don’t know what it’s like to be so hungry that you’d steal to eat. You’ve never even had a job except at that Sook-ja Kennedy’s store,” he said.
    “Don’t call her that. Her name is Sabine Jun Gottesman.” She spat out each part of her boss’s name like a nail but kept herself from saying,
How could you be so ungrateful?
After all, Sabine had given his daughter a flexible job, generous bonuses that helped pay for her books, for clothes—all because Sabine had gone to Leah’s elementary school in Korea. Sabine and Leah had not even been friends back then—they were merely two Korean girls from the same hometown and school who’d by chance run into each other as grown women on the other side of the globe—of all places, at the Elizabeth Arden counter at Macy’s in Herald Square. It was Sabine who’d offered to hire Leah’s daughter for her store. And over the years, the childless Sabine had taken Casey on—the way she had with many of her young employees. She’d bought her rare and beautiful things, including the Italian horn-rimmed eyeglasses she was wearing now. The glasses had cost four hundred dollars, including the prescription lenses. Sabine had treated Casey better than anyone else had, and Casey hated her father for not seeing that.
    “I had to work for Sabine. I had no choice, did I?”
    Joseph looked up at the ceiling tiles above their kitchen. He exhaled, stunned by the child’s meanness.
    Casey felt bad for him suddenly, because for as long as she could remember, they never had any money, and her father was ashamed of this. Her paternal grandfather was supposed to have been very rich but had died before her father had any real opportunity to know him. Joseph believed that if his father had explained to him how a man made money, things would have turned out differently. In truth, Casey had never blamed her parents for not being better off, because they worked so hard. Money was something people had or didn’t. In the end, things had worked out for her at school: Princeton had paid for nearly everything; her parents paid whatever portion they’d been asked to contribute, so she didn’t have any college loans. The school had provided her with health insurance for the first time in her life and, with it, cheap birth control. For books, clothes, and walking around money, she’d taken a train to the city every weekend and worked at Sabine’s.
    “I. . . I. . .” Casey tried to think of some way to take it back but couldn’t.
    Joseph looked her squarely in the face, studying her defiance. “Take off your glasses,” he said.
    Casey pulled off the tortoiseshell horn-rims from her face. She squinted at her father. From where she stood, not quite three feet away from him, she could still see his face clearly: the wavy lines carved into his jaundiced brow, the large, handsome ears mottled with liver spots, and his firm mouth—the only feature she took after. Casey rested her glasses on the table. Her face was now the color of bleached parchment; the only color in it came from her lipstick. Casey didn’t look afraid, more resigned than anything else.
    Joseph raised his hand and struck her across the mouth