Lucky smiled.
“So where is Avery? Still at work?”
“Amazingly, no. She’s at an AA meeting, but she should be home soon.”
“She still goes to those?”
Lucky was hurt that Avery hadn’t offered to pick her up from Saint Pancras or at least arranged to be home when she arrived, though she would never show it.
“Mm-hmm,” said Chiti. “Third one this week. It’s good for her. She stopped going for a little after last year, you know.”
“She never talks to me about AA.”
“She doesn’t like to beat anyone over the head with her program,” said Chiti. “You know how private she is. Anyway, I think she lost a little bit of faith in it for a while.”
“I get that,” said Lucky quietly.
“So I’m happy she’s there,” Chiti said with a brightness that Lucky noticed seemed faintly forced. “Though I know she was disappointed not to be here for your long-awaited arrival.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” said Lucky. “She’s probably avoiding me. I’m the bad sister, remember.”
Chiti tutted.
“Nonsense. Good sister, bad sister, no such thing. She loves you girls more than anything.”
“Except you,” said Lucky.
Lucky had meant for the comment to be kind, but Chiti only frowned. She exhaled a low hum that was neither an agreement nor a denial of this statement. She looked up and smiled, though Lucky could see her eyes weren’t joining in.
“Sometimes your sister reminds me of one of those medieval fortresses you can take tours of in Scotland,” she said suddenly. “She can be a very…private woman.”
Lucky nodded, though she was unsure what Chiti was trying to say. She and Avery had always seemed an unassailable unit from the outside. They were the only people Lucky had ever met who made marriage look kind of nice. Her parents certainly hadn’t managed that feat.
“I guess it can be hard to live up to Avery’s standards,” she said.
But this didn’t seem to be what Chiti was getting at. Lucky watched her set her face back into an expression of resolute cheerfulness.
“She’s had a hard year,” she said, reaching over to squeeze Lucky’s forearm. “You all have. Now, tell me how you are. What precipitated this most welcome visit?”
An image of pink, tulle-clad Lucky projectile vomiting out the window of one of the most famous design houses in Paris flashed like a perverse postcard before her eyes. She had claimed to be suffering from food poisoning, but the stylist must have smelled the booze on her because they sent her home without walking the show, which Lucky considered a ridiculous overreaction. A couple of espressos, a couple of bumps, and she would have been just fine. Her agency had already called her twice that morning. She didn’t answer the phone. When she eventually got up the nerve to check their website on the Eurostar that afternoon, all images of her had been removed from their board as if she had never existed at all.
“I just needed a break,” she said.
Chiti peered at Lucky from under her dark brows, appeared to want to say something, then thought better of it.
“I can’t think where Avery is. The meeting started at six.” Chiti frowned with frustration. “I simply will not serve this lamb overcooked. Let’s eat; Avery will just have to join us when she joins us.”
They sat at one end of the dining table, the other covered in paperwork from Avery’s various legal cases, which Chiti tried to compensate for by lighting two tall candles. Lucky looked around hopefully for a bottle of wine to accompany the food, but of course neither Chiti nor Avery drank anymore. In fact, Avery made a point of not keeping alcohol in the house, even for guests, a fact Lucky found ridiculous. But perhaps it was for the best, she told herself. She wouldn’t have wanted to drink in front of Chiti anyway. Trying to make a single glass of wine last for an entire meal, eking out tiny little sips and pretending to enjoy the taste rather than chase the effect, was worse than not drinking at all.
The lamb, as Chiti had predicted, was delicious. It melted off the bone like butter, its softness contrasting perfectly with the fresh crunch of the salad. Lucky’s favorite part of any meal was invariably the alcohol, but without that to distract her, she found she was in fact starving. She demolished her first helping in minutes, gladly accepting a second.
“Now this is a sexy piece of meat,” she said between mouthfuls.
Chiti smiled and touched her throat lightly.
“Sometimes you remind me so much of her. The same mannerisms exactly. I’m sorry if you don’t like talking about—”
But Lucky was looking at her with pleasure.
“Really? You think I’m like her?”
Chiti nodded.
“This was her favorite dish too.”
Lucky felt the possessive pride of being closer to Nicky than her other sisters were.
“I always made this when she came to visit,” said Chiti.
Ever since Nicky started teaching high school and got the summers off, it had become tradition for her to spend at least part of them in London with Avery and Chiti, then visit Lucky in whatever city she happened to be living in at that time. Lucky realized suddenly how unmoored her summer had felt this year without the expectation of Nicky’s visit.
“And what about you?” asked Lucky. “How’s the therapy business treating you?”
“That’s kind of you to ask,” said Chiti. “It’s different every day. Sometimes I feel like I’m making an impact on people’s lives, others I feel…” Chiti looked at her hands. “Less convinced.”
“Doesn’t it get boring listening to people complain about their problems all day?”
Chiti tilted her head and smiled.
