Chapter 2 - THE SISTER THEY ALWAYS CHOSE
Madison was three years younger than me.
Growing up, she was everything my parents understood.
Blonde.
Cheerful.
Social.
Agreeable.
I was the daughter who asked why.
Why did Dad fire an employee after that employee questioned an invoice?
Why did Mom pretend not to hear when Dad insulted her?
Why did Grandpa Arthur still review Bennett Development’s financial statements personally even after Richard became company president?
My father called me difficult.
Grandpa called me awake.
When I turned twenty-four, I refused a management position in the family company and became an architect.
Dad acted like I had joined an enemy organization.
Madison joined Bennett Development immediately after college.
Within three years she was vice president of branding despite having almost no operating experience.
Dad adored introducing her.
“My daughter Madison.”
When introducing me, he usually said:
“Claire does her own thing.”
Then Wyatt appeared.
He had been hired by Grandpa Arthur as a structural engineer on one of Bennett Development’s largest projects.
He was tall, dark-haired, calm under pressure, and apparently immune to the Bennett family’s obsession with status.
Dad loved him immediately.
So did Madison.
Unfortunately for them, Wyatt fell in love with me.
My mother called it “unfortunate timing.”
There had never been anything between Wyatt and Madison.
Not a kiss.
Not a date.
Not even a private dinner.
But over the years, my parents created an imaginary version of our lives in which Madison and Wyatt were the natural couple and I had somehow stepped between them.
“You have your architecture career,” Mom once told me.
“Madison wants a family.”
Apparently husbands were resources to be allocated according to need.
Wyatt laughed the first time I explained it.
He stopped laughing after my mother invited him to Madison’s birthday dinner and told him I would not be attending.
Nobody had told me about the dinner.
That was the first time Wyatt said:
“Your family isn’t trying to include me, Claire.”
“They’re trying to transfer me.”
May you like
I thought he was exaggerating.
He wasn’t.
