Chapter 2 - MY CHILDREN HAD BEEN AT WAR FOR YEARS
Lucas and Clara were eighteen months apart.
When they were children, people constantly called them best friends.
That was only partly true.
They loved each other.
They also competed over everything.
Grades.
Sports.
Birthdays.
Attention.
Their mother, Margaret, used to say Lucas entered every room asking who was winning while Clara entered asking whether everyone had enough chairs.
That was probably unfair to both of them.
But not entirely.
Margaret died from ovarian cancer when Clara was twenty-two.
Our family never really recovered.
Lucas dealt with grief by becoming ambitious.
He finished business school, joined a commercial development company, and eventually started his own small firm.
Clara went in the opposite direction.
She became an elementary-school art teacher.
Lucas thought she lacked ambition.
Clara thought Lucas measured life in invoices.
I spent years telling myself they were simply different.
Then Sophia entered the family.
She was beautiful, socially polished, and understood Lucas immediately.
Maybe too well.
Where Clara laughed at Lucas when he became self-important, Sophia admired him.
Where I told him a risky business deal sounded risky, Sophia told him he was thinking bigger than everyone else.
Within a year of meeting her, Lucas had upgraded his car, moved into a larger apartment, and started talking about building a custom house.
I asked whether his company was doing that well.
He said, “It will be.”
That answer worried me.
Sophia and Clara disliked each other almost immediately.
At first the conflict was subtle.
Comments about Clara’s clothes.
Jokes about teacher salaries.
Sophia repeatedly asking whether Clara was “still renting that little place.”
Clara gave as good as she got.
Then the family house became involved.
Margaret’s parents had owned a beautiful brick home in River Oaks for decades.
Not enormous by Houston standards.
But valuable.
Very valuable.
When Margaret inherited it, we rented it out for several years.
Before she died, she changed her estate plan.
The house would eventually pass to Clara.
Not Lucas.
There was a reason.
Margaret’s parents had helped pay for Lucas’s business education and given him a substantial investment account when he turned twenty-five.
Clara had received nothing comparable.
Margaret viewed the house as balance.
Lucas viewed it as favoritism.
For years, the property remained in trust while certain estate conditions were completed.
Then, six months before his wedding, everything finalized.
Clara became the sole owner.
I told both children over dinner.
Lucas barely reacted.
“Good for her.”
Sophia smiled.
“How much is it worth?”
Clara rolled her eyes.
May you like
That should have been the end.
Instead, I now know that dinner was the moment Lucas began making plans involving a house that did not belong to him.
