The fork was halfway to my mouth when I heard my father’s voice drop to that particular register—the one he reserved for business deals and strategic family decisions, the tone that meant someone was about to lose something they didn’t yet know was at stake. My name floated through the air from the adjoining room, and I froze, green bean casserole suspended in mid-air, suddenly hyperaware of every sound in my parents’ sprawling Charleston home. “Claire won’t fight back,” Thomas Whitmore said, his words carrying the casual certainty of a man who’d spent thirty-two years studying his eldest daughter’s patterns.
“She never does. We can have Savannah’s family moved in by New Year’s.”
The casserole dish slipped from my hands and hit my plate with a porcelain crack that seemed to echo through the dining room. For a moment, the only sound was Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” from the speakers in the living room, his voice syrupy and oblivious to the way my world had just tilted sideways.
My name is Claire Whitmore. I’m thirty-two years old, and until approximately thirty seconds ago, I thought I understood the rules of engagement in my family. Be quiet, be useful, don’t make waves, and eventually you’ll earn the love that comes so easily to everyone else.
I’d followed those rules religiously for three decades. I’d swallowed every slight, accepted every comparison to my golden-child sister, and built a life that required nothing from them so they’d have nothing to criticize. I bought my own condo at twenty-eight—a beautiful two-bedroom in downtown Charleston with exposed brick and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbor.
Three hundred thousand dollars of mortgage payments I’d made myself, of furniture I’d chosen without anyone’s input, of silence that belonged entirely to me. It was the first thing in my life that was completely, unquestionably mine. And apparently, my parents had just decided to give it to my sister.
“Margaret, are you sure she’ll go along with this?” My mother’s voice drifted through the doorway, concerned but not concerned enough to actually protect me. “Of course she will,” my father replied. “Claire’s always been the accommodating one.
Besides, Savannah needs it. Three kids in that tiny rental—it’s practically child abuse. Claire lives alone.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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