Chapter 1

When my mother Helen took my speech, half the guests had already arrived. Right in front of them, she fed the pages into the shredder. The machine hummed, and the five-year plan I had spent several sleepless nights writing turned into strips of white confetti.

"Lydia just called me," my mother said. "Julian's mother is in the hospital again, and they can barely make the payments on their apartment. If you announce tonight that you're transferring the Harbor Hotel to her, that will shut those people up."

"Which people?"

"The ones waiting to see the Ashford family humiliated."

I nearly laughed.

Three years ago, over everyone's objections, Lydia had insisted on marrying Julian Mercer. Julian came from a working-class family in Ohio, had gotten through Yale on scholarships, and was now up for partner at an architecture firm in Boston. He was smart, presentable, ambitious, and genuinely good at what he did.

But good is not the same as rich.

Lydia had been taking private jets on vacation since she was a child. Only after the wedding did she learn that a salary of two hundred thousand dollars a year still meant budgeting for a mortgage, that her mother-in-law had to wait in line to see a doctor, that her husband flew economy on business trips. She couldn't stand that kind of "poverty," and asked the family for money every month.

And the only reason she had insisted on marrying Julian in the first place was that the person he liked first was me.

At the Christmas ball four years ago, Julian had invited me to the New Year's concert. Lydia took the invitation from the butler. Two weeks later, she appeared before the whole family on Julian's arm and announced that they were in love.

That night she wore my silver gown and the pearl earrings my grandmother had given me.

I asked her why.

She smiled innocently. "Whose fault is it that he looked at you that way? I just wanted to know whether, if I wanted him too, he'd choose me."

Later she used tears, a hunger strike, and a supposed accidental pregnancy to push Julian into proposing. Before the wedding, the pregnancy turned out to be a false positive. Julian was silent for a long time, and kept his promise anyway.

Everyone said Lydia had finally beaten me once.

But I had never entered that contest.

"The Harbor Hotel can't go to her." I looked at my mother. "Grandmother's will is very clear. It was my twentieth birthday present. I'm the one who turned it around."

My father, Richard, stood at the window and didn't even turn his head.

"Precisely because it's doing well, it should go to someone who needs it more. You'll take over the family holding company one day. Next to your future assets, a hotel is nothing."

"And to Lydia?"

"It's her chance to start over."

There it was again.

Whatever was mine was a résumé line, a training exercise, a little toy I should sooner or later put down. The moment it landed in Lydia's hands, it became security, dignity, and a chance to start over.

We weren't twins. I was three years older.

Those three years were like a lifelong contract. When she fell, I should pick her up. When she lost, I mustn't celebrate. When she wanted what was mine, any hesitation meant I wasn't acting like a sister.

When I was seven, I ran a high fever and my parents promised to come see me. Lydia had a last-minute children's riding competition, and in the end they both went to the arena. While the nanny brought my fever down with cold towels, the television showed my mother holding Lydia, who had placed fourth, and calling her the pride of the whole family.

At sixteen, I won the national debate championship. At the celebration dinner, Lydia cried because the school drama club had given her only a supporting role. My father canceled the cake on the spot and took her to Paris to see a play.

At twenty-two, I graduated from Wharton, and my father didn't put me on the board. He said an heir couldn't get a seat on the strength of a surname, and made me start at the very bottom of the hotel's staff. Lydia, by contrast, became the public face of the family foundation the day after she dropped out of college.

"She needs to get her confidence back," my mother explained at the time.

They were strict with me because I was the heir. They spoiled her because she wasn't.

It sounded fair. In practice it meant giving me all the responsibility and her all the love.

The makeup artist knocked to say there were twenty minutes until the doors opened.

My mother handed me the new script. The first page held a single sentence: I voluntarily give all rights in the Harbor Hotel to my sister, Lydia Mercer.

"Smile, Evelyn." She smoothed a crease on my shoulder that wasn't there. "Your sister is upset enough. Don't let her think you look down on her."

I took the script.

At last my mother looked satisfied. She didn't know that a week earlier, I had already met with the family lawyer.

Nor did she know that my speech wouldn't be the only thing torn to pieces tonight.