Chapter 4

Five days before the wedding, my mother decided to make up for the twenty-two years Vivian had lost in a single afternoon.

The tailor delivered this season's custom gowns to the main house, and Vivian was having tea with my mother. Twelve dresses were laid out in order of color, and among them was the silver-gray gown whose fabric I had chosen myself, beaded by hand, four full months in the making, the one I had meant to wear to the winter charity ball.

Vivian only looked at it a beat longer than the others, and my mother called the tailor back immediately. "Alter this one for Vivian first. She doesn't have a proper formal gown that fits."

"No," I cut in at once.

My mother, Eleanor Ashford, looked up at me. "Evelyn, you have a hundred dresses in that closet."

"But this one is mine. I picked the fabric myself. I waited four months."

The tailor stood between us with nowhere to go. Vivian backed away instantly, as if she had touched something scalding, and began unbuttoning the new coat she was wearing and taking off the pearl earrings my mother had given her that morning. "I don't want them. I don't want any of it." Her breathing went shallow and fast. "None of this is mine. Evelyn is right. I shouldn't have accepted it."

"Vivian, don't do this." My mother took both her hands.

"I can wear my old clothes. Don't fight because of me, and don't be sorry you brought me back."

She was spiraling, and she even started to take off her shoes. I moved forward a step. "I never said you shouldn't have come home. All I said was that this dress is my—"

"That's enough." My mother's voice cut across mine. She pulled Vivian into her arms and turned to me with disappointment she made no effort to hide. "Every time you insist that something is yours, you remind her that this family had no place for her to begin with. Evelyn, I spoiled you. I never taught you to think about anyone else."

That night Alexander laid a personal spending plan in front of me. "As of today, your unlimited black card is suspended. You'll have a basic living allowance. It'll be restored in a month."

I flipped through two pages and looked up at him. "What gives you the right to control my accounts?"

"That card is tied to the Ashford family trust, and I have signing authority." His voice was level, as if he were reading a statement into the court record. "You need to understand that resources aren't there to show people how much you have."

Nathan stood off to the side. "Buying a few fewer dresses isn't going to do you any real harm."

Julian's tone was as mild as ever. He slid a garage access form across to me, his finger on the name of my own driver. "Vivian has therapy, fittings, and meetings with the lawyers before the wedding. Martin is being reassigned to her for now. If you need a car, take a taxi, or just tell me."

"Tell you, and then wait while you decide whether I really need one?"

He paused a moment. "Don't assume the worst about everything."

It wasn't until the next morning that I found out the private chef had changed the entire breakfast menu too. Every dish on the table had been chosen for Vivian's tastes, and the hazelnut spread everyone knew I was allergic to was sitting there with the rest.

"Take that away," I told our longtime butler, George Hastings.

My mother lowered her newspaper and looked up. "Vivian is finally willing to eat. If you don't like it, work it out yourself."

"It isn't that I don't like it. I'm allergic to hazelnuts."

Nathan was sitting at the other end of the table. He knew my allergy history better than anyone. He reached out and nudged the hazelnut spread a few inches toward Vivian. "Keep your distance and you'll be fine. Don't start a fight over one breakfast."

I looked at him and felt the urge to argue drain away. There was a time when I could get a midnight craving for lemon tarts from the other side of town, and they would race across the city to bring them back. Now even asking them to keep an allergen away from me counted as unreasonable.

I didn't lose my temper and I didn't stage a hunger strike. I called a rideshare to take me to the corner deli, bought a sandwich, and paid the fare out of my own earnings.

That afternoon I told the tailor to send back every piece that hadn't been unwrapped yet. With the black card frozen, I canceled every order I didn't need.

For the first time, I truly understood that I could live perfectly well without a personal driver, an unlimited card, or a custom menu.

It wasn't the material loss that hurt. It was how they framed each thing they took as a lesson for my own good.

Late that night, Vivian came to the door of the Winter House with the silver gown in her arms. "Take it back." She stood in the doorway, her eyes swollen. "I never wanted to take anything from you."

I looked at the gown, its waist already altered to her shape. "You keep saying you don't want it," I said. "So why, when you know it isn't yours, do you always take it first?"

Her lips moved and the tears spilled over. "They insisted. I'm afraid that if I say no once, the next time they won't give me anything at all."

It was the first time she had said anything close to the truth.

But my mother's footsteps came down the hall, and she caught only the second half of what I said. She snatched the dress box and pushed it back into Vivian's arms. "This dress is your gift. Accepting one gift won't get you thrown out of this family."

Vivian looked at me, and in the end held the box tight against her.

I stopped trying to explain. I took a small pair of scissors out of the sewing box, found the name label stitched into the lining, and cut it out cleanly along the seam.

My mother frowned. "What are you doing now?"

"If we're giving it away, we may as well do it cleanly."

I dropped the label with my name on it into the trash.

I used to wait, quietly, for them to give me back everything that was mine. This time I didn't want it back.