Chapter 2

The next morning, Mom and Dad called everyone into the living room.

Mom pushed two envelopes across the coffee table, one to me and one to Tyler.

Tyler opened his first. A key slid into his palm.

He looked up at her, baffled. Mom exchanged a glance with Dad, then smiled and pressed a folded deed into his hands.

Tyler opened it.

Twenty-one hundred square feet, and the title was in his name.

Mom patted the back of his hand.

"We weren't planning to give it to you this early. But you blink and suddenly you're old enough to be dating."

"It's a gift from your father and me. Consider it something solid under your feet."

Tyler's eyes went red on the spot.

"Mom, Dad, how did I get parents this good?"

Mom patted him again, doting on him. "Well, you're our precious boy. What did you expect?"

Tyler wiped his eyes, embarrassed, and glanced over at me.

"What'd Mom and Dad give you?"

I opened my envelope. Cash. I counted it.

Sixty-six dollars. An odd, deliberate little sum.

I looked up at Mom. She seemed to know exactly what I was about to ask, and her voice went flat.

"You're grown. You're at the age to marry and start your own household. There isn't much we can give you. This is a small gesture from your father and me."

I stared at her, then found my eyes drifting to the deed in Tyler's hands.

He noticed and clutched it hard against his chest, but his voice was pure gloating.

"Mom and Dad bought that for me. You don't get one. Too bad, so sad."

Dad looked at me. His voice was soft, and there was a warning underneath it.

"Don't get any ideas. That belongs to your brother."

"You've been working for years anyway. Whatever we could give you, you'd only look down on."

"No sense wasting the money."

So because I'd started working early, I got sixty-six dollars.

There were a lot of days when I wanted to ask them outright whether I was really their son.

I asked Grandma once. I even had a DNA test done in secret.

The results said what everyone said. I was theirs.

Some part of me wished they'd said otherwise. If I'd been someone they picked up off the street, being ignored might not have hurt so much.

After a moment, Serena weighed in too.

She pulled a bank card out of her pocket and slid it across to Tyler, her voice indulgent.

"Your sister can't match Mom and Dad, but whatever I've got is yours."

"It isn't a fortune, but it'll more than cover the renovations on your place."

Mom added, smiling, from the side.

"Your sister's saved close to sixty thousand since she started working, and she's handing you every cent of it."

"Don't you dare complain it isn't enough."

Tyler's eyes brimmed over.

"You're the best, Serena."

She ruffled his hair, and the tenderness in her face was almost embarrassing to watch.

"I just want you to know you're the best thing in my life. Whatever kind of girl you fall for, I'll back you, no questions."

"We'll always be here."

I stood off to the side like a stranger who'd wandered into the wrong house.

Entirely surplus to requirements.

I turned to go, and Serena called after me.

"Adrian."

I stopped and looked back.

She came toward me. "Don't you want your present?"

"There's one for me?"

"You're my brother too."

Something in my chest warmed, just a little.

She opened her hand. A watch lay in her palm, its face a deep blue scattered with tiny silver stars.

I'd seen it before.

She'd given it to Tyler for his birthday.

The birthday present Tyler didn't want, she was giving to me.

Something bitter rose in the back of my throat.

I smiled and looked her in the eye, and I meant every word.

"Thank you. This is the most valuable gift I've been given today."

The warmth in the room froze solid. Whatever life had been in it drained away.

Tyler's voice cut through the silence, sharp with outrage.

"How can you say something like that? It doesn't matter how big a gift is. It's family. It's the thought that counts."

The thought was his. What I got was the afterthought.

In this house we were strangers who happened to share a last name, and that was all.

I looked at them, said nothing, and walked into my bedroom.

Behind me I heard Serena soothing him.

"Ignore him. You know what he's like. He's been competitive since he was a kid."

"We're all used to it by now."

The door shut, and the tears came before I could stop them.

What I'd been competing for was their love.

Did they really not know that?