Chapter 1: The Children of Excess and Leftovers
My parents said I wasn’t invited to my brother’s wedding after I gifted him a house worth $770,000. “It’s only for the closest family,” my father stated. My brother just laughed. So, while his lavish, 200-guest wedding was in full swing, I sold the house out from under him. What the bride’s family did when they discovered the truth brought the entire reception to a dead silence. “You’re not on the list,” my brother had said about his own wedding, held in the house I bought with my own blood, sweat, and tears. That single sentence cost him $770,000. It cost my father a daughter, and it cost me the last shred of naïve hope that my blood relatives would ever see me as one of their own.
My name is Sierra. I am 31 years old. Let me drag you back 17 years to the day my mother died, the day my universe split cleanly in half.
My mother passed away on a bleak Tuesday in October. The funeral was a blur of gray skies and wet grass. Even now, the sharp, cloying scent of lilies mixed with cold mud makes my stomach turn. My father, Gerald, stood rigidly by the mahogany casket. He threw a heavy arm around my brother, Dalton, who at 16 was already taller than him. Gerald pulled him close and announced, loud enough for the gathered mourners to hear: “You’re the man of the house now, son.”
