My name is Clara.
I grew up in a family that treated success like oxygen, something you either had in abundance or suffocated without. Appearances were currency. Connections were bloodlines. Love was transactional, measured by how impressive someone looked standing next to you in a photograph. When I left the city years ago and married a man who preferred early mornings to cocktail hours, my family decided I had voluntarily stepped off the social ladder, and they never forgave me for it.
The wedding of my younger sister Madeline was the first time I had seen all of them together in years.
It was held in a renovated ballroom attached to a luxury hotel, all crystal chandeliers and ivory linens, the kind of place that smelled faintly of perfume and money. I arrived alone, as Andrew was delayed by traffic and parking, wearing a simple dress I loved because it felt like me, not because it made a statement.
My mother, Evelyn, looked me over the way one inspects a cracked plate at a dinner party.
