I Watched Them Love Her Chapter 02

I Watched Them Love Her Chapter 02

Nico was silent for a moment.

“Tessa, you don’t like Chloe?”

I stopped what I was doing and glanced at him.

“I’m indifferent. I just want to avoid trouble.”

He studied me for a long time.

For a second, he looked like he wanted to ruffle my hair the way he did when we were kids, but his hand hovered in the air, then dropped.

“Tessa, I know it’s strange, having someone new in the family all of a sudden,” he said. “But you have to believe us. Chloe’s arrival doesn’t change how we feel about you.”

I looked at him, saying nothing.

It wouldn’t change?

When I won first prize at the National Junior Science Fair, Dad had only said, “Not bad.”

When Chloe landed a minor role in a school play, the whole family had caravaned over in two cars to see her.

Afterward, they took her out for a celebratory dinner and bought her flowers.

When I’d fractured my ankle playing basketball, my parents sent the housekeeper to sit with me at the hospital.

When Chloe came down with the flu, Mom and Dad took turns calling out of work to sit by her bed.

Mom, her eyes red, had even said that Chloe had suffered so much already; they had to make it up to her now.

I pulled my gaze away from him.

“Okay. I get it.”

After Nico left, I opened the innermost drawer of my closet and took out a wooden box.

It was the music box Grandpa had carved for me.

In my last life, Chloe broke it.

That was the first time I ever hit her.

She’d run crying to our parents. She’d only wanted to look at it, she sobbed. My reaction had startled her, her hand had shaken, and she’d dropped it by accident.

Mom hadn’t even asked for my side of the story. She’d just scolded me.

“Tessa, it’s just a music box! Do you have to make such a big deal out of everything? Can’t you cut her some slack?”

But it wasn’t “just a music box.”

It was the last thing Grandpa ever gave me.

I closed the lid and placed the box gently at the bottom of my suitcase.

This was the only thing I still wanted from this house.

At six that evening, Mom knocked on my door.

“Tessa, come down for dinner.”

Her voice was light, straining for the casual tone of an ordinary family dinner.

“It’s Chloe’s first meal with us. We should all eat together.”

I put down my book and went downstairs.

The table was laden with food.

Lasagna, chicken parmesan, a large salad, garlic bread, and a bowl of Mom’s homemade tomato sauce.

But as I reached the table, I stopped.

The seat that had always been mine—between Mom and Nico—was now occupied by Chloe.

She was sitting primly in a new dress.

Dad was cutting her steak into small pieces. Nico pushed a serving of pasta toward her. Mom kept piling more food onto her plate.

“Eat more, Chloe.”

“I made this chicken just for you. You said you liked it, right?”

“Slow down. You’ll burn yourself.”

The light from the chandelier was warm, casting them in a perfect portrait of a happy family.

I was the outsider.