The Girl They Ignored Got Married, Then They Regretted Everything Chapter 02

The Girl They Ignored Got Married, Then They Regretted Everything Chapter 02

The next day, Mom and Dad made a point of gathering everyone in the living room.

Mom slid two gift envelopes toward Chloe and me.

Chloe opened hers first, and a key slipped into her palm. She stared at Mom in confusion.

Mom and Dad exchanged a smile and pressed the envelope back into her hands. Chloe looked inside and found documents showing that a 2,200-square-foot condo had been deeded solely to her.

Mom patted the back of Chloe’s hand.

“We hadn’t planned to give it to you this soon, but somehow, you’re already old enough to start dating.”

“It’s our gift to you—and a place that will always be yours, no matter what happens.”

Chloe threw herself into their arms and burst into sobs.

“Mom, Dad, how did I get so lucky with you two?”

Mom affectionately tapped the tip of her nose. “That’s what happens when you’re our precious girl.”

Chloe wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and looked at me.

“Evelyn, what did Mom and Dad give you?”

I opened my gift envelope and found a small stack of mixed bills. I counted them twice: fifty dollars.

I looked up at Mom.

She seemed to know exactly what I wanted to ask, but her voice remained flat.

“You’re grown now too, and you’re old enough to start thinking about marriage. We don’t have much to give you, but this is a little something from your father and me.”

I froze, then instinctively glanced at the deed in Chloe’s hands.

The moment Chloe noticed, she clutched it tightly against her chest, her voice dripping with smug satisfaction.

“Mom and Dad bought this for me. You don’t get one. Too bad!”

Dad looked at me. His voice was quiet, but the warning in it was unmistakable.

“Don’t get any ideas. It belongs to Chloe.”

“You’re moving to Boston once you get married. Even if we bought you a place here, you wouldn’t use it.”

“There’s no point wasting that kind of money.”

Because I was moving away after marriage, all they gave me was fifty dollars?

There were so many times when I wanted to ask whether I was really their daughter.

I had asked Grandma. I had even secretly gotten a DNA test, and it confirmed that they were my biological parents.

But I wished I had been adopted. At least then, being ignored might not have hurt quite so much.

After a long silence, Grant presented his own gift.

He pulled a cashier’s check from his pocket and slid it toward Chloe, his voice full of affection.

“I don’t have Mom and Dad’s money, but every dollar I have is yours.”

“It isn’t much, but it should be more than enough to renovate your new place.”

Mom smiled as she added, “Your brother has saved almost sixty thousand dollars since he started working, and he’s giving you all of it.”

“I hope you don’t think it’s too little.”

Chloe’s tears, which had only just stopped, began spilling down her cheeks again.

“Grant, you’re the best.”

Grant ruffled her hair, his eyes overflowing with tenderness.

“I just want you to know that it doesn’t matter who your boyfriend is. If he ever treats you badly, come home.”

“We’ll always be here for you.”

I stood off to the side like a spectator, painfully aware that I had no place in the scene.

I turned to leave, but Grant called after me.

“Evelyn.”

I stopped and looked back.

Grant walked over. “You don’t want your gift?”

“I have one too?”

“You’re my sister too.”

Warmth flickered through me at those words.

Grant opened his hand. A gold necklace lay across his palm, with a rose-shaped pendant hanging from the chain.

I had seen it before.

It was a birthday present Grant had once bought for Chloe—the one she hadn’t wanted.

Now he was giving Chloe’s rejected gift to me.

A dull ache spread through my chest.

I smiled, looked up at Grant, and said each word with deliberate sincerity.

“Thank you. This is the most expensive gift I’ve gotten today.”

The warm, cheerful atmosphere in the living room froze instantly, leaving behind a suffocating silence.

Chloe’s shrill voice finally broke it.

“Evelyn, how can you say something like that?”

“It doesn’t matter how much a gift costs. What matters is the love behind it.”

But the love was always hers. All I ever got was an afterthought.

In that house, we were nothing more than strangers who knew one another too well.

I looked at them without saying a word, then walked straight into my bedroom.

Behind me, I could still hear Grant comforting Chloe.

“Hey, ignore her. You know how competitive she’s always been.”

“We’re all used to it by now.”

The moment my bedroom door closed, my tears began to fall.

What I had been fighting for was their love.

Did they really not know that?

…

At three that afternoon, someone knocked on my bedroom door.

It was Mom, with Chloe standing behind her.

Mom shoved a cleaning rag and a mop into my hands.

“Chloe’s boyfriend will be here in a couple of days. Clean the house so she won’t be embarrassed in front of him.”

I looked up at them.

They were both dressed beautifully, with their makeup already done.

My grip tightened around the mop as I pointed at Chloe.

“What about her? What is she doing?”

Mom frowned, clearly irritated.

“I’m taking Chloe shopping for a couple of new outfits. She’s the center of attention here, so of course she needs to look her best.”

“Stop comparing yourself to her. The two of you aren’t the same.”

With that, Mom took Chloe by the hand and walked away without giving me any chance to refuse.

She seemed to have forgotten that I was the one who was about to get married.

Compared with Chloe, I was the one who really needed something nice to wear.

But did Mom truly care?

By the time I finished cleaning, it was already five in the afternoon.

Grant came home from work and stepped directly onto the floor I had just mopped.

He was carrying two bouquets of roses—five dozen in one and only half a dozen in the other.

He hid the larger bouquet, leaving a trail of footprints across the living room to Chloe’s bedroom and back.

Then he approached me holding the half-dozen roses.

“Here, these are for you. I’m planning a surprise for Chloe, so keep it to yourself.”

I held the bouquet. Gradually, my nose began to itch and swell, and my chest tightened.

When Chloe was born, Grant and I had both been forgotten in a corner of the hospital while everyone else’s attention revolved around her.

Back then, Grant had taken my hand.

He saw how lost and helpless I was, and he stayed beside me through that small, private hurt.

I had believed that even if no one else in the family cared about me, I would at least still have Grant.

But as Chloe grew older, that changed.

Once she learned to say Grant’s name, I lost the last source of comfort I had.

Grant had said, “She’s my sister too. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

But in the end, I was the only one who was ever treated unfairly.

From then on, he favored her too.

When Grant noticed my reddened eyes, he looked both amused and exasperated.

“It’s just a bouquet. Is that really enough to make you cry?”

“Don’t tell me your boyfriend won you over with little gestures like this.”

I set the flowers down and wiped away the tears that had escaped.

“He really has never bought me flowers, because he knows I’m allergic to pollen.”

The smug look on Grant’s face froze.

After a long pause, he apologized, though there wasn’t a trace of remorse in his expression.

“Sorry. I didn’t know. I was only trying to make Chloe happy.”

“The florist threw in the extra half dozen when I bought five dozen. I didn’t know you were allergic.”

So even the roses making me sick were nothing more than a free extra that came with Chloe’s gift.

I opened my mouth, wanting to tell him that he did know.

He had bought me flowers at my graduation too, and he had seen exactly how badly I reacted.

But in the end, all I said was, “It’s okay.”

And it truly was okay now.

Once I was married, we would be related, but we would no longer be family.