Chapter 3

I never once imagined that the single most important moment of my life, my wedding, could turn into something this absurd.

My father sighed and sighed. My mother's tears wouldn't stop.

The people around us pointed and murmured. They kept their voices low, but I could still make out enough. None of it was kind.

Right there, Caspar wrote out the transfer authorization and flung it into Brendan's face.

“Go handle the paperwork yourself. As for today's wedding, you're not welcome here.”

“Brendan, you'd better remember what I'm telling you. Never set foot in my home again, or I'll break your legs.”

Brendan gave a short laugh, took the authorization, and walked off with his men, cocky as ever.

A week after the wedding.

Caspar, away on business, called me, his voice tight with worry.

“Call Brendan, right now.”

“Call him for what?”

Just hearing the name turned my stomach.

“He sold off the taxi paperwork. How could he sell it?”

Caspar was beside himself, though it was more the frustration of someone who couldn't shake a man into sense.

“The license alone runs three, four hundred thousand to get, and with the car it's got to be five hundred thousand at least. He sold it for three hundred fifty.”

“When I transferred it to him, I did it hoping he'd finally straighten out. And look at the mess he's made of it!”

I hung up at once and called Brendan.

“Whatever it is, make it quick. I'm busy over here.”

The indifference in his voice sent my anger surging.

“Why did you sell off the taxi paperwork?”

Brendan let out a careless snort.

“This is what you're calling about? I thought maybe you were inviting me over for dinner.”

All at once the anger drained out of me, but a colder desolation settled in its place.

How could he have turned into this?

“It was transferred to me, so it's mine. I sell it if I want to. Do I need your permission for that too?”

“Nothing else? Then I'm hanging up. I'm in the middle of a mahjong game. That's a win……”

Right before the line went dead, I heard the cheerful clatter of money being raked in on his end.

I really didn't want to get involved, but after mulling it over for a long while, I called my parents anyway.

The two of them were quiet for a moment after I finished. Then my father spoke.

“Prissy, just let him be. We're getting old. We can't control him anymore.”

If it had been anyone but my father saying it, I'd have thought I'd misheard.

“Dad, did you hear me right? He sold the whole taxi setup, every bit of it.”

“It's not that I won't let him sell. If he had a real job it'd be fine, but he's out with that crowd of his all day, eating and drinking and running wild. What if……”

“Prissy, that's enough of that.”

My mother cut in suddenly, her voice heavy with disappointment.

“Everyone else in the world can doubt Brendan, but you can't.”

“You're brother and sister by blood. You've got a long road ahead of you together……”

My mother had barely gotten a few words out before my father hung up the phone.

Their attitude left me cold, but more than that, it left me puzzled.

My parents never favored sons over daughters. They'd always treated Brendan and me exactly the same.

Back when I got into a decent state school, my mother worried about what we could afford, but my father settled it on the spot.

“The child got in, so she's going, even if we have to sell the pots off the stove.”

For a rural family, a child in college was the single best shot at changing your fate.

And yet a few years later, Brendan, the one my parents had pinned all their hopes on, didn't even sit the SATs.

I tried to talk him out of it back then, and the explanation he gave me made a terrible kind of sense.

“The way the world is now, a diploma from some third-rate junior college really doesn't count for much.”

“Mom and Dad have it hard enough. Putting one of us through is plenty. I can stand on my own.”