Thirty-Six Wedding Lanterns All For My Younger Sister Chapter 03
Mom slapped the notebook out of my hand.
“You ungrateful brat! You’ve actually been keeping tabs on your own mother?”
She clutched her chest and started wailing.
“Your father and I worked ourselves to the bone raising you. We fed you, clothed you, put a roof over your head, sent you to school—and this is how you repay us?”
“Not only are you ungrateful, now you’re demanding money from us!”
“What did I ever do to deserve a daughter like you?”
Chloe and my brother hurried to wipe away her tears and comfort her.
Dad hurled his glass to the floor, where it shattered. He pointed straight at me, furious.
“Maya, you’re about to get married and suddenly you think you’re grown enough to do whatever you want?”
“Your mother and I already knocked the amount down because you’d always been the obedient one. Do the math yourself. Everything we’ve spent on you over the years wouldn’t be covered by forty-five thousand dollars.”
My brother kept rubbing Mom’s back.
The expensive watch on his wrist had been a college graduation gift from my parents.
That year, I was only a junior in high school, and Mom gave me three dollars a day for food.
The diamond necklace around Chloe’s neck had been a birthday gift from Mom and Dad when she graduated high school.
By the time I started college, they gave me only a hundred dollars a month to live on.
I slept four hours a night and worked every spare hour I could just to earn enough money to keep from going hungry before the end of the month.
Then there was all the money they’d spent helping my brother land his first job, and years of Chloe’s art classes and dance lessons.
I desperately wanted to ask exactly where even forty-five thousand dollars had supposedly been spent on me.
But I didn’t.
I already knew there was no point.
I’d asked when Mom first took control of my bank account. I’d asked when I was shivering through winter because I didn’t have a warm enough coat.
Their answers never changed.
“Your brother needed help getting a decent job. Without a good job, he’d never find a wife, and then the Bennett family name would die with him.”
“Chloe wasn’t as strong academically as you. We had to invest in her art and dance if she was going to have options.”
“You’re capable. You’ll land on your feet anywhere. We don’t need to worry about you.”
“Your father and I are getting older. You’ve always been the sensible one. You need to understand how hard things are for us.”
Why did being responsible and capable mean I was the one they were entitled to bleed dry?
And yet every time I looked at their rough hands, graying hair, and backs that seemed a little more stooped each year, I gave in.
With the tension in the room ready to snap, Chloe stepped in to play peacemaker. She grabbed my arm and gave it a little shake.
“Maya, stop upsetting Mom and Dad. Family comes first. We’re supposed to respect our parents.”
“And Evan’s right here. Aren’t you embarrassed to let him see you act like this?”
I looked at her sweet, innocent face and suddenly found the whole thing so absurd that I laughed.
“What are you laughing at?”
“You. You’re such a hypocrite, Chloe. You don’t hand over a cent. You sit there enjoying every bit of their favoritism, and you have the nerve to lecture me?”
Chloe froze.
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and her eyes immediately reddened.
“Isn’t this whole scene tonight just because you’re jealous of my wedding gifts?”
She shoved the deed and car keys into my arms, her voice choking up.
“Fine. Take them. Take all of it. I don’t want any of it anymore. Happy?”
Mom lashed out at me in anger, leaving me stunned.
“So that’s what this was really about?”
“I had no idea you were this calculating. You’ve been after your sister’s wedding gifts this whole time.”
“I swear, I’ll make you regret this!”
Evan stepped in front of me.
“Please calm down, Mrs. Bennett. Don’t let Maya get you this worked up.”
“Let me talk to her, okay?”
He held out a tissue, his expression tense as he looked at me.
I said nothing and didn’t take it.
“Maya, enough.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Bennett have been so good to you. You can’t hurt them just because you want Chloe’s wedding gifts.”
“You were never this materialistic before. Right?”
I couldn’t believe this was the same person who had spent our childhood quietly taking my side and slipping me snacks whenever no one was looking.
I didn’t dare raise my head. I couldn’t let the tears fall.
“Fine. I don’t want any of it.”
Forty-five thousand dollars was enough to repay them for raising me and buy my way out of this family for good.