Brooke was different.
She tolerated me the way you tolerate a cracked window in winter.
She’d never say anything outright cruel. Not in front of people anyway.
But there were always these little moments.
The eye roll when I needed extra time getting into a restaurant.
The sigh when family events had to account for accessibility.
The way she’d say, “Oh, Savannah,” in this voice that made me feel like a problem to be managed rather than a person to be loved.
I told myself it didn’t matter.
I told myself she was just stressed, just busy, just Brooke.
I should have listened to what those little moments were actually telling me.
Brooke met her fiancé, a guy named Colton, at a rooftop networking event in Chicago 3 years ago.
Colton is exactly who you’d expect Brooke to end up with.
Polished, successful, good-looking in that generic catalog way. He wore blazers to casual dinners and talked about his investment portfolio before you’d even asked his name.
I actually tried to like Colton. I genuinely did.
When Brooke got engaged, the whole family went into wedding planning overdrive.
Mom was crying happy tears.
Dad was writing checks.
Jolene was already planning her maid of honor speech.
And me, I was just so happy for my sister.
I know that sounds hard to believe given everything I’m about to tell you.
But at that point, I was—I wanted a fresh start with Brooke.
I thought maybe a wedding, a new chapter in her life, would soften something in her.
She asked me to be a bridesmaid.