If you grow up as the designated failure in an affluent Boston Brahmin family, you learn very early on how to become invisible. You learn to read the temperature of a room the second you walk through the door. You learn exactly how to stand, how to breathe, and how to smile so that no one notices the thousand tiny paper cuts they inflict upon your spirit.
My name is Meredith Reed—though to the people sitting in the grand ballroom of the Fairmont Copley Plaza today, I am still Meredith Campbell, thirty-two years old, perpetually single, hopelessly boring, and the eternal disappointment of the Campbell family dynasty.
I grew up in a meticulously restored five-bedroom colonial in Beacon Hill. To the outside world, my parents, Robert and Patricia Campbell, were the absolute pinnacle of Boston society. My father was a high-powered corporate attorney whose name was etched in gold lettering on a downtown skyscraper. My mother was a former beauty queen turned ruthless socialite, a woman who treated charity galas like battlefields and her children like accessories.
