Synopsis: Pearls and Roses

Kathryn Elizabeth is the oldest daughter of Dr. Elizabeth, a world-known brain surgeon, and his first wife who happened to be his nurse early on in his career. Now her father is a workaholic, obsessed with his job and the money that comes with it while her mother is living quite happily off the divorce money. Kathryn lives with her father in his roomy DC apartment, his fourth wife, her two half-siblings, and her grandmother. Kathryn wants to escape from the patterns of neglect from both parents and the society both her parents force her into. It’s when she meets the Baker twins that her world really begins to change however. New money, everyone calls them, meaning that they haven’t the class or elegance to be truly wealthy and noble like themselves.
Kathryn has long expected and been expected to marry Richard Quinton, whose money comes from the chain stores his family owns and that he will one day inherit. She has convinced herself that she is in love with him and that he is in love with her. However, everything changes when he invites his not-so-dear, much despised twin brother Jedidiah (not his permanent name) to his home for the engagement party.
Soon Kathryn has fallen in love with him but to keep her parents and society happy she marries Richard, as planned. Rather than hurt either Kathryn or Richard further than he already has, he leaves the country.
There he plans to forget about her and his goody-goody brother who he has always been in awe of but never had a brotherly relationship with.

Now it skips forward twenty years:

Jed has returned to his brother's neighborhood after his voyage abroad and is shocked to find that everything has changed during his absence. Richard has grown paler and had a bitterness to him that Jed has never seen before, their is a young lady now almost fully grown up at the age of eighteen, and her mother, Kathryn is dead - she committed suicide.