I wore a navy maternity gown and my mother’s ivory silk wrap.
Mom wore that wrap the night she became the first woman partner at her law firm, back when people still asked her who her husband was. She hand-rolled the hem herself because she said store hems looked lazy.
She died in March, the week before I found out I was pregnant. The wrap had been in tissue paper since the funeral.
I wanted her there. That was the closest I could get.
The gala was on a hotel roof downtown. String lights, the skyline, a low stage with a podium and a screen as wide as a garage door.
I got there forty minutes early. I wanted to find Derek before anyone else did. I wanted him to hear it from me.
I found him at the bar.
His hand was low on Paige’s back. Not on her shoulder. Not on her arm. Low. She was laughing at something he’d whispered, close to her ear.
He looked up and saw me, and his face went hard. Not guilty. Annoyed. Like I was a stain on his night.
He picked up a full glass of red wine from the bar and walked over. Paige followed with her champagne, smiling the whole way.
Two people from his team were at the next table. Glen, who’s been with Derek since the firm was three people in a garage. Tasha, the youngest architect there.
“I told you not to come,” Derek said, low.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Not here.”
Then he lifted the glass, tipped it over my shoulder, and poured.
It was cold. It ran down the front of my mother’s wrap in one long stream and spread into the silk like ink in water.
“There,” he said, louder now. “Go home. Paige is my date.”
Paige laughed behind her hand.
Someone gasped. Tasha, I think. Nobody moved.
I didn’t wipe it off. Wiping it would have meant his opinion still mattered.
I put my hand on my belly. The baby was kicking. And I looked past him, at the stage.
Derek turned to his team and put his arm around Paige’s waist. He was enjoying this now.
“She thinks this party’s about her.”
Glen laughed, the short, unhappy laugh men give when they don’t know what else to do. Paige giggled into her glass.
Tasha didn’t laugh. She was looking at the stage too.
Up there, Raymond had just stepped up to the microphone. The giant screen behind him lit up.
With my face.
My board photo, navy blazer, twelve feet tall. The rooftop went quiet, front to back.
“Please welcome our new CEO, Nora Whitfield.”
A spotlight swung off the stage, searched the crowd for a second, and landed on me. On the stain. On the pregnant woman in the back, exactly where my husband had told me to stand.
A hundred and fifty people turned around and started clapping.
Derek was still holding the empty glass.
Paige put her champagne down on the nearest table and took one step away from him. Just one. I saw it.
I picked up my clutch. I walked toward the stage, and on the way I passed my husband. I stopped at his shoulder.
“Monday. Nine a.m. My office.”
Then I kept walking.
