The CEO's Wife is A Badass novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Her Name Is Not on the Door
On relaunch night Siobhan finds Blair named Director and her badge dead; Blair drops Siobhan's sketchbook in the champagne and Siobhan takes the microphone. Blair answers with the girl whose paintings burned.
My name was not on the door.
For two years it had been there in small brass letters under the hours.
SIOBHAN DOOLAN, GALLERY MANAGER.
Thursday night the brass said BLAIR KINGSLEY, DIRECTOR.
I stood on the sidewalk in my navy dress with two hundred guests walking past me.
The relaunch of Harrington Gallery was tonight, and I had planned every minute of it.
I had picked the wine and hung the walls.
I had chosen the lighting by standing on a ladder for six hours.
I tapped my badge on the reader inside the glass doors.
The light went red.
"Ma'am, you're not on the list," said the guard.
He was the same guard who brought me coffee every morning.
He would not look at me.
"I'm Siobhan Doolan. I run this gallery."
"I was told you're not staff anymore."
"Who told you that?"
"The new director."
Behind him, under the big chandelier, a woman in a white suit raised a champagne flute.
Her hair was platinum now and her smile was the same.
Blair Kingsley had worked in the studio next to mine at art school.
I hadn't seen her in seven years.
I walked past the guard and he let me, because he did not want to touch the owner's wife.
Inside, everything I had built was there.
The long white wall was there, and the sculptures I had lit from below.
My assistant was carrying a tray with her eyes on the floor.
Blair's name was on the program, on the wall text and on the banner over the stairs.
Mine was nowhere.
"Siobhan!" Blair said, loud enough for the room. "You came."
She kissed the air beside my cheek.
"I had to let your access go, sweetie. Director only on opening nights."
"You're not the director," I said.
"I'm afraid I am."
She turned to the crowd and tapped her glass with a ring.
The room went quiet for money.
"Friends, welcome. And thank you to our little team, who did the invitations and the sandwiches."
She smiled at me.
"Especially Siobhan, who has been such a help. Siobhan, would you get us more ice?"
A few people laughed.
One of them was a critic I had personally walked through the coat check last spring.
My face went hot, and then it went very still.
I had a leather sketchbook under my arm.
It held two years of my own drawings, the ones I did on the train and never showed anyone.
Blair noticed it.
"What's that? Your homework?"
She took it out of my hands before I understood she was going to.
She flipped through it with two fingers, one page, two pages, a smirk.
"Oh, how sweet. Little lanterns."
Then she dropped it into the champagne fountain.
It sank into the pink bubbles with a soft sound.
Someone gasped.
Nobody moved.
I looked at the fountain.
I looked at her.
I did not cry.
I reached into the fountain up to my elbow and pulled the book out, dripping, and I set it on a pedestal.
Then I walked to the microphone on the little stage and took it out of its stand.
"Good evening," I said.
My voice came out calm.
I do not know where it came from.
"My name is Siobhan Doolan Harrington. I married the man whose name is on this building, and I have managed this gallery for two years."
The room had turned toward me.
"I hung every piece on these walls. I wrote the program that woman is holding."
I pointed at the banner over the stairs.
"That design is mine, and I paid the printer."
Blair's smile slipped one notch.
"I'm not here for ice," I said. "I'm here for my office."
I looked straight at the guard.
"Open the door for me, please."
He looked at Blair.
Blair gave a small shake of her head.
I put the microphone back in its stand.
"Fine," I said. "I'll be through the front door at nine tomorrow. Every one of you can come watch."
I picked up my wet sketchbook.
People parted for me as I walked out, and not one of them said a word.
I was almost at the glass doors when Blair's heels came clicking behind me.
She caught up and leaned in close, so only I could hear.
Her perfume was the same perfume she wore at twenty-two.
"You were always loud when it didn't matter," she whispered.
She tilted her head, almost kind.
"Funny thing, Siobhan. Nobody remembers the girl whose paintings burned."
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