Two Hearts That Could Never Meet novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Woman in the White Coat
Millicent slaps a guest who insults her at the Thackeray gala and her husband punishes the woman, until his dead first love walks in and he leaves Millicent to follow her; Millicent takes off her ring, and the video that spreads shows Leona smiling.
The woman in the green dress said it loud enough for the whole table to hear.
"You're a knockoff. Take off the necklace, honey. It was never meant for your neck."
It was the Thackeray Foundation gala, three hundred guests, and every one of them turned to look.
I put my glass down.
Then I stood up, walked around the table, and slapped her so hard her earring flew into the bread basket.
Nobody moved.
I had never been told no in my marriage, and I didn't plan to start.
Lawrence was across the room by then. He had left a senator mid-sentence.
"Who touched my wife?" he said.
"She did," the woman said, holding her cheek. "She hit me."
"After you insulted her." He didn't even look at her. He looked at me. "Are you hurt?"
"My hand stings," I said.
He took it and kissed the palm.
"Security," he said. "Take her out. And find out who put her on the list."
That was Lawrence. For three years he had handled every woman who looked at me wrong that way.
Two women had lost their jobs over it. One had lost a lease.
I knew why, too. Everyone did.
I looked about eighty percent like Leona Fairbank, the girl he loved at twenty-four and lost at twenty-five.
Same eyes. Same jaw. My nose is shorter and my hair is darker, and I had spent three years pretending those differences were enough.
Lawrence's mother came up behind me and fixed the clasp on my necklace.
Constance Thackeray was sixty-one and never wore anything but gray silk. She smelled like cold cream and lilies.
"There," she said. "Straight again. You did well, dear. I've always said you have more spine than anyone he's ever brought home."
"Thank you, Constance."
"Don't thank me. I only did the seating chart." She smiled. "I did it the night you two met, too. Table four, right beside him. Some things you simply know."
She squeezed my elbow.
I remember being happy then.
I remember the band starting up, and Lawrence's hand finding the small of my back, and thinking the night was over and I had won it.
Then the doors at the top of the staircase opened.
A woman in a white coat stood there with snow on her shoulders.
She came down slowly, one hand on the rail.
The band stopped playing.
I saw her face and my stomach dropped.
It was the face from the photograph Lawrence kept in his desk drawer, the one he thought I didn't know about.
Her eyes were exactly mine.
Her nose was not.
"Leona," Lawrence said.
The glass in his hand hit the marble and broke.
He didn't look down at it.
He let go of my back and walked straight across the ballroom, through the broken glass, and the guests moved out of his way.
"Lawrence," I said.
He didn't turn around.
I followed him as far as the foot of the stairs.
Leona reached up and touched his face with two fingers.
"You're alive," he said. His voice cracked on it. "Eight years. Where have you been?"
"Home," she said. "I came home."
He was shaking.
I had never seen Lawrence shake.
"Lawrence," I said again. "Look at me."
He did, finally.
"Not now, Millicent," he said.
Three hundred people heard it.
Then he took Leona's arm, and she leaned into him, and they walked out through the lobby together past every camera in the building.
I stood alone at the foot of the staircase.
Nobody came to stand with me.
I went back to the table and picked up my glass.
My hand wasn't shaking. That surprised me.
I turned the diamond on my finger once, and then I took it off.
The Thackeray ring was a four-carat oval, and for three years I had never once removed it.
I laid it on the white tablecloth, on top of the place card that said Mrs. Lawrence Thackeray.
So I left.
Constance caught my arm by the coat check. Her face was pale.
"Millicent, wait. Whatever it looks like tonight, he is yours. He promised me that. Come home with me and let me fix this."
"No," I said.
"Dear, you're upset."
"Yes," I said. "I am."
I took my coat from the girl at the counter and I walked out into the snow with nothing but my phone and my purse.
My friend Roxy was waiting at the curb with her engine running. I had asked her to pick me up at ten, because I always left parties early.
She took one look at my face and said nothing.
She handed me her phone instead.
A guest had filmed the lobby.
The video already had forty thousand views.
Lawrence was lifting Leona into the back of his car, careful, gentle, the way he used to lift me when I'd had too much wine.
She turned her head toward the camera as he shut the door.
She was smiling.
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