The annual Carter Group gala was in December and it was the first one I attended as Co-CEO rather than as Kade's wife or as a shareholder.
It was a distinction that mattered more than I had expected.
Not in how anyone treated me. The room was the same room it had always been, investors and partners and clients and the particular social ecosystem of high-level New York business. But the way I stood in it was different. Not taller, not more defended. Just more fully myself.
I wore a dress that was my choice, dark green, elegant without performance. I wore my hair the way I wore it when I was thinking clearly. I wore the earrings Eloise had given me on our first Christmas.
Kade found me early in the evening and stayed for a drink and then let me move through the room because he understood
