What I felt, crossing that ballroom floor, was integration — the sensation of two halves of myself that had been kept apart for three years finally sliding together into one whole person.

For three years there had been Celestine Winthrop, the pleasant decorative wife who smiled at her husband’s colleagues and said little, and there had been Celestine Ingram, who sat in conference rooms and moved capital and pulled companies back from ruin, and I had walked between those two rooms every single day, careful never to let one leak into the other.

Every step across that ballroom collapsed the wall between them.

By the time I reached the stage I was not two women anymore.

I was one, in front of everyone, for the first time since my wedding day — and the relief of that, the sheer physical relief of no longer having to be smaller than I was, was so large it nearly undid me right there at the microphone.

The applause was pleasant.