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knew with some certainty what Virginia would tell her.
Speak up, Dana. They still can’t hear you. You won’t get ahead being good. It’s your great ideas that will succeed.
    Dana continued walking, eyes cast down. Her legs moved with a steady rhythm, one foot in front of the other. That’s how the entire day had been: one step at a time in order to hold body and soul together while people had alternately tried to warn or pacify her.
    Earlier in the day, she had followed the instincts she’d inherited from Virginia. She’d disobeyed Helen and spoken her mind, first to Bea and then to Bob, but she’d taken it on the chin and stepped back in line. She would have to follow orders as well as stifle all her creative energies.
    She’d only gone one block when her thoughts, more melancholy with each successive step, turned to Brett. Where was he? Where was her partner, her friend who shared her dreams? After almost eight years of working and planning for the life they wanted, it was all coming together, and yet at the same time it seemed to be flying apart. They’d done everything right—made all the right moves—and had usually been in agreement about the path of their lives together. But something was different in their relationship. Sometimes she felt as if she were a ghost inside her own home. Was he so self-absorbed that he didn’t see or hear her when she walked through a room or offered an opinion? She listened attentively whenever he spoke of the firm, but she wondered how much he knew or cared about her activities at B. Altman. Then again, maybe he was very aware of her but no longer liked what he heard or saw.
    So what was she going to do? Play the loyal employee and wife and, as her father might say, wait for things to fall into place? Or would she, like Virginia, fight the good fight and try to make things happen? Would she confront Brett or perhaps force him into counseling? Would she risk her job by remaining vocal? Dana wasn’t sure how to answer these questions, but she felt as if she’d crossed a threshold of sorts. She was a different person than the Dana McGarry who had arrived at B. Altman that morning, brimming with enthusiasm. Was such a radical transformation really possible?
    Yes, it was most certainly was. She’d been asked to do more than just sit on a terrific money-making concept and wait for B. Altman’s corporate gears to align with her way of thinking. She’d been ordered to lie. She sensed that her life was about to change, although she couldn’t predict how. The day was almost over, but Dana sensed that a new journey was beginning.
    Dana quickened her pace. She didn’t quite know who Dana McGarry was any longer or what she was going to become. But she knew that things were going to change. Like her father, she would continue to be the good employee. Like her mother, she felt compelled to stand up for herself and challenge the status quo.

C hapter Four
    J ohn Cirone put down his glass of Barolo and rose from the overstuffed chair in the spacious den of Phil and Virginia Martignetti. Their house sat on the edge of Macy Channel in the community of Hewlett Harbor on Long Island.
    “I tell you, Phil, I can’t accept this, and I won’t,” he said. “I’ve never liked this Farnsworth girl, and now she goes and pulls a stunt like this. For God’s sake, she’s not even Catholic! What is my son thinking! What kind of a life will Johnny have if he’s married to a Main Line Philadelphia socialite? A WASP!”
    John Cirone, known affectionately to the Martignetti children simply as Uncle John, paced the floor of the den anxiously. The stunt he alluded to was the mailing of wedding invitations ahead of schedule by his son Johnny’s fiancée, Suzanne Farnsworth.
    “She did it to make sure Johnny doesn’t back out at the eleventh hour,” John asserted. “She knows I’ve been against this union from the beginning, and this is her Main Line response.”
    “John, you need to sit down