Opening
Fourteen years before the novel’s main events, Chloe Taylor opens with a confession: she betrays her sister on the grand staircase of the Met. At the height of a glittering night, one phone call pulls her out of fantasy and into a choice that reshapes her family—and foreshadows a murder.
What Happens
At the Met Gala, Chloe arrives as the young protégée of her powerful boss, Catherine Lancaster, floating in a borrowed Versace gown and newly buoyed by praise—Catherine calls her writing “smart” and her instincts strong, a hint that a real career might finally be hers. The enchantment fades when Catherine treats her like an accessory, handing over a sequined clutch and sending Chloe trailing behind as a glorified bag-holder. The room gleams with celebrity and polish, while Chloe feels the old hierarchy settle: not guest, not peer—assistant.
Her phone lights up with calls from her parents and from the home of her sister, Nicky Macintosh. Convinced it’s another orchestrated meltdown timed to spoil her moment, Chloe silences the phone and switches it off, a choice simmering with resentment and the frayed edges of Sisterhood and Rivalry. When she finally powers it back on, the voicemail waiting is not Nicky’s—it’s from Adam Macintosh, his voice tight with “anger, mixed with exhaustion and fear.” Their son, Ethan Macintosh, has almost drowned in the backyard pool. Adam implies Nicky’s negligence and says he can’t do this anymore.
In the lobby, awash in light and floral arrangements, Chloe makes a choice she understands as irreversible. She sides with Adam and Ethan. She answers his plea, stepping away from the sister who has always threatened to pull her back into chaos. The prologue closes on a jolt of foreknowledge: four years from this night, Chloe becomes the second Mrs. Adam Macintosh—and ten years after that, she’s the one who finds his body.
Character Development
Chloe steps out of fantasy and into consequence. Her ambition and clear-eyed pragmatism crystallize in one decisive act, even as guilt takes root in the telling.
- Chloe: Ambitious, hungry for legitimacy, and alert to power dynamics; her refusal to pick up the phone becomes an active choice when she allies with Adam. She narrates with remorse, signaling a long shadow over this night.
- Nicky: Seen through others’ accounts as volatile and unreliable, the perceived source of family upheaval and the catalyst for Chloe’s “betrayal.”
- Adam: A father at the brink; his call reframes him as protector and as someone seeking an ally beyond his marriage.
- Catherine: Gatekeeper to Chloe’s professional ascent, simultaneously validating and diminishing her—mentor and reminder of Chloe’s place.
Themes & Symbols
The prologue stages a collision between image and truth. In the Met’s curated glamour, the calls expose the messiness Chloe tries to outrun, sharpening the theme of Public Image vs. Private Reality. The setting doesn’t just dazzle; it traps Chloe in a mirror of who she wants to be, while the crisis drags her toward who she is at home.
The unanswered calls imply a long pattern of spiraling crises and rationalizations, planting the seeds of Family Secrets and Lies. Adam’s implication of Nicky’s negligence, and Chloe’s readiness to believe it, suggest a family accustomed to silence, assumptions, and stories told from convenient angles.
Betrayal and Loyalty tenses every decision. Chloe’s “betrayal” is also a form of loyalty—to a child’s safety, to a future she’s building, to a version of herself that refuses to be pulled under. The novel asks whether loyalty is measured by blood or by the lives you’re willing to protect.
Symbol: Pockets vs. Purse. Catherine’s sequined clutch—thrust into Chloe’s hands—marks subservience and performance. Chloe’s pride that her dress has pockets is a small assertion of autonomy: hands free, unburdened, self-sufficient. She wants a life with room for her own tools, not someone else’s baggage.
Key Quotes
“I betrayed my sister while standing on the main stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
This confession frames Chloe as both agent and judge of her own actions. The location—public, iconic—underscores the split between spectacle and private rupture, aligning the prologue with questions of image versus truth.
Catherine told me I had a “smart gut.”
Validation from a power broker signals the tantalizing nearness of the life Chloe wants. It also makes the impending crisis feel like a test of whether she will prioritize ambition over family—or redefine what family loyalty means.
Adam’s voice was “anger, mixed with exhaustion and fear.”
The triad compresses years of strain into one moment. It positions Adam as both credible and desperate, priming Chloe—and the reader—to accept a narrative of Nicky’s instability before we hear Nicky at all.
“I had no idea that four years later, I’d become the second Mrs. Adam Macintosh, or that ten years after that, I’d be the one to find his dead body.”
The flash-forward reframes the prologue from domestic drama to crime story. It seeds causality—this night begets a marriage, which leads to a body—inviting the reader to trace the fault lines from choice to consequence.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
The prologue plants the novel’s central fault line: Chloe’s choice cleaves the family and binds her future to Adam’s. It establishes the emotional logic that drives every later decision—ambition, resentment, protection, and the cost of picking a side. By closing on the murder, it converts backstory into motive, reshaping a tale of sisters into a suspense engine. Every subsequent chapter echoes this night’s two competing lights: the Met’s chandelier glow and the cold blue of a phone screen that changes everything.