“Alright. Yeah. Thanks for meeting with me,” I mutter, as I stand and start to shrug on my coat.
“Off to join some dating apps?” Mr. Grande asks, too cheekily for the guy who just told me I’d have to get hitched to receive the inheritance that shouldn’t have so many fucking strings attached.
As if a whole life of jumping through hoops wasn’t enough for me to earn it. Leave it to my father to continue yanking me around from beyond the grave.
“Ha,” I offer, dryly, because maybe laughing at his jokes will keep him on my side. And I’m going to need it for whatever I try next. “Yeah, something like that.”
When I leave Grande’s office, I detour to walk through Millennium Park, even though the sun has just started to set and the wind cuts right through my jacket.
It’s not like New York is some sort of tropical paradise, but they call Chicago the windy city for a reason, and somehow I’ve managed to forget just how cold it can be here.
I take a left on Randolph, mind working as I walk, turning over everything Grande said in his office. The way he’d joked about it, asking if I was going out to look for a wife, it made me wonder just howrealit would have to be.
There must be voluntary and mutual consent free from undue influence or coercion.
What does that mean? What is undue influence? Coercion?
Isn’t every marriage, in the end, simply a contractual agreement that benefits both parties? How would Grande even know if I just found someone, convinced them to marry me for—what? Security? Money?
And after that, we could end the thing like everyone else does.
Most marriages end in divorce, too. I think about Orie, the other cardio surgeon I worked with back in New York. His last marriage didn’t even make it past a year. I think about Alena, whose calls to me about Matt, her husband, have gone from jokingly troubled to undoubtedly serious in the past year. There are plenty of people in Hollywood getting divorce as often as they get face lifts.
All I’d have to do was find a single woman looking to get married. Someone who wouldn’t get attached, and to whom I could offer something in return.
Without thinking, my feet steer me toward the Christmas village, or Christkindlmarket. Dad brought Alena and I here each year, and we’d get twenty dollars to pick something out for the other sibling by the end of the night. I make a note to ask Alena if she’s planning to come, to try the same thing with the twins. It might be a good idea for her to get out and do something to lift her mood.
Plus, I like spending time with my sister. She’s the one person who really understands what it was like to grow up with our father, and she’s been my closest friend forever.
I can’t quite remember what it was like when I was a kid, if you’d have to pay an entry fee to get in, but this year it’s open to the public, so anyone can wander among the little booths, the floating scent of roasting nuts and wafting sweetness of hot chocolate.
There are no smells now, though, as most of the booths are shuddered, and some of them are playing music from Bluetooth speakers as they get things ready.
In fact, one of the booths is blastingMonster Mashat full volume, which isn’t exactly the Christmas ambiance they go for around here. Two women move in the dim glow of the orange light. One of them fumbles with a few packages, and the other laughs, catching them and setting them out on the counter.
At first, I don’t recognize her. She’s wearing a striped, green sweater and some sort of bowler hat, bending over to retrieve small, pastel boxes from a tote within the festive booth around her. Even dressed as a knock-off Freddy Krueger, her ass is distracting.
The sweater clings to her curves, showing me exactly the dip in which a man might want to rest his hand.
It’s Juliette Harper. Who needs surgery for her son.
Even now, there’s something about her that strikes me as deeply familiar. She has the kind of personality, the kind of face that makes you feel at home. I watch as she straightens up, nearly drops one of the boxes, then laughs with the other woman in the booth, who has glowing brown skin and long, pin-straight hair. She’s in a black lace dress that crawls up and down her arms with spiderwebs.
Earlier, at the hospital, I’d had the urge to offer the surgery pro bono, though I knew administration wouldn’t like that. Too messy, plus, it’s not like I can speak for the nurses, anesthesiologists, techs, and other doctors involved in the operation.
I could have offered to outright pay for it, but Juliette didn’t exactly seem like the kind of woman who would accept an offer like that. If she was, she probably could have started a Go Fund Me with a picture of Gus in that dinosaur costume and had the whole thing paid for in a week.
Feet still more in charge than my head, I find myself standing in front of the booth like I’m ready to buy one of these tiny glass bottles.
“We’re not open,” the other woman deadpans, her eyes flicking to me before flicking away again.
“That’s alright,” I raise my hand before she dismisses me fully and jerk my head in Juliette’s direction. “I was actually hoping to talk to Juliette.”
The woman pauses, giving me a look, then sighs and turns, “Jules?”
Juliette turns around, her eyes widening when she sees me. Her hair—which is dark brown in this light—is wild around her face, and my hands twitch to push it back behind her ears, out of the way.
“Dr. Burch?” she asks, like she’s not really sure it’s me. I resist the urge to smile at that.
