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I’d made up my mind.
I wasn’t going to find her.
I was better off forgetting she’d ever existed.
“Zachary, pay attention. What about this one?” Across the office, Mom dangled a Polaroid of a long-haired, scarlet-lipped beauty. “I do adore her family. Her mother is in our country club. She’s a tax lawyer. Works at Clarke & Young. Not a partner just yet…” Her delicate brows slammed together as she skimmed her file. “No, no. She won’t do. Too lazy. She only volunteered twice in college.”
Mom boomeranged the photo into the trash pile on the rug. Dozens of pictures scattered across the coffee table, coating the entire surface.
All potential brides for yours truly.
All eligible.
All as boring as a freshly painted white wall.
This particular batch had missed the soirée, during which I’d failed my task—choosing a bride by midnight.
Yesterday, Mom had barged into her friend’s dating agency and confiscated these dossiers. This marked the birth of Plan X.
(She’d labored through A to W over the last five years when it became clear that I’d need divine intervention to drag me down the aisle.)
I yawned, keeping my feet propped over my desk, ankles crossed, as I tossed a tennis ball up to the ceiling. Back and forth. Back and forth. “So what if she isn’t a partner?”
“She’s already twenty-five. She should be well on her way to owning her own firm by now.” Mom’s head snapped up. “You surprise me sometimes.”
Perhaps because you’re the one who’s changed, Mother.
Sun Yu Wen—American name Constance—had a one-track mind.
To find me a bride.
She was running out of time, and I was running out of options. Especially after she’d chalked up the ball as a terrible failure. She’d thrown it for me to pick a future wife.
In reality, I didn’t even leave my office.
At this point, my best bet was a mail-order bride.
A mail-orderbride would not huff when I lodged her in the guesthouse.
Would not flinch when I made her go through IVF to avoid touching her.
Would not sulk when I retreated into one of my dark moods, where I didn’t want to see or hear from anyone.
Would not protest when she realized all I had to offer her was money and premium sperm.
I tossed the ball. “Why does it matter that she’s not an overachiever?”
I knew I’d poked the bear, but I had trouble accepting my fate—and a whole entire wife I did not desire.
Mom wanted to live vicariously through me. She knew she’d never remarry. Never open up to someone else.
So, she’d decided, unilaterally, that I needed to stuff her void with a picture-perfect daughter-in-law, grandchildren galore, and more people for her to take care of.
And itwasa void.
After Dad’s death, Mom even changed her last name from Zhao to Sun, a huge deal because:
One) Chinese women did not change their surnames.
