Souvenir by Therese Fowler Read Free Book Online

it a busy day?” he asked—
his
attempt to connect, she supposed, given that he knew all her days were busy.
    She sighed and put her feet up on the sofa, taking up the space that he might have filled if he’d tried a little harder. If he had wanted to try. If she had wanted him to.
    “Yeah, busy, but also taxing,” she said. “I had a pre-eclamptic mother with back labor who dealt with it by screaming, and then a transverse baby I practically had to climb inside with to get out.” She rubbed her arm, thinking about that one. “And two new high-risk patients this afternoon, you probably know the one’s husband: McKinney? Joseph, I think his name is.” The surname, when she read it on the chart earlier in the day, had made her think of
McKay
, of Carson, of how she’d learned a week ago that he was planning a May wedding. To a much younger woman, the news website’s headline announced—“Musician McKay Robbing the Cradle for a May Bride?”—and Meg had elected not to click the link to read the details. Since then, even the weakest prompts called him to mind.
    “Yeah, I know him, Joe McKinney,” Brian nodded. “Partner at Decker McKinney Peterson. He’s pretty good—at golf, I mean—though judging from that little black Ferrari I saw him in, likely at law, too. What’s his wife’s trouble?”
    “She’s forty-three.”
    “Ah. It’s good, though, you getting all these new high-risk patients—obviously you’re building quite a reputation as a specialist. You should raise your rates, take space somewhere a little more…upscale, let’s say.”
    “We like where we are,” Meg said. She and Manisha chose their office location, a modest brick building downtown, precisely because it
wasn’t
so upscale that they’d price out women less affluent than the Mrs. Joseph McKinneys of the world. Or the Mrs. Carson McKays, for that matter, she thought, wondering if pregnancy explained his short-notice announcement. Their wealthy patients came to them because they were good doctors, not because their offices looked like a luxury spa.
    “I just don’t see why you’d choose not to take advantage of an opportunity when it’s practically dropped in your lap,” Brian said, standing up. “You’re savvier than that.”
    His criticism, delivered benignly, still stung. “What does ‘savvy’ have to do with anything? Just because I don’t feel like I need to earn more money, I’m not ‘savvy’?”
    Brian pushed his hands into his shorts pockets, relaxed and confident in his opinions. “Look, ever since I’ve known you, whenever you’ve been faced with an opportunity to better yourself or improve your status, you’ve taken it. I don’t see why you’d stop now.”
    He was right, and yet his assessment missed seeing her clearly, as though time had made his memory as farsighted as his eyes. Had he forgotten that her first
opportunity
was one he’d constructed so carefully that there was no way she could turn him down? Once he’d set the wheel in motion, then yes, she’d tried in every way to better herself. She was practical. There were limits, though, to her ambition. Maybe he didn’t want to believe this about her, or maybe he hadn’t noticed. He loved to tell people what a terrific pair they made, how alike they were in temperament and taste, how accomplished she’d become; he had constructed the reality he wanted in their marriage the same way he’d done for his business.
    He had her all wrong.
    She was not the woman of his tales, would never be that woman, but was there any value in arguing the point? In part, he didn’t know who she really was because she kept pieces of herself hidden from him. Money couldn’t buy
everything.
    Before she could frame any sort of response, Brian picked up his gym bag, said, “I have to make a couple calls,” and left the room. She let him go.
    He didn’t know, either, that she’d thought of leaving him many times, the way a blond woman might think about