Eleanor insisted on sitting with him to get his payment information so she could transfer him the money. By the time the rain stopped two hours later, they had talked about everything from the absurdity of modern corporate culture to their favorite childhood books.
Julian was a junior analyst at V-Corp—the crown jewel of the Vance family empire. Eleanor found the irony delicious, but kept her silence. He was brilliant, ambitious, and relentlessly kind. Over the next six months, they fell into a rhythm. They went on dates to free museums, ate street food in the park, and spent hours talking on the roof of her small apartment building.
Julian loved her. Not the heiress. Not the Vance dynasty. He loved Jane, the struggling artist who burned toast and laughed too loud. He proved it in a thousand quiet ways: walking on the street side of the sidewalk, remembering how she took her tea, and holding her when she pretended to be stressed about her non-existent rent payments.
But there was a storm gathering on the horizon, and its name was Miriam. Miriam, Julian’s mother, was a woman entirely defined by what she lacked. Having grown up in poverty and married into lower-middle-class stability, she viewed life as a ladder. She had sacrificed everything to put Julian through a top-tier university, and she viewed his career at V-Corp as the final ticket out of mediocrity.
To Miriam, a son's success was incomplete without a strategic marriage. She had dreams of Julian marrying a partner at a law firm, or the daughter of an executive. When Julian introduced her to "Jane"—a freelance artist with no family connections, no property, and a wardrobe that looked suspiciously second-hand—Miriam's disappointment was palpable.
The first dinner was agonizing.
They met at a mid-range Italian restaurant. Miriam spent the entire evening conducting a polite but ruthless interrogation.
"So, Jane," Miriam said, swirling her cheap Pinot Grigio, her eyes darting over Eleanor's plain cotton blouse. "Julian tells me you're an... artist. Is there much of a future in that? Only, Julian works so incredibly hard at V-Corp. I'd hate to see him burdened with a partner who can't pull her own weight."