This is both significantly more money than she makes and obviously a solution to her current problem.

Two thousand dollars buys a lot of macaroni. It will still buy a lot of macaroni when she remembers that this is not actually how life works.

"A week is... this isn't super urgent, you could give me two weeks to put vacation time on my calendars so I don't have to lose all my jobs if either of us is immediately sure that this is a terrible idea? And to figure out where to put Connor and Zana in that time?"

"Of course! We do a two-week waiting period normally."

"I suppose this is rather more sensible than asking people to make decisions on the spot."

"You definitely shouldn't make a decision on the spot! Do you have any questions you'd like me to answer?"

" - you can leave in the middle of a trial period, if you have to, you just don't get the money?"

"You'll get a fee based on how much time you spent with him, unless of course he violated our rules against abuse or harassment, in which case you'll get a double fee as an apology. That has never happened, because we are very good at screening, but I hope it's comforting."

"Yeah! Yeah it does." Actually it sounds kind of implausible, but she doesn't think a sniper can take out her cousin before her cousin calls the police without drawing some kind of attention to themselves, should she need to leave and become incapable of doing so. Also Zana is actually dying, and that is not some paranoid fantasy she's spun up.

"I will - have to think about it. I am... tentatively interested."

"Take as much time as you need! There's no hurry!"

"Thanks. I will - think about it for a few days and get back to you."

So she goes back home. She narrates in her head what she is doing and what her plan is, until she successfully remembers that this is an incredibly stupid idea - so stupid as to be insane, the sort of thing they put in your notes when they take you to the mental hospital. 'Patient once tried to solve her problems by marrying a billionaire she had never met.' They will look at her with concern over piles of papers covered in words she doesn't know, and ask her if she remembers why she did this.

- and she will. She will remember that she knew it was stupid, knew it was not going to work, knew that in hindsight having considered it was going to be humiliating, knew the thing couldn't be what it was claiming to be and that even if it was she wouldn't be able to make it work, and she weighed all of that against watching her niece slowly die in front of her, and all of that was as a feather.

She will remember that Lev Aarons looked harmless and sad and that he couldn't think of a better story than being willing to pay thousands of dollars for a hug.

She tucks her niece and nephew in to bed and puts vacation time on her calendars, which she can always cancel later if she comes back to reality, and looks up articles about the Aarons Foundation and its founder.

Lev Aarons looks, if anything, more profoundly uncomfortable in every photoshoot of him she finds online.

Most of the marketing fluff in interviews about Yenta comes from his cofounder, Claire Sullivan. Lev is generally quoted talking about the algorithm, and his quotes have a certain air of being edited down into a soundbite. She finds one unedited interview; he is patient with the interviewer and walks her through exactly how the algorithm works in a way that makes it actually make sense, and completely deflects all her questions about his personal life or even his favorite movies. 

He's published several peer-reviewed journal articles, all in psychology.

The Aarons Foundation gives to polio eradication, vaccination programs, treatment of a bunch of different diseases, agricultural development, and cash transfers. It funds the development of alternatives to animal products and makes large biosecurity grants. There are more interviews about the Aarons Foundation than about Yenta, and nearly all of them consist of Lev talking about why he made particular grants. He is obviously very knowledgeable and very very good at explaining things. In one of the video interviews, he smiles.

Aw man.

Well. If she were going to do this transparently insane thing, she's not going to find an easier person to do it for, and given that she's not going to be able to stop thinking about how she could maybe have saved Zana if she says no, she might as well take the shot and then miss it.

It was super dumb to assume that there wasn't time pressure, she realizes - they probably made the same pitch to fifteen different people and are going to go with the one that says yes first. Billionaires do not go around waiting weeks to avoid inconveniencing particular poor people. It's late, but she emails back the same night and says that she thinks she'd probably like to try the one-week trial thing.

A response comes back very quickly. 

"Great! He's paid for our pampering package but he only wants you to use it if you want to, he mostly just wants you to be comfortable. You can come in tomorrow to sign the paperwork!"

Welp.

She discusses things in very vague non-NDA-breaking terms with Connor and Zana, mostly to explain that they might have to stay with their grandparents for a week in a little bit. Connor wants to know whether she's doing something dangerously stupid or just embarrassingly stupid; she assures him that it's probably the latter but she has contingency plans for the former. 

She heads in between jobs to sign paperwork.

A lawyer wants her to know that she will VERY DEFINITELY not get any of Lev's money other than the money that pays for Zana's care, and that if she tells a journalist about any of this, or tells someone who tells a journalist, or in any way causes a journalist to find out what has happened, she will have to pay a sum that is significantly larger than her entire life savings to date. She can talk about their relationship with her friends and family, though, as long as none of them are journalists and as long as she leaves out the existence of Billionaire Marriage Brokers.

She considers pointing out that her cousin is not a genius but can figure out that if Karen starts dating a billionaire then it is probably because of that Billionaire Marriage Brokers place that she told her might or might not be a kidnapping scheme. Her cousin's not going to talk to anyone important anyway.

(She has decided that they are probably not a kidnapping scheme in the strictest sense of the word, on the grounds that ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to pay to kidnap totally random people and that if someone who received a check from them disappears it's going to be so obvious what happened, but she's decided to keep acting like they might be a kidnapping scheme on principle.)

Then the paperwork is signed once the lawyer is VERY CERTAIN she understands that she is not supposed to talk to journalists and she is not going to get Lev's money.

She totally understands these things!

And the two week waiting period begins!

Cool cool cool.

She continues working her slightly unreasonable number of jobs. She tells her parents that she's been roped into a really important thing for church and could they possibly watch Connor and Zana for a week, yes she knows she should have told them earlier but they've been right about her all along and she's a weirdly irresponsible person, see. Yes of course it's just the one week. She updates her cousin on emergency check-in and loss of contact procedures.

She thinks a lot about how this is incredibly stupid and about how the stupidity level doesn't matter. She plays with Zana, who is getting very frustrated that thinking very hard doesn't always make her hands move the way they're supposed to.

She has everything wrapped up in two weeks and then is ready to go wherever.

Then she will have to approach the door of Lev's mansion!

The mansion looks like someone thought it ought to be a gothic castle but was not quite ready to fully commit.

More buildings should be gothic castles, but fully committing takes a level of bravery that might be hard to summon when working with vast sums of money.

She sets her suitcase down for a second and knocks on the door.

Lev opens his door and smiles. "Hi! I'm Lev!"

He blinks in surprise about the absence of children but decides that it is probably a sensible decision not to introduce children to someone you might decide you dislike in a week.

Oh shit she forgot to process the fact that if this wasn't an elaborate kidnapping scheme then she was gonna meet someone who's done lots of really cool things and who is therefore really cool. This is fine. This is fine fine fine.

"Hi! I'm Karen!"

"I can show you where you'll be staying?"

"Yeah, that sounds great!"

She picks up her suitcase and follows him inside.