Page 25 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
But Zac stopped typing and was lowering himself down across from her, which meant this was a big deal. He cared, and he was trying.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”
Zac took her hands in his. “Growing up, my parents were very demanding.
They were both professionals—my mom was an economist and my dad was a bigwig at a bank—and they expected me and my siblings to follow in their footsteps.
They sent us to Eton, then Oxford and Cambridge, and we were always aware of which shiny badges we were to collect along the way.
Playing polo, rowing crew, getting invitations to the most influential charity galas?
Yes. Playing poker, acting in the school theater, or doing actual volunteer work in soup kitchens instead of attending fancy fundraising parties? No.
“I resented it, as you can imagine most children would. I didn’t want to be my parents.
That’s part of the reason I’m here in New York.
Being in finance in London would mean eternally living under my parents’ shadow.
I could never make a name for myself; I would always be Edwin and Lenora Billings’s eldest son.
“Yet, my parents were not entirely wrong in how they raised us. Now that I’m in New York and no one knows who my father is, I have had to rely on myself.
And what I have found is that there is real-world value in those shiny markers of success I collected over the years.
All the awards I won along the way mean something. Oxford on my résumé opens doors.
“This paper rose project of yours, Chloe… It has value. You say you don’t want to take just any job.
Well, seize this then. I don’t want you to let this opportunity go by when something beautiful you created is in the public eye.
It could lead to other things. You never know.
So make it a big deal. Get publicity, monetize, make people know your name. ”
“Wow,” Chloe said. “That was not what I expected.”
Zac laughed and kissed her. “I get riled up where ambition is involved. But really, Chloe. This could be a defining moment for you. So seize what you deserve. Or at the very least, make some extra rent money.”
Chloe smiled. “I’ll think about it. It’s not my personality to do something like monetize, but… I see where you’re coming from. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Is there anything else I can do to help? If not, I think I need to get back to the office to fend off this upstart who’s trying to destroy me.”
She still didn’t know what, exactly, Zac did for a living.
She knew he was in finance, but when she’d asked about it on their first date, he’d brushed her off and said that his work was too complicated to explain.
Even recently, Chloe’s questions about his day were usually met with generalities short on details.
Sometimes she wondered if he thought she wasn’t smart enough to understand.
But maybe she was being ungenerous again. Maybe there was another good reason.
“Don’t be too hard on your ‘nemesis,’?” Chloe said.
“Then you don’t know me well enough yet,” Zac said with another laugh. “With regard to my opponents, I am like my father. We show no mercy.”
Chloe shook her head, amused, as she walked Zac to the door. He might technically be London gentry, but he had a Manhattan capitalist’s soul.
And the funny thing was—for different reasons—Chloe was starting to feel like maybe she belonged here in New York, too (ability to pay rent notwithstanding). Her origami flowers were resonating with people, so maybe there was a place for her in this city.
She wanted to make more paper roses, so that everybody who needed one could have one.
Back in the kitchen, Becca had indeed pushed all the flowers onto the south side of the table. Some of them had fallen to the linoleum floor.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Chloe bent to pick up the ones that had fallen and put them into the large basket she’d begun using. As the interest in her origami had grown, she’d had to expand from her original little basket to something that could carry a whole lot more.
Then she started to sweep the finished roses from the tabletop into the basket. But she stopped partway, because in the middle of them, there was a crumpled-up piece of yellow paper with gold foil stripes. There was some extra writing on what had once been a flower.
How did that get here?
Frowning, Chloe sat down and examined it.
Beneath her original message— Sometimes wishing can make a dream come true —someone had written I guarantee it ABSOLUTELY does not.
“Becca! Did you do this?”
“Do what?” she yelled from her bedroom. “Gimme a sec, I’m getting ready for work.”
Grumbling, Chloe looked around the kitchen, and her eyes fell on the chore chart that Becca kept stuck with a magnet on the refrigerator door.
The handwriting was nothing like what was on the flower. Becca’s was round and she “stylistically only believed in lowercase letters.” The writing on the paper rose was small—tight and precise and made normal use of capitals—and not the kind of thing someone with a bubbly hand could fake.
Becca came into the kitchen, canvas tote and keys in hand, ready to head out to work. “What did I do?”
“This destroyed origami flower? The message inside?”
“Why would I do that?”
Chloe cocked her head at the table again.
“Then how did this one rose get here? All the flowers in the kitchen are new.” They were the remnants of a fresh batch she’d made this past weekend but hadn’t had space to take with her to Central Park this morning (and hadn’t needed to, since she had a small, happily chatting team now helping her fold there during the day).
Becca shrugged. “Maybe it was trash and you didn’t notice you brought it home with you.”
“My basket was empty when I came home. I would’ve noticed,” Chloe said. “I don’t know… There’s something happening with the flowers. Strange, but good. Like how the right message just happened to get to Thelma, and also Giovanni, the bakery guy, and Mary and Bonnie and Ricky.”
Becca snorted. “Sometimes you’re so adorable, Chloe, I can’t stand it. I think you’re believing a little too much in the power of a few sheets of paper. Anyway, I gotta go. Try to keep at least one foot on the ground while I’m gone, ’kay?”
But after she left, Chloe found herself wondering if there was power in goodness. Not magic, really, but a sort of altruistic current that went out into the world and, in this case, connected people with what they needed.
Regardless of how the rose had gotten onto her table, though, whoever had written on it was exactly the kind of person Chloe wanted to reach.
It was easy to be forgotten in a city this big, to start to think that the things you wanted or the emotions you felt or your very existence didn’t matter when you were only one in a sea of millions.
“But you do matter,” Chloe said, sitting back down and pulling out a pen. She knew it was silly, writing back on this rose, but even if she couldn’t reach this specific person again, it felt right to still put that intention out into the world.
Sometimes wishing can make a dream come true.
I guarantee it ABSOLUTELY does not.
Chloe wrote, I respectfully disagree, and I’m willing to bet you on it. She added a smiley face to make it lighthearted; she didn’t mean it like a challenge. And, of course, she drew her signature rosebud.
She refolded the gold-striped paper into a flower. It was a lot worse for the wear—the paper had been crumpled after all—but pointless or not, it made Chloe giggle.
Then she made herself some tea and grabbed a handful of circus animal cookies—the very-bad-for-your-body but very-good-for-your-soul kind covered in pink-and-white icing and sprinkles. On her way to her bedroom, she glanced over at the wrinkled paper rose one more time.
“Oh, all right, you’ve served your purpose.” There was no reason to keep it; in responding, Chloe had countered the message of doubt with her more sanguine one, and she considered the balance of the universe—or at least of New York—restored to a slight tip in favor of optimism.
She plucked the paper rose from the table and tossed it in the trash. Then she went to her bedroom to read for the rest of the night.
In the morning, the discarded flower was gone, but Chloe didn’t notice, because she didn’t know to look.