Page 28 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper

He grabbed the paper rose and stormed out into the hallway to where all the cubicles were. He shook the golden flower in the air and yelled, “All right, ha ha ha. Which of you practical jokers took this out of my trash and then stuck it back in my mail today?”

Nobody said a word.

“It had to be someone here,” Oliver said. “This rose didn’t put itself on my desk.”

Everyone started to look anywhere but at Oliver.

“Fine, don’t say anything now. But when I figure out who—” He stopped short. Because he knew precisely who was most likely to mess with him.

Zac. That motherfucker.

Seething, Oliver marched back into this office, grabbed a pen, and added something new.

Under

I respectfully disagree, and I’m willing to bet you on it.

Oliver scrawled,

Name your wager. Because the odds are against you.

He crushed it in his fist again, then strode over to Zac’s office. The door was open—unlike Oliver, who liked his door shut so he could focus on his work, Zac “believed” in a culture of free-flowing exchange of ideas and camaraderie—and Oliver walked right in and threw the balled-up paper at Zac.

With his typical, infuriating calm, Zac looked up and said, “Why are you throwing trash at me?”

“Grow up, Zac. Are you messing with me because of the interview? Were you watching the show live, just hoping I’d crash and burn? Well, I don’t appreciate you wasting my time with idiotic pranks.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Without even looking at the paper, Zac scooped it up and threw it back at Oliver, who caught it by reflex.

“What I do know, though,” Zac said, “is that Puja asked me to take a look at the numbers for the Winston family foundation’s investments with her this afternoon.”

Oliver’s jaw dropped. “I thought I was going to do that.”

“You were,” Zac said. “But I happened to stop by her office when she was thinking about it, and I told her I could take care of it instead. I had to move around some things on my personal calendar, but when an opportunity like this drops into your lap, you don’t say no.”

“It didn’t drop into your lap! You took it from me.” Oliver could barely control his body’s shaking. He channeled his rage into his fists and crushed the balled-up paper rose even tighter.

“You know,” Zac said, eyeing Oliver’s hands, “our firm has generous benefits. You might want to inquire about an anger management program.”

“You piece of—”

“Nuh-uh-uh.” Zac waved a finger. “Manners, Tolly.”

Oliver growled but spun on his heel and headed for the elevator. He needed to get away, far from Zac. He took the elevator down to the first floor and walked straight out of the building.

A few blocks later in Washington Square Park, he threw the paper rose into a trash can next to a hot dog stand. “Good riddance,” he muttered under his breath.

He passed East 12th Street, which he briefly considered turning onto to bury himself in the shelves of the Strand Bookstore. But Oliver wasn’t in the mood to stay still, so he kept walking.

He went north-ish, into and through Union Square and the kiosks of vegetables at its Greenmarket.

Past the Flatiron Building, and then the National Museum of Mathematics, one of his favorite places to spend free time back when he had leisure time for himself and didn’t have to spend it in the office, trying to head off whatever new scheme Zac was plotting against Oliver.

Still, he kept walking, burning off the anger that seemed to constantly simmer under the surface these days.

The truth was, Oliver suspected it wasn’t entirely anger, but he didn’t want to think harder about what it could be.

The blue of loneliness was harder to face than the red fire of annoyance.

Easier to blame things on Zac than to look too deep into himself.

Oliver passed the Empire State Building, then Bryant Park. Before he knew it, he’d been walking for almost an hour. He had just reached Rockefeller Center when his phone rang. It was a video call from Ben.

Had something happened to him or Dad? Ben usually just texted or did a voice call, so Oliver’s pulse broke into a sprint as he found a bench to sit on where he could take the call.

Keeping his dad and Ben safe had been the primary focus of Oliver’s life for so long that the fear was hard to escape, even though Jennifer, the inflictor of all their trauma, wasn’t a part of their family anymore.

Ben had only been twelve when they fled Kansas, and Oliver had tried his best to shield his baby brother from the shrapnel of their mother blowing up their lives.

Even when they were in homeless shelters or living out of their car, Oliver tried to emphasize the slim silver linings of their situation: Look, isn’t this so amazing that you and I get to spend so much time together?

Isn’t it great that I can teach you whatever subjects you want to know and you don’t have to deal with all the kids who were in your class who used to tease you?

How cool is it that we don’t have to stay in any one place for long and instead get to road trip across the country?

That was probably why Oliver tended toward skepticism now. He had drained the well of optimism dry during those hard years.

Even after Oliver left for college, he still made sure to take care of his dad and brother.

He texted them every day, called when he could.

He set up bank accounts for his dad and Ben, too, and deposited money from whatever jobs Oliver could juggle in between classes, just to make sure his dad and brother always had a way out, if they needed to leave Jennifer.

“Ben, what’s wrong?” Oliver said, almost hyperventilating as he answered his call now.

“Hiiii, Unkie Owiver!” his twin nephews shouted. Noah and Davy were four years old, and their chubby faces filled the entire screen.

“Oh thank god.” Oliver exhaled. “Hey, buddies. How are you?”

“We wanna show you something,” Davy said. “We made a wego wobsta!”

“Wow, a LEGO lobster?” A smile spread across Oliver’s face. “Can I see it?”

“Yeah! Here it is!” Noah stuck the mass of LEGOs right up to the phone so that all Oliver could see was red.

He laughed while, in the background, he heard his brother say, “That is quite a close-up, Noah. How about you back it up a tiny bit?”

The LEGO lobster retreated, and Oliver could see it better. It was… Well, if he used a lot of imagination, he could see how it was a lobster. “That’s incredible work,” he told Davy and Noah. “It looks so good, I could eat it.”

“No!” They giggled. “It’s not weal! You’ll bweak your teeth, Unkie Owiver!”

“It’s a good thing I have my dentist on speed dial.”

They giggled again, even though they probably had no idea what speed dial was. That was the great thing about little kids. No matter how bad your joke, they thought you were the most hilarious person in the world.

That was probably why so many dads had an affinity for puns.

They started out as funny when the kids were small.

And when the kids turned into teenagers, the dads held on to their puns because if they couldn’t get a laugh, they could at least get a groan, which was better than angsty adolescent silence.

“All right, boys,” Ben said. “Go off and play. I’m going to talk to your uncle Oliver for a few minutes.”

They ran away, laughing and chattering.

“Hey,” Ben said, turning the phone to himself. “Sorry about the shouting. My pastry chef whipped up a new cookie recipe today and gave the boys a taste. They’re still on the sugar high.”

Oliver shook his head. “Don’t apologize. Davy and Noah were a welcome sight. Let me guess… Lobster was on the menu recently, hence their LEGO inspiration?”

Ben chuckled and nodded. But then his expression sobered.

“I wanted to thank you for hiring the home nursing service so quickly. It’s only been a couple days, but they’ve already been a huge help to me and Elsa, and they’re good with Dad—getting him what he needs, helping him with baths and lifting him in and out of chairs and beds. ”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

In front of Oliver, a group of seventysomethings posed for a photo in front of the eighteen-foot-high bronze Prometheus fountain in the middle of Rockefeller Center.

They kicked their legs up in sync, as if they were Radio City Rockettes.

Oliver turned away. His dad would never move like that again.

Not that he’d choose to do a Rockette kick if he could. But still.

“How’s Dad doing?” he asked.

“You know how he is, he’ll never complain,” Ben said. “But he’s happier this week, I think. The nurses take him out in his wheelchair and he brings his binoculars and gets to watch the birds. It’s been really good for Dad to be outside.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Ben said. “Don’t worry so much about us. You should be enjoying yourself in the Big Apple. You’re young, rich, and not even that ugly.”

“Ha ha. But you know I pretty much work all the time.”

“You’re allowed to have a life, you know.”

Oliver arched a brow. “My boss recently said the same thing. Anyway, you’re one to talk. If you’re not home taking care of Dad, you’re at your restaurant. You work all the time, too.”

“Yeah, well, I guess we were both traumatized by Mom losing all our savings. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out that working gives us a sense of security.

But still,” Ben said, “seriously, you should do something for yourself sometimes. Call up a friend. Or go on a date. You know that Noah and Davy would love it if you made some baby cousins for them.”

Oliver snorted. “That’s not happening. But hell, I’ve already ditched work today. Maybe I will do something for myself. Might as well make the afternoon worth it, right?”

“Definitely. Hey, and we’re all looking forward to seeing you soon when you come down here to D.C.”

“Yeah, me too. A lot.”

When they hung up, Oliver almost turned around to head back to the National Museum of Mathematics. But at the last second, he changed his mind. Central Park was close by, and being outside in nature was supposed to be good for you, right? It seemed to be helping his dad.

But he never made it to Central Park. Because on 5th Avenue, there she was.

Chloe, standing just outside of Bergdorf Goodman.