Page 7 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper

Chloe

Zac showed up early the next morning with steaming cups of freshly brewed coffee for Chloe and Becca.

Even in workout gear, there was something dashing about him.

Or maybe it was just because he was British, and decades of conditioning through James Bond movies made every American woman swoon at the sound of the King’s English.

“Good morning,” he said, pulling Chloe into a hug while assessing the all-gray hoodie and sweatpants outfit she had on. “That’s awfully drab and unlike you. You doing all right after the bombshell of yesterday?”

Chloe nodded into his chest. He hadn’t done his morning workout yet, and she breathed in the traces of his woodsy cologne that still lingered from his client dinner last night.

“Morning, Zac,” Becca said, eyeing the coffee cups. “Is one of them for me?”

“Extra large skinny latte with hemp milk, no whip, exactly how you like it.”

“You’re the best,” Becca said, although Chloe knew she didn’t really mean it.

Becca thought Zac was a love bomber, someone who was over-the-top with flattery and gift-giving to overwhelm their target into a relationship.

And because Becca had appointed herself Chloe’s big sister, that meant she was very wary of Zac.

Chloe wasn’t a cynic, though. She liked to believe that people could be nice just to be nice.

“Are you guys going over to the park?” Becca asked.

Zac had recently discovered the circuit training stations across the street from Chloe and Becca’s apartment.

So for the past couple of Saturdays, he’d been coming over to get a workout in before heading back to the office for the afternoon.

Chloe wasn’t really a let’s-work-up-a-sweat type, though, so she would take a book with her and “keep him company.”

“Depends on Chloe,” Zac said, looking down at her, still wrapped in his arms.

Chloe nodded again into his broad chest. “I’m up for it. It’ll be good to get out.”

Reading always soothed her, especially if it was a previously read favorite that Chloe could sink herself into, the familiarity of the world and the characters like a warm hug from an old friend who had no expectations other than time well spent together.

It was too soon for her to think about finding a new job; it had been less than twenty-four hours since she’d been let go, and Chloe was still working through her shock.

But taking some time for herself with a book was a good baby step.

She’d always told her students to be kind to themselves, to be patient, and she was trying her best to follow her own advice.

She hoped she hadn’t been leading the kids wrong all this time.

While Zac ran interval sprints around the park and did…

whatever it was that he did at the circuit training stations, Chloe settled down on a shady bench under a sprawling, leafy oak tree.

Later in the day, this bench would be occupied by an Italian man who came to feed the pigeons every Saturday afternoon.

But for now, the spot was Chloe’s, and she opened her well-worn copy of Little Women .

The book had been one of her very first purchases when she moved to New York—from the wonderfully cozy Astoria Bookshop in her neighborhood—and she’d read Little Women four times since.

The first time, she had tried to underline her favorite passages, but she soon realized that would mean underlining ninety percent of the pages, so she decided just to love the entire book instead.

As she read, time fluttered by like a summer creek, a gentle burbling with no rush, only peace. That was the beauty of art: you could fall in and lose yourself, yet find yourself at the same time. And when you emerged, you were a wholly different—and better—person.

When Chloe reached one of her most favorite lines in the book, she smiled.

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

It felt, in this moment, as if the universe were speaking to her, or maybe it was Louisa May Alcott across a century and a half.

Whatever it was, those were exactly the words Chloe needed, but since she’d long ago given up on underlining passages in the book itself, she reached for the pen in her purse and wrote the quote onto the back of the receipt she used as a bookmark.

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

It seemed truer when she wrote it out, and Chloe felt the muscles in her shoulders loosen a little.

Losing her job was a setback—professionally, financially, and emotionally—but she would navigate her way to something new.

What that would be, she wasn’t sure, but Chloe reminded herself she had done it before.

After the University of Kansas, she and her boyfriend, Michael, had done okay for themselves.

As an art history major, she’d found a job at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, while he’d landed a position as a photographer for the Kansas City Star .

Then four years ago, he’d wanted something more, and he’d thought New York was the place for them to move up in the world.

But they’d broken up not long after arriving here, and Chloe hadn’t enjoyed her work at the Met because she’d spent all day in the back rooms of the museum, cleaning art or working on their cataloging system and not enough time with actual people.

Chloe could have moved back home, closer to the warmth of her family in Kansas, but she’d stayed here, naively believing that the more than eight million people of New York City would inoculate her from loneliness.

It hadn’t. But still, she’d continued on, keeping her head above the surface in the dog paddle of adulthood, where you’re not really sure where you’re going and you’re making a mess doing it, but at least you haven’t drowned.

The good part of working at the Met, though, had been when kids came on field trips and Chloe got to show them how to feel the meaning of a piece, rather than just seeing it as “some dusty old painting.” She loved how their eyes lit up when they suddenly understood, and she realized that these small moments could change a person, that she could do more than dust sculptures but could instead help shape young people’s lives.

That was when Chloe decided to become a high school counselor, and she had worked hard to get her master’s degree through night school. When she finally landed the guidance counselor job a couple years ago, she thought she’d made it.

And look where she was now.

Chloe sighed.

She doodled a minuscule heart-shaped rosebud onto the receipt bookmark, then threw herself into reading for the next hour.

In the meantime, she absentmindedly folded the receipt into a tiny rose, but Chloe was so deep into her book, she didn’t notice when the breeze kicked up, rustling through the maple leaves and blowing her paper flower away.

She only figured it out later, when Zac had finished his workout and appeared in front of her, and she reached for her bookmark on the bench beside her but found nothing there.

“Hmm.” Chloe frowned and scanned the grass all around her.

“What are you looking for?” Zac asked.

“A receipt I folded into a little flower.”

He did a cursory sweep of the area, then shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. People leave trash behind all the time.”

Chloe frowned. Sure, it was an old receipt, but that didn’t make her paper rose trash. And even it if were, she didn’t like being a person who littered. Despite what the Threadbare Countess believed.

But her origami was nowhere to be seen, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Who knew where it had gone by now. Chloe liked to think, though, that it wasn’t just lying in the dirt somewhere in the park.

Instead, maybe a bird had picked it up for its nest. Or maybe a squirrel had stolen it and hidden it away like a treasure in the hollow of a tree.

Maybe the receipt flower had higher aspirations than remaining Chloe’s old bookmark.

After a lunch of leftover veggie soup and a slightly stale brownie by herself (Zac had to go to the office and Becca was, thankfully, on the Saturday shift at the health food store), Chloe went downstairs to grab today’s mail. But as she descended the staircase, she was greeted by barking.

Happy barking.

What was going on?

Chloe reached the first floor, where the usually closed door to unit 1A was flung open, and a half dozen residents were gathered inside, their dogs cheerfully playing with Rufus, the terrier that lived there.

There were a pair of Lhasa Apsos wearing collars embroidered with the names Barney and Freddy .

A stout English bulldog, a feisty white Maltese, an Instagram-ready Corgi with a red bow tie, and another terrier apparently named Rocky, because his owner kept saying, “Rocky, calm down! Rocky, I know this is fun, but shh…” before she gave up trying and devolved into giggles.

And Thelma the Threadbare Countess was standing on a folding chair, holding court, and grinning .

Chloe stuck her head inside 1A. “What’s happening?”

“It’s the new doggy daycare center,” a woman with short curly hair said. “Aren’t you here because of the ‘Thelma the Terrier Lady’ flyers in the Hell Room?”

Chloe shook her head. “I haven’t been to the Hell Room yet.”

“Where’s your dog?” a man in horn-rimmed glasses asked. “This is Arthur and Ford Prefect.” He gestured at the two shelter dogs jumping at his feet who did, indeed, look like an adventuresome duo worthy of their literary namesakes.

“Um…” But Chloe didn’t get to respond that she didn’t have a dog (despite loving them), because Thelma clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. The crowd turned to her.