Page 130 of A Fool's Game

She turns and lays down with her head in my lap, looking up at me. “We did it, you know.”

I smile and nod. “Yup. Luna & Hearth is alive.”

She smiles back but shakes her head. “I don’t just mean the restaurant. I mean,” she pauses and glances around the room, “all of it. All of this. You and I knew we wanted more, and even though we were both scared of the future and unsure how it would all work out, we made it.”

I cock my head at her, smile turning sly. “You tried to run off on us.”

She shrugs, no stranger to my teasing. “Yeah, well. You rescued me. You rescued all of us.”

“You don’t think Ainsley rescued us?” I ask, suddenly serious.

“The Fool comes to help us embrace new beginnings and trust our intuition.”

“Oh, really,” I smile down at her, watching as she turns pensive in my arms.

“Yes, really. And he carries only his little pouch, helping usunderstand that we have to release our long-held burdens to move forward.”

“That’s my lesson, huh?”

“Would you say you’re worse off having let go of your albatross?”

I laugh softly, shaking my head. “Definitely not.”

It was a bittersweet day when my parents signed the papers with the county to sell the land the house was falling to pieces on. They’re building a park and promised to name it after our family as homage to my great grandparents. I know the land will be enjoyed by families for years to come, but I’m not sure how long it will take me to be ready to visit.

“The Fool also shows us that we can trust in the universe.”

“By dancing off a cliff?” I shake my head. “Little guy’s lucky that all worked out for him.”

It’s Gemma’s turn to smirk. “Well, that’s just the thing. We’re all so lucky. And these big leaps into the unknown are working out for us, too.”

I tuck her into bed beside Ainsley and spend another hour sitting awake in the chair in my own room, looking out my window at the bright half-moon smiling down at me from the dark sky.

I planned to spend this time alone reflecting on the first real service at Luna & Hearth. Going over and over each dish and how I could have done better.

Instead, I just let go. And, as keeps happening to me, I feel myself move forward.

And maybe that’s what the real lesson here is. We hold ourselves back with whatever anchors we choose. We decorate them and shine the steel chains until we’re proud as hell at whatever ill-conceived tether we’ve decided is what we can’t move past. But it’s the letting go that actually gives us whatever we’ve been trying to bleed out of that anchor all along. It’s thesurrender to the unknown that serves up the bountiful miracles we’ve been searching for. After a lifetime of putting up with whatever specks of happiness we’ve been able to pickax off our anchors, we get to step forward and be free.

If only it wasn’t so scary to step into the unknown, we’d do it so much sooner. But I guess that’s the challenge. You have to come to terms with the fear. With possible failure. With the idea that you’re on a spinning planet in outer space and are in charge of nothing.

That’s The Fool. Dancing happily off a cliff, all of his worldly belongings in a tiny bag.

I wonder for a moment about the vastness of it all, the truly limitless number of possibilities that exist for my life and everyone’s life. The real miracle here is that I found them. My people. I found my path, not by forcing it to unfold the way I thought I wanted, but by letting some fool drag me into his messy, imperfect vision of how life could be.

By letting people love me.

I’d love to tell myself now that I’ve figured it out. Reached enlightenment. That I can just coast along on my happiness and surrender forever.

But even I know better.

Because The Fool isn’t the end of the story.

Even with my happiness and my partners and my restaurant and my newly unfogged windshield into the vastness of life, I know better.

The Fool is the first card in the deck.

Number zero.

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