Page 126 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

Well, except for one more tiny thing, and, no, it wasn’t cash the cheque—I’d already done that with my banking app before leaving the lawyer’s office.

It was time to go see Estelle over at Your Fairy Godmother to find out if the park had brought my account down to zero.

I walked over to 10thand 10th, enjoying the mid-August sunshine and the feeling of having my life back.

Or so I hoped.

I stood in front of what I knew to be 1010B, muttering the secret password for what might be the last time. The wooden door appeared and popped open a crack.

I filed inside, navigating the plants until I was with the witch at reception.

“Oh, you again,” she grumbled.

“Do I need to sprint past you again today, or are you going to let me in to see Estelle?”

She cracked a surprising smile, and tapped around on her keyboard. Moments later, the hidden door opened behind her and Estelle came out, looking bubbly in her black leather pants and bright red hair.

She led me through the pink bullpen and into Paxi’s old office, where we’d have more privacy than in her cubicle. As we moved, a fairy with white hair and pink reading glasses watched us from an office with a gold door that matched the one behind the witch’s desk. She gave Estelle a serious nod.

“Who’s she?” I asked, as Estelle closed Paxi’s door.

“The head fairy.”

“Cool. I came to tell you the park’s done.” I flopped into a chair, noting that the office seemed cleaner than it had been during other visits. And was that a new pink computer monitor on the desk? The first time I’d come in here, scared and doubting, seemed like a lifetime ago. I’d been afraid back then and had felt so alone in the world.

So much had changed. But there was still one more thing in my life that I was really, really hoping had changed.

“Did I pay off my debt?” I asked Estelle.

“Things have really shifted for you over the past few days,” she replied, sliding a can of ginger ale my way. I opened it, taking a sip. It had been a hot walk over here, and the pop’s crisp coldness was heavenly.

“Yeah, I was penniless and almost homeless and now?—”

“No,” Estelle interrupted, her tone serious. “Energy has piled up.”

I was instantly wary. “What kind of energy?”

“When you start a project like your park, initially, you don’t create a lot of karmic energy.”

I nodded. “Tell me about it. I asked for a lot of favours. For a bit I was worried I was creating more good karma for others than for my account.”

“You were. Your project was like getting a very large, and very heavy, ball rolling.”

Josie’s analogy of a car not being worth anything until it left the factory came to mind.

Estelle shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable. “But then, eventually, good begets more good.”

“Right,” I said. “It’s like smiling at people in the grocery store. Some smile back, and then they smile at someone else and it gets passed on.”

“As you began making changes in your neighbourhood with your park—people meeting each other, giving the kids a place to play—it brought positive energy and created abundance.”

I crept to the edge of my seat, breath held.

“You reached a tipping point of sorts and created an avalanche.”

I nodded, not quite following, but hoping an avalanche was a positive thing.

“Basically, in the past few days, the widening effect of your good deeds has had an enormous impact.”

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