Page 45 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Oliver sighed. “Then I guess I better dust off my tux.”
He didn’t get home until late that night. If you could call it home. Oliver didn’t like to waste money on interior design, so he’d bought the minimal amount of IKEA furniture possible, and there was no art on the white walls. It was fine, though, because even if you spent a ton on paintings or photography, sooner or later your eyes would glaze over and you’d stop seeing them. So, really, there was no point, and this was a much more sensible and frugal way to live.
Oliver dropped his briefcase by the front door and went into the kitchen for some wine. He’d been at his computer for so long today, his vision was blurry and his eyes felt crossed.
He opened a bottle of pinot and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. He was just about to pour when he saw it.
A yellow paper rose in the glass.
It had the same gold stripes as the one he’d thrown into the trash at the hot dog stand, but this one was obviously new, because it wasn’t crinkled and creased up from his crushing it into a ball.
“What the—?” Oliver jumped, spilling wine all over himself.
He set the bottle down but didn’t bother trying to save his clothes. Instead, he turned the glass upside down, and the paper rose tumbled out onto the counter.
Impatient, he jerked the petals open.
I can’t promise that wishes always come true. But I believe they can, and I would be willing to bet my heart on that—because if there is anything worth wishing for, it’s a happily ever after.
It was a continuation of their previous conversation, where Oliver had challenged his correspondent to name a wager. He didn’t even need to lookat the minuscule rosebud heart sign-off to know it was the same person writing to him as before. But she had started a new rose, presumably because they were running out of space on the first one.
He took a long pull of wine straight from the bottle. How did these damn roses keep finding him? And how was it logically possible?
The intercom buzzed. Oliver frowned. Who could be visiting him? No one even knew he lived here.
He pressed one of the intercom’s buttons. “Hello?”
“Your mother is on the way up,” Sal, the doorman, said.
“Mymother?” Oliver froze, a deep chill consuming him, as if he’d been standing a second ago on what he thought was a solidly frozen lake but had now fallen straight through into the icy water. Last he’d heard, Jennifer Jones had been serving time in a prison in northwest Pennsylvania. He hadn’t known she’d been released. He hadn’t wanted to knowanythingabout her.
“You sorta look like her,” Sal said through the intercom.
“Notthatmuch,” Oliver said through gritted teeth. But unless he cut out his eyes, he would never fully be able to get away from her.
Oliver would have to have a talk with Sal later about checkingbeforeletting people upstairs. Even if it was obvious they were related.
His doorbell rang.
Oliver’s stomach flipped, and he clenched his fists to steady himself. The last time he’d seen Jennifer was when he slammed the door and left for college. He had never looked back. Not even when she was finally caught and sentenced. As good as it would have felt to watch her walk away handcuffed in a prison jumpsuit, he had made a decision that he had no mother.
But now here she was, forcing her way back into his life. Once again making Oliver deal with her onherterms, not his.
He was going to throw up.
The doorbell rang again.
Oliver braced himself against the wall, took three deep, not-calming-enough breaths, then opened the door slowly. Just enough to see her but not enough to be an invitation to come in.
“My sweet boy!” The woman from whom he’d inherited his auburn hair and green eyes opened her arms to embrace him.
“What do you want, Jennifer?” Oliver made no move to accept her hug and remained on his side of the door.
“Can’t a mother just drop by to see her son?”
“Other mothers, yes. Not you, though.”
She faked a pout. “Oh, honey, at least let me inside. I’ll only be a minute.”
