Page 87 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
I haven’t heard back from you since the gala, so I can only assume that you’re angry with me, which I rightfully deserve. You’ve probably seen my CNBC interview by now, and all I can say is I am so, so sorry. I was asked about the paper roses before we’d started writing in them, and well before I knew it was you I was writing to. But that doesn’t excuse what I said on TV. I’m a fool, and if you stop reading right now—or if you just threw all these paper roses in the trash without reading them at all—I’d understand.
Then there is the matter of my mother. I didn’t know she’d gotten herself involved in your life, and I am sorry that the tornado that is Jennifer Jones blasted through your hopes and dreams.
But I love you, Chloe. Before I can expect you to love me back, though, I owe you many apologies and many explanations.
So let me start at the beginning, that night that my family disappearedfrom Lawrence sixteen years ago. And when I’m done—if you’re still reading—then maybe I’ll have a chance to fix the biggest regret of my life: losing you.
That was the end of the second paper rose. Despite how carefully Oliver had written, there was only so much room on a square of origami paper. Chloe’s heart battered against her ribs as she fumbled at the third rose. Finally, he was going to tell her why he’d vanished into thin air, why he had seemed able to forget her so easily. Why he hadn’t cared how much she hurt.
But she held her breath, too, as she opened rose#3. Because while Chloe hoped what Oliver was about to say would be enough, there was also the chance that it wasn’t.
The thing you have to know about my mother is that she’s a sociopath. Jennifer is the personification of charisma, and she can make everyone think she’s their best friend, but in reality, she doesn’t feel any connection to them. That doesn’t mean she never feels empathy or guilt; sometimes she does. But usually it’s reserved for my dad, Ben, and me. She rarely feels bad for the victims of her cons.
Growing up, I suspected there was something off about my mom. But I never really knew, not until she came home screaming that we had to pack up—only the bare essentials—and flee because the Feds were onto her. The details would come out in the year afterward, when we were bouncing from town to town, always trying to stay one step ahead of the law. We slept in homeless shelters and in our car. During the day, Ben and I had to sell candy at bus stops, because she told us people were more likely to cough up money for kids. At the same time, Dad insisted we keep up with what we would have been learning in school, had we been enrolled someplace. So in the evenings—after hours of hawking candy bars—I taught Ben and myself from books I stole from the library.
Chloe tried to swallow, but her throat had clamped shut like a vise. She’d had no idea that this had happened to Oliver. In the months after he disappeared, she had thought only of her own pain in missing him.
But I should have known.He’d been her best friend, and she’d understood him better than she understood herself sometimes. She should’ve recognized instantly that something had gone very wrong for him to break off their friendship—and their precious, nascent relationship—like that.
Her fingers trembled as she opened paper rose#4.
I wish I could have told you all this back then, Chloe. But besides needing to lie to protect my mother, I was ashamed. She had swindled so many people—timeshares that didn’t exist, plots of so-called ancestral land across Europe, not to mention pyramid schemes selling everything from crystals to kitchen knives to skin-firming vitamin tonics.
I was also ashamed of what had become of me. I wanted you to remember me like I’d been our whole lives up until that point—happy and openhearted, not angry and miserable and falling apart. I couldn’t bear for you to imagine me in a sleeping bag on a patch of flattened, dry grass at the edge of the parking lot of a boarded-up movie theater, or getting into bloody fistfights when other groups of kids would try to steal the money Ben and I had scrounged up that day.
That’s why I didn’t try to write or call. It crushed my heart not to, and I’m sorry because I know it probably broke yours, too.
“Oh, Oliver.”
Through the next seven paper roses, he told Chloe about how his dad had done odd jobs so he could be paid under the table and stay off the grid, but it had never been enough money to keep them afloat. And how Oliver had learned how to ask for expired food behind supermarkets and cafés so that Ben could eat better. How he’d eventually started picking up math tutoring jobs, saving up money to surprise his little brother with things like a week at a cooking day camp so that Ben could feel like a normal kid, at least for five days in the summer.
When it came time to apply to college, Oliver had thought about the University of Kansas, knowing that Chloe would probably end up there, because that’s where almost everyone in her family went. But he changedhis mind because he had messed up so badly with her and he was afraid too much time had already passed to tell her he’d been wrong. He ended up at Harvey Mudd instead, where he buried himself in the comfort of math but swore off getting too attached to anyone—roommates, women at campus parties, even professor mentors. Any stability in his life still felt tentative at that stage; although he’d left home, he knew how close to the edge his dad and Ben continued to live with Jennifer dragging them in the wake of her pie-in-the-sky schemes.
Even when Oliver had gotten his PhD and then found security in his work and his home in New York, he couldn’t change back to the trusting boy he’d once been. The fear of getting burned if he wanted something—or someone—too much had calcified into thick walls around his heart. That conclusion seemed more justified when the Feds finally caught up with Jennifer, convicting her for selling quixotic dreams.
In those pages, though, Oliver also detailed how often he’d thought of Chloe over the years. How, after a rough day, he’d sometimes go to a park and lie down in the middle of a field and pretend she was there beside him. He’d imagine holding her hand like they had when they were young, and he’d pour out to her everything on his mind—which graduate school classes were difficult, which office politics were driving him mad, what projects he was working on that were veering a little sideways. Oliver had lost the ability to do that in real life, to share his feelings with anyone. But with Chloe—even if only an imaginary version of her—he felt safe.
“I’ve thought of you, too,” she murmured.
Finally, Chloe reached#12, the last rose.
So that’s me. Oliver James Jones, laid bare. I’m sorry I waited this long to tell you, and I’m sorry for any suffering I caused. I’ve been scared of making wishes and taking risks for a long time, but I had to try.
On that note, I’m working on incorporation and tax filings for the Paper Roses Foundation. Not that you need me to save you. But I needed to do this for myself, to right Jennifer’s wrong. I hope that’s okay.
I don’t know if you can ever forgive me, though I can hope. Becauseyou’ve taught this skeptical man who believed only in numbers to now take a risk on the unknown of tomorrow.
I love you, Chloe Hanako Quinn. I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you in that ridiculous zebra hat and fluffy tulle skirt with the rainbow polka-dot leggings and red clown shoes underneath. I have loved you every day of your life since, and I will love you for every day to come.
My heart is forever yours.
∞
Oliver
Tears spilled down Chloe’s cheeks as she traced the infinity symbol above his name.
“Oh, Oliver,” she whispered. “It’s always been you, too. It could never have been anyone else.”
