Page 86 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Chloe spilled the armful of origami flowers onto the sofa. They tumbled out of the kitchen towel onto the couch cushions in an artful pile, like a bouquet of paper roses.
The first rose was the most recent one they’d been passing back and forth. She knew the gold pattern of the paper so well now, the edges a little worn.
But as she picked it up, it felt different. Heavier, like there was something inside. And the touch of the paper itself made her palm tingle, like someone was whispering across her skin. Her pulse thrummed loudly in her ears.
She unfurled the paper flower and hardly skimmed her own note, which had ended with:
On the other side of risk is the very real possibility of happiness.
He’d responded:
Then here is my heart.
It’s yours, Chloe… It has always been yours.
∞
Two bracelet charms tumbled out into her hand—a clover and an infinity symbol made of looping hearts. They would have matched the charm bracelet she used to wear in high school.
From the tarnish on them, it looked like theyhadbeen bought when she was in high school.
“Oh my god. Oliver.”
A happy sob escaped from her lungs, and Chloe felt electrified, as if a time machine had whisked her back and she and Oliver were on the porch roof outside her bedroom window, their bodies nearly touching, watching the lightning cut the sky through the rain.
These paper roses changed everything. Running into him on the streets of New York had seemed like a coincidence, but now—knowing he was the one she’d been writing to all along—it felt like there was no other way it could have been. She could feel the vibration of the delicate, spiderweb-like thread of silk that tugged between them. Maybe she didn’t know the Oliver of the present as well as the Oliver of the past—his handwriting was certainly different—but Chloe couldn’t look at this paper rose and believe that it meant nothing. It had traveled back and forth between them for a reason.
No other origami flowers had done this. Every day, her little volunteer crew in Central Park physically handed roses to passersby, or she left them places to be picked up, and that was that. And if there were something more to it elsewhere—in San Francisco, in Atlanta, or overseas in Asia and South America and Europe—Wanda would have mentioned it during theNew York Timesinterview.
But there had always been a spark between Oliver and her, a particular Clover kind of magic that linked them.
Now, looking at the dozen roses in front of her, she laughed.
TheToday Showhost had quipped that someone ought to send Oliver a bouquet of roses.
But instead, he’d sent a dozen to Chloe.
Was this his apology?
With the roses laid out in front of her, she could understand why Uncle Mitch might’ve thought some of the kids had made the flowers. The folds were imperfect, the petals uneven, and some of the roses looked lopsided.
But that didn’t matter, did it? What mattered was that Oliver had taken the time to try.
Well, the other thing that mattered was what the flowers said inside.
It was then that Chloe noticed one rose with a tiny#3written at its base. The origami flower next to it lay sideways, and upon closer inspection, she found a minuscule#11on it.
Chloe let out a small laugh. “Ofcourseyou numbered them.”
It was that very “Oliver” gesture that shook her loose from the apprehension holding her back, and Chloe flipped all the paper roses over to reveal their numbers.
She had already read the first rose. So now, hands shaking, Chloe unfolded rose#2, patterned with gold filigree.
But inside wasn’t a single sentence, or even two or three, like their previous missives had been. No, the entirety of the paper square was covered from corner to corner, a lengthy letter. He’d had to write so small for it to all fit.
“Oh my god,” she said.
Dear Chloe,
