Epilogue
Zina
A Little Less Than a Year Later
I put down my pen, the story of Samovar and our family written but not finished. Not by a long shot. I hope one day somebody will read it. Maybe my daughter.
I glance over at her now, in her crib by my bed in the loft, smiling her toothless little smile, prattling and trying to speak already.
She will be like her Baba Valya. But I didn’t name her for any fortune teller I know, not even my grandmother.
Instead, I named her Zoe in French, Zoya in Russian, for it means “life.” She had given me fresh life, a family, a home, when I thought I had lost mine.
But I wish for Zoe to be her own person, her own woman, and come to fortune-telling and divination only if she wants to and when she is ready.
I feed and dress her. Then I follow the aromas of roasting coffee swirling through the tearoom, meeting Zefir on the stairs. Katya has been up since the crack of dawn, pacing restlessly to and fro in Baba Valya’s old room, where she now lives.
Dr. Misha had a heart attack and died six months ago.
Before that, he and Katya married, and she is due to have his child any day.
A playmate, a little sister, for Zoe. I saw it in my coffee cup, just as I had seen my own daughter coming.
I took Katya in, and she moved into the tearoom gladly.
I am proud it now holds a new generation of Lenormand and Sherbatsky women, whether they continue the traditions of fortune-telling and divination or not.
Either way, they will always have Samovar—with us, Mama, and Baba Valya watching over them.
In the tearoom, the tables have been pushed together to display a mouthwatering breakfast spread: croissants and baguettes, an assortment of cheeses and meats, blini and syrniki, apricot and raspberry preserves, a loaf of properly black bread, even a small bowl of red caviar.
The space is already filled with people—not patrons, but friends.
Samovar is closed for the day in honor of Baba Valya on the anniversary of her death.
“There she is!” The crowd surges toward Zoe, Mary successfully swooping the baby out of my arms and pressing her close.
Zoe smiles happily on, truly the most content little baby there ever was.
Agnès embraces me and passes along the latest book she says will further aid in my spiritual education.
Fortune-telling and divination have been coming to me more easily after Baba Valya’s death, séances becoming second nature.
Someday—if she wants to—I will teach Zoe the ways of our women.
Not just the Lenormand family, but the women of rue Daru.
I greet Inessa, Karina, Nina, and Masha, who have brought even more food to our celebration of the larger-than-life woman that was my grandmother.
Katya’s mother is absent, put out that her daughter won’t move back into their flat with her, or maybe just toiling as hard as ever in Mademoiselle Chanel’s workrooms.
“Mama needs to eat.” Henriette shoves a plate piled with food toward me.
Katya hobbles over, big and unwieldy with child, and takes the plate.
“She won’t eat it,” my friend tells Henriette with an eye roll.
“She must have her coffee first, like her grandmother.” Katya hands the plate to Marie-Louise, who accepts it with a huff and passes me a steaming, freshly brewed cup of coffee instead.
I almost laugh—is Marie-Louise starting to come around to me?
Coralie nods with a self-satisfied smile, as ever the mind reader.
I run a hand through Zefir’s glossy white fur as she looks up at me with her large jewel eyes, asking for milk as usual, which I give to her indulgently though teasingly.
I take a sip of the coffee and revel in its rich, nutty flavors, the first cup of the day being better than the taste of anything on this earth, except maybe Gabriel’s kiss.
I feel a stab in my heart at that. But now Klara is telling a story about a customer who came into her garage, asking for good fortune, and Mila and Dasha burst in raucously as usual, simmering with good cheer as they greet everybody.
Dasha feels better, not coughing as intensely, though I am hoping she will stop speaking so crassly around Zoe.
Sergei makes some joke. His new lover, the up-and-coming dancer at the Ballets Russes, Daniil, laughs gregariously. This prompts the entire room to join in.
I am too busy admiring my friends—my family. But I feel that stab again. Gabriel isn’t here.
Now the first throes of my loss and grief have passed, the remaining pain is mostly for him.
At first, I intended to tell him about Zoe before her birth.
Then I grew too preoccupied with the tearoom and my after-hours business, then with a newborn.
I still haven’t told him. And I haven’t seen him since last summer.
My skin prickles in shame at the thought that he doesn’t know he has a daughter.
I may have forgiven Gabriel, but the Lenormand women are stubborn.
We simply cannot forget even the smallest of slights.
But I realized something, when I had put down my pen after finishing our story.
I have forgiven Gabriel, so the forgetting doesn’t much matter.
And I feel good, satisfied—that I have established my tearoom and business on rue Daru, had a child, did it all myself, though of course not without help. So what am I waiting for?
As Baba Valya’s party is winding down, I hand Zefir to Katya and pour some tea in a glass. I collect Zoe and make my excuses. It is around the time of afternoon when people take lunch breaks, to eat or to meet friends in parks all across Paris.
I place Zoe into her stroller, and we leave Samovar, where everybody waves at us.
The new bell over the door jangles cheerily, and we are on rue Daru.
It is busy with passersby, speaking in French and Russian, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral gleaming golden in the warm June sun. I am assaulted by the smells of the streets, of baguettes baking, of lavender scenting the air.
Before I know it, we are at the gates of Parc Monceau. Children’s laughter drifts over to us. The trees all around puff out with a vibrant, very alive electric green.
I pause, hesitating. What if Gabriel isn’t here today? What if he stopped coming?
What if, what if! Just do it, girl, I can hear Baba Valya’s grumble in my head.
“All right, all right,” I give in, and Zoe looks at me curiously with her too-keen pale blue eyes, so like Baba Valya’s.
So I concentrate on walking and pushing the stroller and definitely not thinking.
I make my way down the main path toward the colonnade and the pond with the weeping willow guarding it like a sentinel.
I loop around the park—still no Gabriel.
Disheartened but not yet discouraged, not really, I veer onto the curved walkway where we met the last time we were here together.
It is hidden by the same thick, blooming foliage.
This path is quieter and nearly empty. Somebody sits on a bench down the lane. It is a man in a nice, official suit. My heart speeds up. Our time together—the good, the bad, the in-between—flashes before me as in a film reel. What’s left is the ache, the love.
Zoe looks back at me with wide eyes, instantly sensing the change in my mood.
Gabriel rises and walks over to meet us, his energy clear blue, like a spray of ocean water.
Yet there is a yellowish, cautious tinge to it.
Especially the moment he notices the stroller, and the baby inside.
By turns, shock, confusion, and hurt flash across his features.
But I can also feel a little of his guilt.
I hold out the glass of tea, losing all the words I had rehearsed.
“Zina—what is this?” Gabriel’s eyes are now riveted on the baby. “Who is this?”
“You haven’t stopped coming” is all I can stammer out. Though I hoped he would be here, there was no guarantee.
He accepts the glass of tea and takes a sip before putting it down. “I told you I would be.”
“It has been almost a year…”
His eyes finally cut to mine. “I never stopped coming.”
I smirk. “Not even in the rain?”
He matches my smirk. “I like Paris in the rain.”
“What about in the snow?”
“Paris is lovely in the snow.”
“How often?”
“Every day.” His lips twitch. “Now, do you have something to tell me?”
I swallow. All my feelings play out in that moment—the fear of betrayal, of getting hurt again, of trusting Gabriel, but also the happiness of seeing him again, of being able to introduce him to this baby we made in our togetherness, the anomaly, the conundrum that somehow works.
I don’t know what will happen in our future, nor do I want to.
I only know I want him, this, us. And I finally, finally say the words.
“Gabriel, meet your daughter, Zoe.”
He looks at her in wonder. “Zoe…I like it. I like it very much.” His smile is tentative, as if it would fragment and break. It edges out any caution, all the hurt.
I don’t smile; I’m too relieved. “Would you like to hold her?”
A look of pure terror replaces the smile, his face blanching, going still.
But Gabriel takes our daughter into his arms, and the two of them truly look at one another for the first time. They meet, take each other in, fall a little bit in love.
Life is not only about being a Lenormand, a fortune teller and medium on rue Daru.
As I watch Gabriel and Zoe, my two favorite people in the world, in my favorite slice of the city, I remember that word whispered on the wind: Live.
And right then and there, I promise I will—in my home, Samovar and Paris.
And I won’t be afraid to forgive, to befriend, to trust and to love, even to tell secrets.
Of course, always with a hot cup of coffee steaming at my side, allowing me a glimpse into the future. But only a glimpse.
My fortunes I will make myself, like my mother did before me, and my grandmother did before her, like the women of our family have always done and will always do from now until forever.