Epilogue Hazel
Epilogue
HAZEL
Eleven months later
Turns out, Wendy and her birds aren’t okay.
They’re more than okay. Thriving even.
We find them at the Good Fortune Fair. The setup is the same as last year, with food booths, and strung lights, and a festive atmosphere. It’s like no time has passed.
By the looks of it, Wendy had caught wind of our news. There’s a printout of our photo with the big check. The writing next to it: Predicted the jackpot winners having abundance.
At least it’s the disguised version of me. Wendy’s also taken the time to color over our names with marker.
What is there to do but laugh? Everyone’s got to make a living.
Wendy’s busy. The line to see her snakes down the block. Just before we move on, she looks up and catches my eye. There’s a glint. Something knowing. I give her a small wave, and she looks away before I can tell for sure.
“Bo’s here, too,” Logan says.
He’s focused on his work, reading tea leaves for two young women. I’m relieved that they’re smiling at whatever it is he’s saying.
We continue strolling, our stomachs filled with mooncakes and crispy lotus root chips. Logan wanders off to a stall while I browse colorful lanterns for sale. When he returns, he’s picked up orange and yellow chrysanthemums from one of the flower booths down the block.
Whenever we aren’t cat sitting Toffee, who insists on eating petals like it’s his sole purpose in life, Logan brings me bodega flowers.
He said he’s trying to make up for all the times he never got to.
I still don’t spend money on that kind of thing, but I’ve come to love this gesture.
And that it makes him happy. Which makes me happy.
I take the bouquet from him, giving him a kiss in return.
He nods toward the lanterns I’ve been browsing. “You want to get some for the apartment?” Logan asks.
Home.
The one we now share in the East Village. A neighborhood—and a place—of our very own.
“They’re lucky, right?” he asks.
I lift one. “They are.”
We end up buying two. Not that we need the luck. These days, we’re making our own.
Logan never quit or got fired as head carpenter from Windfall.
It took them a few weeks after opening night to work out the kinks, but from the start, it received rave reviews from critics and fans and is still the hottest ticket in town.
The show was even nominated for Best Musical at the Tony Awards, a first-ever nomination for Mrs. Walker as a producer.
She walked the red carpet with Toffee in tow.
It was a dangerous night for birds everywhere.
Logan and I celebrated at the firehouse with Chinese food and extra fortune cookies. Just in case.
The show was extended, giving Logan some time to settle in until the next show moves into the theater.
There’s chatter that Windfall will hit the road on a traveling tour this spring.
Logan’s considering the head carpenter role to lead the traveling crew.
I’d tag along for a bit and do some more traveling.
For the holidays, we took a spontaneous—and all-expenses paid—trip to Spain.
Our magazine feature comes out next week.
Yes, we got there by plane. Logan’s still here.
It’s surreal that we got to see the Basilica de la Sagrada Família with our own eyes.
There are dozens more countries on our list to visit in the coming years.
But for now, we’re content with the predictability of a routine.
Logan no longer runs his storage and transfer business.
Instead, he’s made room for more of what he loves: building, working with his hands, and turning wood into beautiful furniture—with drawers that open.
He’s been saving up his lottery money to open a woodworking shop for teenagers and young adults who have struggled with substance abuse.
It’s a place for a second chance. A place to restart.
I spend my days at Sweet Escape, working alongside Emma and Gloria, who’s been on the payroll for months managing inventory while Emma’s focused on growth and expansion.
I do a little bit of everything at the shop, with most of my time going toward analyzing data.
Making forecasts. Predicting trends. The usual data fortune-telling stuff.
I had told Emma and Gloria about my lottery win that day in the shop.
They never again mentioned it out of respect for my privacy.
It only came back up when I expressed interest in being an investor in Emma’s second location after this year’s increased annuity amount was deposited.
We’re working as quickly as we can to open a second Sweet Escape in the Meatpacking District in time for the holidays.
The house went into foreclosure. The highest bidder was a family with three kids in elementary school who love to swim. It’s just my luck.
Even luckier, the family doesn’t want to tear the house down.
Instead, they wasted no time starting repairs and renovations to bring the house back to the version it used to be.
I like to imagine the five of them making key lime blondies on Grandma’s baking bar and sharing them with neighbors when they go out on their boat at sunset.
My relationship with Dad and Jerry was tense for the first few months after our phone call. I wouldn’t say it’s great, even now, but the ice between us is slowly thawing.
Dad begrudgingly moved into an apartment nearby.
I gave him the number to my financial advisor, hoping he’d reach out to make good choices with the little money he got from the house sale, but I don’t know if he ever did call.
He still won’t go to rehab or therapy. I talk to him mostly on his birthday and holidays.
It’s hard, but I try not to concern myself with the minutiae of his day-to-day.
Jerry’s sprains healed up nicely. He and Danielle went their separate ways shortly before Thanksgiving.
He’s now in New Hampshire, focusing on his photography and working his way out of financial debt.
He sold his van and is slowly working to pay me back for the fake surgery down payment he tricked me into.
Plus interest. It hasn’t been, like he guaranteed, the easiest money I ever made, but it has been the most gratifying.
Will I ever fully trust Dad and Jerry? Maybe, but I have a lot of my own work to do on that front, too. And that’s between my therapist and me.
“Hazel. Hazel!” Logan calls out, drawing my attention from a booth serving Peking duck wraps. “Look!”
He’s hunched over on the sidewalk. I run, concerned. When he looks up at me, his bracketed smile tells me everything’s okay. Great, in fact. Because there, between the cracks of the sidewalk, is a bright green four-leaf clover the size of my thumbnail.
“You pick it,” he says. “Then give it to me. It’s supposed to double your luck.”
“I’m not taking your luck.”
“Well, I’m not taking yours.”
“We can’t just leave it there!” I say, ignoring the stares we’re getting from passersby. “Or… maybe we can.”
“We searched for hours. My eyes will never be the same. I was seeing squares in my dreams for weeks!” Logan runs his hand through his hair. “And now you want to leave it?”
“For someone else,” I say. “They might need the luck more than we do.”
Logan stands and takes my hands in his. He got his cast off just before last Christmas and hasn’t broken any more bones since.
“Okay. I like that.” He drops a kiss against my temple. “And I already get to love you. That makes me the luckiest.”
I wrap my arm around his waist as we wind our way through the fair, checking out the other stalls.
Logan comes to an abrupt stop. “What would you say to checking out that place?” He points to a stall with the words “kau chim” written on its sign.
“I say no way.”
I’ve been trying not to overthink anything that isn’t within my control. That’s just another way of trying to predict the future. And I have no idea what’s going to happen.
For now, I’m learning how to trust life as it comes. I’m continuing to learn how to trust myself.
Logan nudges me. “One more for old times’ sake?”
“Absolutely not.”
“We might go home empty-handed, or we could win big,” he says, thinking this will tempt me.
I’m skeptical, but also kind of intrigued. “We already did win big, in more ways than one.” I glance back over at the sign.
Haven’t we pushed our luck enough? Everything’s been going so well. Yes, metaphorical shoes have dropped, but Logan and I have been there to catch them. Together. We’ve made our own fortune. It’s what we’ve been doing since the beginning.
“You want to do a temp check? After all this time?” I ask.
“Let’s just see,” Logan says. “I owe you dim sum after.”
I take a deep breath in as we head toward the fortune teller. She has availability now, inviting us to sit down in the two chairs across from her. A red tube sits on the table between us, patterned cloth spread over the surface.
“Have either of you done Chinese fortune sticks before?” she asks after introducing herself as Mel.
We shake our heads no. And while it’s true, it doesn’t feel accurate. We haven’t done this kind of fortune-telling before, but doing a fortune reading together isn’t unusual. We’ve been here before. Because of me. Because of Toffee. Because of who knows what else.
And then my spontaneous act somehow turned into our tradition. So here we are in another fortune teller’s booth. Again.
Mel explains to us that Chinese fortune sticks, or kau chim, is one of the oldest fortune-telling methods.
Inside the tube are sticks with numbers on them.
We’re supposed to ask a question and then shake the tube until one of the sticks falls out.
The number on the stick corresponds to our fortune in a booklet, which she holds up for us both to see.
“It’s based on numbers?” I ask.
Mel nods. “This is also known as lottery poetry.”
I cast my eyes over to Logan. There’s a hint of amusement dancing across his teal irises.
I can’t help but laugh. Because of course it’s called that. And nothing feels more poetic than the two of us playing a lottery together, yet again.
“What if we ask a joint question?” I propose to Logan.
He rubs his chin, nodding. “Minimize the chances of any flipping.”
“Exactly. Toffee’s already with Mrs. Walker today so we can rest easy there.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” he says.
“Same question?” I ask.
“As always.”
Mel pops the lid off the tube and hands it to me.
The sticks inside look like long Popsicle sticks, their wood faded with red painted on the ends. Chinese numbers are printed along the sides of each one.
Did our luck actually flip? I do wonder about it every now and then. I’ve learned to accept that we may never really know what happened that day in September. In life, you don’t always get concrete answers any more than you get answers about the future.
Even when you hold on tight and try to take control, nothing is certain. Nothing is guaranteed.
Maybe it’s when we resist trying to solve life’s mysteries that we get to enjoy our present, welcome the future, and reflect contentedly on the past.
Maybe, by letting go of what we think we know, we actually change the prophecy.
“What does our future look like?” I ask.
And then, without a second thought, I begin shaking the tube.
The wood knocks against the canister, the sticks slowly inching forward with each movement.
Logan leans closer as one stick becomes a clear front-runner.
I lift the tube and give one last shake. As I do, there’s a blur of white, orange, and black. I duck toward Logan, holding my arm over our faces. I peer at the table before glancing over at him. At the same time, we burst out laughing.
Because right there in front of us are Doc and Marty, one of them holding our stick between his orange beak. They look directly at us with their beady eyes for one long breath.
And then they fly away, our fortune disappearing with them.