The Fortune

When Lola told her parents she wanted to see a fortune teller, her father told her she was crazy. Her mother told her to be careful. Nevertheless, Lola went. She didn’t really think it was going to mean anything anyway. Just a distraction from her life. Maybe a faux sign that everything was going well or, at least, would be in the not-so-distant future.

Maybe there would be a job coming soon. Maybe she could leave her parents house for good. The World of Maybes was Lola’s permanent residence and she needed someone else to move in so she didn’t feel so lonely. Her mother used to be that person, feeding into her ideas. But three years post-graduation with her History degree, her mother’s Maybes got twisted. They changed from “Maybe the Smithsonian will accept you without experience – they need the fresh perspective!” to “Maybe a receptionist job won’t be that bad – at least it’ll allow you to support yourself while you keep looking.”

Lola knew her father the Computer Engineer never believed in what he called her “Degree of the Past” but she always had a support with her mom. With even her changing, Lola knew she needed to too. This fortune teller was her last chance at holding on. To live in the maybes.

The front of the shop was unimposing with just a minimal sketch of an eye with three lashes hanging on a board above the door. It creaked and swayed as a gust of wind blew by. Lola walked into the shop and was hit with a strong waft of incense that filled every inch of the room and made their way into her lungs. She wasn’t sure if it was the smoke that made her feel lightheaded or something else. The limited light peeking through the crack in the curtain was the only thing illuminating Lola’s path, making it harder and harder for her to see the further she walked in.

“Hello?” Lola had still yet to see another person and she was starting to worry the lady was closed and just forgot to lock her front door. All she needed was to be accused of breaking and entering.

“Come in, dear.” A feeble voice called from a far off corner of the room.

With squinted eyes, Lola inched further toward the voice.

“I-I didn’t mean to intrude. Are you open?”

“Yes, yes, dear. Just for you, actually.”

The voice was much closer now. Lola felt like she was playing a horror movie version of Marco Polo.

It was coming from behind a red velvet curtain. Is she going to pull it back and see the Wizard running Oz? No, just an old woman sitting under a tent of tapestries and velvet. The woman sat on the ground with her legs crossed. In front of her sat a short table that raised to her elbows.

“Please. Sit.” Despite the woman’s small voice it still sounded like a command to Lola. She sat across from the woman quickly.

“I came here because I wanted to know-“

“You want to know what everyone wants to know when they come here, dear.” The woman interrupted, “You want to know about your fortune.”

“Well, yes, but more importantly I want-“

“You’ll get a fortune alright, dear. But you won’t get what you want.”

Lola blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t really understand what you mean.”

“Your fortune. It’s coming, and quicker than many.”

“Like….a fortune fortune?”

“What other kind is there?”

“Oh…” Lola didn’t expect her encounter with the Fortune Teller to go this smoothly. Or as fast. She didn’t know what else to say. Or if she even believed the woman.

“Now if there’s nothing more you wish to ask, my dear...”

“No, no,” Lola spoke, “I do have one more question.”

“And that is?”

“Will…will I know what to do with my life once I get the fortune?”

The woman paused as if carefully planning her next words, “That all depends on you, dear. I do not know what life holds after. None of us truly know that far ahead.”

Lola left the shop feeling, well, odd was the only word she could think to describe it. Her father warned her that the woman would speak in riddles – it was the way to tell Lola what she wanted without actually making any promises. But this felt like more.

“She knew my questions before I even asked, Papa.”

“Everyone has the same question, Lola.” Her father rolled his eyes.

A week had passed and Lola couldn’t stop thinking about what the woman had said. She had thought to return to her and ask her to clarify, but she feared her father was right. Maybe she can only speak in the abstract. Maybe that’s all the future is. Maybe she wasn’t magic at all and just wanted Lola’s money.

Lola was growing discouraged. She spent day after day hovered over her computer searching for a job, any job that would accept her. The search was not going well. Many nights she laid with her head on her mother’s lap as tears quietly fell and her mother played with her hair like she did when she was a child. But then, wasn’t Lola still a child? She was still living at home, still having her mother cook for her, still in her childhood bedroom. What separated her from her high school self except the years?

“I’m sorry, Mama.” She would whisper as they stared at the television screen watching a random sitcom, the laughing track the only palpable joy in the room.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, my dear.” Her mother would coo. Lola couldn’t see from the way she was sitting, but her mother always had tears in her eyes too.

Lola fell asleep with her computer open in front of her, scrolling through job boards. Each day that passed made the woman’s prediction of a fortune less and less likely. Her eyes hurt and there was a stiff pain in her neck. Still, she’d take this physical pain over the torment in her mind. She needed a coffee.

She walked into the kitchen and saw her father sitting at the table, staring out the kitchen window. There was no familiar scent of coffee brewing or her mother’s humming.

“Papa?”

Her father turned toward her and the light hit his face, reflecting off the tears welling in his eyes.

“Papa, what’s wrong?”

He turned back toward the window and an audible sob left his throat. Lola followed his gaze and saw police cars outside. She rushed out the front door and saw a gurney with a cloth thrown over top. Even with the body covered, Lola recognized her mother’s worn pink bunny slippers.

Lola fell to her knees, the morning dew soaking through her tattered pajama pants.

“N-no,” she cried, “Mama!”

An officer approached. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. May I have a word?”

“N-no. No. No.”

The officer offered his condolences once more before leaving Lola screaming in her front yard as the van drove away with her mother inside.

The next morning, there was a knock at the door. Lola’s father still sat at the kitchen table, staring out toward where the van was.

“She’s not coming back, Papa,” Lola told him last night.

“I know, I know,” He said, but still stared out the window as if the van would come back and Mama would be home.

Lola answered and saw a woman in a blazer and pencil skirt. “Is this the Phillips Residence?”

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m from Tune and Forth Law Offices, I’m here on behalf of a Mrs. Phillips.”

Lola couldn’t help but laugh. A fake, cynical laugh. “Kind of impossible, she’s dead.”

The woman’s frowned slightly, thrown off, before letting out a cough. Her face returned to its neutral state. “Yes. That’s why I’m here. She spoke with our offices before her passing. May I come in?”

Lola waved the woman in and they sat at the kitchen table. Lola next to her father and the woman across in her mother’s usual seat.

“Lana spoke with a lawyer?” It was the first words Lola’s father had spoken since it all happened.

“Yes, she wanted to make sure you were all cared for. She approached us about a week ago.”

“How did she know?” Lola asked, “How did she know she needed you?”

“She didn’t tell us much, just asked us to draw up a will and to give you this.”

The woman handed Lola a small, black Moleskin notebook. She remembered seeing her mother write in it the last few months and quickly hid it when Lola entered the room. She assumed it was her diary. Maybe it still was.

“Your mother made her last wished extremely simple.” The woman continued casually, seeming to already forget the journal as soon as it left her hands. “The house and all that within, she concedes her portion to Mr. Louis Phillips, to do with as he pleases. Her pension, a total of $20,000, and her Moleskin she leaves to her daughter Miss Lola Phillips.”

“W-what? She left her money to me?”

“I’m sorry, that’s all the information she gave us. Here is the will if you would like to further read its legal jargon but it doesn’t really say more than I have.”

The woman stood and walked to the door. She turned before leaving, a slight pause in her step, “I am sorry for your loss.”

Without another word, she left.

Lola opened the journal and almost cried at seeing her mother’s familiar loopy letters.

My Dearest Lola, I write this to you because I don’t know if your father could stand to read it. I ‘m sorry for not telling you about my sickness, but I didn’t want to ruin our last few months together. The doctor’s said the cancer was too far gone and I was ready.

I’ve written all my final thoughts and any life advice I can offer you in these pages so I can stay with you a little longer. I hope you can use them whenever you need to hear my voice again, if only in your head.

I just want you to make me one promise, my love. Take the money and build a life you can be proud of. But please, stay with your father. He hasn’t been alone in so long I think he’s forgotten how.

Maybe now you can follow your dreams.

I love you and we will see each other again.

Lola slammed the book shut with hot tears pooling down her cheeks. She didn’t know why, but she was angry. Angry at the lawyer woman for showing no emotion as she gave Lola her mother’s last words. Angry at her mother for knowing she was going to die and not telling them. Angry at her father for needing her support when she can’t even support herself. Angry at herself for being so wrapped up in her own issues and not seeing signs of her mother’s sickness. Angry at the fortune teller for not warning her about this. Although, maybe she did.

“What does it say?” Lola looked at her father and her anger dripped away into the familiar sorrow she’s known for the last 24 hours.

“She was sick.”

“How didn’t we know?”

“She didn’t let us.”

Lola held her father in her arms as they both cried. It was the first time she’d ever seen her father truly cry and it broke her even more than she was already broken.