We pass the bullpen with the interns. “I tried that poker strategy you taught me,” Matteo calls out to Emoni. “For the first time ever, I made out like a bandit on poker night.” Emoni truly loves money. Any time she doesn’t spend in her garden is spent at the casinos. It’s not a gamblingproblemper se because she always manages to win.
Emoni sniffs with satisfaction. “I have so much more to teach you, let’s meet at lunch. Lila, did you try that egg soufflé recipe? Because you need more protein. Your arms—”
I steer her away. “All right, back to work, minions!” Farther away, I look at Emoni. “You can’t talk about people’s bodies.”
“I’m old, I can do anything.”
After her computer is sorted out (YouTube ads strike again—this time from a video about a penguin who delivers groceries in a small Japanese town), I head back to my office.
“Cass?” Shreya motions to me discreetly from the front desk.
I walk over. “Yeah?”
“You have a last-minute reading scheduled for, well,nowif you can do it.”
“I already have four readings today, you know they take a lot—”
“You might want to see who it is.” She jerks her head toward the waiting room. There’s a woman sitting on the sofa, flipping through a magazine. When she tilts her head up, I catch a glimpse of a very familiar face. Celebrities are not foreign to us here at One & Only—we’re in Beverly Hills and our reputation as the bestdiscreetmatchmaker in Los Angeles is pretty sterling. Still, the woman in our living room won a Golden Globe this year and is the latest spokesmodel for Dior. It’s been splashed all over the internet that she had a messy breakup with her equally high profile musician boyfriend. The latest in a string of bad romances.
I’m pulling up my calendar on my phone, to see if there are any conflicts, when someone says with full authority, “Send her to the reading room in five minutes.”
Shreya’s back snaps into an impossibly straight line. “Yes, Mrs. Park.”
I turn to see Halmoni—my grandmother. The boss. She has made a fashionably late entrance, as always. She’s grown shorter, but her presence is still intimidating at eighty-eight years old. Her hair, still fairly dark for her age, is twisted into a low knot on her nape. Her big Chanel sunglasses are still on, and her cheekbones are still on a level with Audrey Hepburn’s. She hands her Hermès bag to Shreya, who takes it wordlessly, then lifts an eyebrow at me. Challenging. “Can you handle this reading, Cassia?”
Halmoni has no cute nicknames for me. To her, I am alwaysCassia. The name my mother, her daughter, gave me. A daughter she can now only see in the shape of my eyes, the stubborn wave in the back of my long hair, and the large feet that accompany my tall frame.
“Yes, of course,” I say easily. “You sure you don’t want to handle it?”
She waves her head dismissively. “Your halabuji snored all night. Too tired.”
I laugh but look at her closely. She is impossibly spry for her nearly ninety years, but age has been creeping up on her and I’m always on high alert. Halmoni notices and scowls. “Go take care of our client.”
Right below the surface of my adult veneer is a surly teenager and I roll my eyes. “I wasgonna.” She makes a quicktsksound and digs a knuckle into my upper arm. I pretend it hurts but we both know it doesn’t, and I make a face at her before she walks away. Halmoni has a hard shell for everyone in the world but her family. And, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it at first glance, she saves the softest parts of herself for me.
When I walk into the waiting room, Gemma Flores looks up at me. She is beautiful and tiny like a hummingbird, like all actresses when you see them in real life. Her clothes are very celebrity incognito—a matching set of soft lounge pants and a sweater with a black cap. “Ms. Flores? I’m Cassia Park, it’s so great to meet you.”
She stands up and shakes my hand, her tennis bracelet pressing into my wrist. “So nice to meet you, too!” She laughs nervously, a husky sound that is familiar to me from watching her on a long-running hospital drama for years. “I kind of can’t believe I’m doing this.”
I tilt my head. “Why?”
Another nervous laugh. “Just…If it got out that I went to amatchmaker, I’d be skewered online. But I can’t take any more of the heartbreak, you know?”
Something in me loosens. Gemma Flores may be famous, but she’s familiar. I get her. “I know.”
Halmoni walks in, her expression warm and serene. This is her client-facing side. “Ms. Gemma Flores, we are such huge fans of yours. We’re so happy you’ve decided to join us here. I’m the founder, Mi-Kyeong Park.”
“Thank you, and so nice to meet you, Mrs. Park,” Gemma says, everything a bit more relaxed now. “I heard about your agency and your face-reading methods and thought, well, that’s something new, right? I’m a little nervous.”
Halmoni takes Gemma’s hands in hers, grasping them tight. “Don’t be nervous. Our family has been matchmaking for centuries. It’s a skill that runs in our family, and we were known for it in Korea. We brought it here to Los Angeles in the seventies. So, you’re in good hands.” She winks and Gemma is charmed. “And yes, we use face-reading, but we blend it with traditional matchmaking practices. This form of matchmaking is unique to our family.”
“How does it work? Face-reading I mean.”
“Well, you know palm-reading?”
Gemma nods.
“It’s like that—but for the face,” Halmoni says with an impish smile. “A face is very revealing about a person’s character—their strengths and flaws. But it also reveals interests, temperament, and even their future.”
