It’s the common denominator between everyone who comes to One & Only, the thing that ties everyone together.
Tiesustogether.
The jade cuff feels warm on my wrist once again. Everyone has big feelings about big birthdays, so mine are nothing new. But for me, forty marks ten years of knowing who I’m supposed to be with.
And ten years of not being able to find him.
Halmoni’s not in her office when I creep in. The sunlight filters through a row of fig trees planted outside the bank of windows, and shines onto the apothecary cupboard.
I find the drawer with my name on it:Cassia Park
Third row from the top, almost dead center. I pull the drawer out, beautifully lined with red floral-patterned silk. A small scrap of paper lies right in the middle. The edges have curled slightly so I need to flatten it out on the table to read the name stitched into it:
Daniel Nam
I’ve seen it a hundred times, and yet something still stutters inside of me when I read his name. This was the name Halmoni drew for me. At my insistence, I had never let my grandmother or aunts do a reading for me. My mom got her face read at a young age and it led her to rebelling and dating my deadbeat dad—a fate I wanted to avoid. But when I turned thirty, after a terrible breakup with yet another damn musician, I asked my grandmother to read my face and enter my past life.
Almost ten years I’ve known my fated is Daniel. Ten years of searching for him.
All our methods here at the agency have come up with nothing. At first, it wasn’t a big deal.I’m only thirty! Be patient. What am I, a child bride?At that age, marriage and children were nebulous desires. But the one clear goal I’ve had is this: I want to be so in love that the entire world around me dissolves. I want to go through life with someone beside me. My mother died young, and I don’t take this future available to me for granted.
With my thirties coming to a close, I’ve spent the past year doubling down on my efforts. Shreya has this side gig that is DanielNam focused—she’s working with a private investigator and sends me updates every week. This week’s update was the same as the last. I’m trying to stay determined—but a feeling of restlessness has been growing.
Because beyond having a partner, I want to feel that magic. The magic of falling in love with the person whose fate has been intertwined with mine many lives over—overcoming time and space and all else.
I want to begin a love so fated that it isinevitable.
And it’s not lost on me that I’m the last woman in the family with the gift. Sunny has no children, and Emoni only had two sons, andtheyonly had sons, by some goddamned curse (I love those boys, it’s fine). With my possibly last male relative, Wally, born only eight months ago, it’s getting increasingly clear to me that if I don’t have children, the gift might be lost. So that once-nebulous desire to build a family has become clearer. It’s here now. I guess I really am growing older because I truly cannot believe it’s snuck up on me like this. This big decision that had always felt so far away.
Forty. A milestone birthday for many, but especially heavy with expectation for me.
Maybe this will be the year. A milestone gift for a milestone birthday. I close the drawer and carry this hope close—willing it into the world with yearning alone.
3
The night before my eighth birthday, I had a dream about a fire in my house. The next morning, my mom told me it was auspicious—that fire dreams mean all your troubles and worries will go away. That was the day my mom had a brain aneurysm and died while doing a load of laundry.
So I don’t put too much stock into dreams.
And thank god. I wake up to my alarm and tiny talons poking my scalp on Saturday morning after a bad night of weird dreams about my middle school crush being in the circus.
“For crying out loud, Betty!” I yell and my cockatoo flies off my head. I touch my scalp and see that she drew blood. “You are a fucking demon.” From her perch on my nightstand, Betty stares back at me with her soulless black eyes.
I shake off the rough night in the shower, and head to the kitchen to get coffee started, trying not to let the specter of birthday week dreams throw a shadow over everything. My bare feet slap on the Spanish tile as sunlight fills the kitchen, the windows left open all night to let in the cool spring air. I stand by the windows, looking out into the sunlit canyon, inevitably thinking about my mother.
Our mornings would start chaotically—her barely getting dressed in time to make me breakfast, in this very kitchen. Breakfast usually consisted of whatever we ate the night before: a cold chicken leg with a tortilla or spaghetti warmed up with a glass of milk on the side. But we’d be blasting music the entire time—Blondie was a favorite—the windows open wide. Bringing in the same sage-laced scent that comes into the kitchen now.
The garage is cool and dark when I open it to grab my bike from its rack on the wall. My grandfather installed it for me four years ago when I started my bike rides. His joints aren’t what they used to be, but he can still build almost anything anyone needs. Although he immigrated here with a medical degree, my grandfather started doing construction work when he first arrived in L.A. While Halmoni built One & Only, he built his own contracting business and did that for decades before retiring. My little bungalow in Mount Washington reaps all the benefits of his skills—from a deck overlooking the hillside to the cabinets in my kitchen. Betty benefits most. He built her a giant cage in the backyard so she could commune with the hawks while being very safe from them. That said, many mornings I’m tempted to accidentally leave it open.
My grandparents raised me after my mom died. When people would remind me that I was an orphan because I lost both my parents, I would always bristle. Because in my mind, I only ever had one parent. My dad was a nonentity. He left us when I was only two, and while my mother raised me alone in this house, I had never felt the absence of a parent until she died. The pitying looks when people found out about me would make me sad until they made me angry.
For a bike ride, the weather is cooperating in L.A., which seems like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised. We have humidity and summer storms now—this isn’t the steadfastly mild L.A. I grew up in. I only need an oversized Sade concert T-shirt and bike shorts fortoday’s ride. I put my long hair into two French braids then strap on my helmet, secure my giant water bottle on the frame of the bike, and pop in my AirPods.
A podcast about scammers blasts in my ears as I take the easy ride downhill, coasting by the mid-century homes tucked into the scrubby hillside. The ancient, leafy oaks and shaggy pepper trees shade me as I zoom under them. People walking their dogs and pushing strollers wave hello to me and I wave back. Parts of L.A. can feel like a small town sometimes.
By the time I reach the street traffic of San Fernando, the sun is a little stronger and I take a break to drink a giant swig of water by a gas station under a freeway overpass. Cars almost clip me and I’m not even mad. This is a car town, I get it. I’m a little insect on a bicycle huffing along.
But riding my bike on Saturdays has been the joy of my life. It reminds me of being a kid, riding up and down steep hills in my neighborhood. Before all the heavy things became heavy. How easy it was to feel light as air, free as a bird.
