She rolled the thoughts around in her mind, pushing and pulling at them, and an unlikely answer came to her. For too many years she’d worried about hurting others by mistake, by taking a person’s luck, who didn’t deserve misfortune. She realized now that the experience of losing the baby and leaving Greg had changed a part deep inside. Where once guilt and apprehension resided, now lived only mild concern.

Her heart had been remolded into something tough and gnarly; a shooter root from a young tree hardened by its push through stony ground. She wouldn’t go out of her way to hurt someone but if things needed doing for the greater good, so what? She wasn’t Mother Teresa, Princess Diana or the Dalai Lama. She was just a person trying to find her way through life, and why shouldn’t she take every advantage given her?

Life was life. Bad things happened to good people; good things happened to bad people. Sometimes the good luck didn’t just transfer to her; others benefited too. Look at Peg and Lacy’s parents and those in need who she’d helped.

She put down the paper to stare out the window through the wrought iron balcony to the little park, five stories below. She enjoyed walking there in the early evening, taking in the cooler night air and watching the locals pass by. These new experiences in this city came from having the courage to change her life.

In going forward, she decided she would always look on serendipity’s bright side. If she hadn’t left Greg she wouldn’t be here. If she hadn’t taken a walk yesterday in the park, she’d never have met the mother.

The woman had sat next to her on the bench by the wonderful old oak and chatted to her first. If that meeting hadn’t happened, who would have taught her not to slap her little girl or call the child a stupid brat? The accident the woman would receive might remind her that words can wreak incalculable damage on a child.

To switch with those who deserved their misfortune meant everybody won. She now had a good luck swap all ready to go.

She picked up her coffee, closed the paper, and walked to the window to stare at the people passing by on the sidewalk below. A mother pushing a stroller; a couple walking arm in arm; a group of teens talking animatedly; another couple holding hands; a man in a business suit carrying a satchel.

They all headed somewhere without giving a second thought to whether the futures of which they dreamed and planned didn’t belong to them. Now she headed somewhere too, but her destiny was as assured as if etched in the lines of her palm. Her fate, not random, but by choice. She decided that she gained nothing by feeling guilt or apologizing for the gift of the diary and the luck thing arising from within its pages.

She’d earned this through her mother’s death and everything that had come since. For anyone who thought of her as undeserving, well, they could shove their opinion and go to hell. And Nem would gladly send them there.