It’s been a while since I last saw the man with the peppermint schnapps or dreamt of the boy in the yellow waistcoat. So long, in fact, that I’ve started to doubt they were ever real at all. But when I see the letters over the doorway of Fortune’s Gate—Fortune Is a Strange Caller—I can’t resist the chance to step inside.

The bells signal my entry as before, and little else has changed. I see the same shelves lining the walls, full of unreadable books. I see the same tables spanning the floor, covered in wares with no prices or labels. The only difference is the curving spiral staircase that wasn’t there back when it was only a single-story building. I finger a basket of dry, gnarled roots in a deep-purple color that smell a little like cat pee, when the clerk appears.

“There you are!” they exclaim. “Where did you go?”

I can’t help but laugh. “You mean, where did you go?” I retort.

They grin at me. “I found your card,” they say. “Now where…” They begin peeking under things on the nearest table.

I hold it up. “You mean this?”

“Ah, yes! There it is. The Moon.”

I hand it to the clerk, and they give me a puzzled look. “Keep it,” I tell them. “I don’t need it now.”

Then, reaching into a back pocket, I fish out the rest of the deck, which I was taking to one of the shops we’d visited before, to see if the woman who owned it wanted to buy it for her collection. “In fact,” I tell the clerk, setting the deck on the nearest table. “Keep them all. They belong here.”

They peer at me, then shrug as if to say, Your loss.

I emerge back onto the street, feeling about ten years lighter. At the corner, I can’t resist turning around. Fortune’s Gate, as I anticipated, has vanished, and the teahouse on one side and the bookshop on the other have pulled together as though it was never there.

And maybe it never was.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

On the left side of my fridge, hanging by a magnet for a local pizza delivery company, is a yellow sticky note with the numbers for the Crisis Hotline, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and the instructions, “Go to the hospital or emergency room,” written in my counselor’s handwriting. Next to it hangs a picture of my daughter, Evelyn, in kindergarten or maybe preschool. It is framed by green construction paper she cut into the shape of a Christmas tree with a red yarn loop for hanging.