She stares at me, shakes her head, and then turns away, muttering about some people.

Huh. So people in New York stand on lines instead of in them. Good to know.

After I get my chai latte, I find an armchair in the corner that a guy with a laptop is just vacating and sink down into it. I’m going to be living in this city for three months.

At the table next to me, two women are talking, leaning forward in intensity like no one else in the world is there. One of them has deep-purple hair, and both of them have on coats that look like they’re made of quilted black parachutes. And by the way, they’re in love, and later today they’ll probably go out and get a dog.

I need a coat, probably. And a job. A pair of warm gloves. More black clothing so I can fit in.

I take a sip of my chai. And all of a sudden, just like that, I know that I don’t want to be in Brooklyn. I want to go home.

This is not a good place to live. It’s dirty; it’s loud; it’s impersonal—and for heaven’s sake, it doesn’t even know how to have a proper thunderstorm! I like my thunderstorms to arrive in the late afternoon after a buildup of humidity and heat so that by the time the storm comes, you’re grateful for it. It does its job, chasing out the sticky air, and moves on, and the sky clears right up. But this—this is a constant gray drizzle with intermittent booms that seems like it could go on all day. Who needs this?

I tap my fingernails on the table, push all the crumbs into a little pile. Maybe I should go back to Charles Sanford’s office and tell him that I’ve made a horrible mistake. I’ll tell him that I’m simply not up to it.

This was an amazing gift, TOTALLY amazing, and I am very appreciative of Blix’s kindness, but, sadly, I myself am not up to it. But . . . thank you.

Let the place go to a charity, and I’ll take the next flight home tomorrow, and later this week, I’ll tell my family the good news that I’m marrying Jeremy.

We’ll go to Cancun for our honeymoon like Natalie and Brian did. In a few years, we’ll have a kid, and then another, hopefully of the opposite sex, and I’ll decorate the house and garden and join the PTA and drive in carpools and keep a color-coded calendar hanging on the kitchen wall and get to say things like, “Honey, did you do your homework?”

I kind of love this idea. And in thirty or so years, I’ll be there to help my parents when they need to move to a nursing home. Jeremy will close his physical therapy practice, and maybe we’ll go back to Cancun for our fiftieth wedding anniversary when we’re eighty. And we’ll say, “Where did the time go?” like everybody else in the history of the planet. And then we’ll die fulfilled and people will say, “They were the luckiest ones.”

That’s a life, isn’t it? A person could do that. There will be so many, many good moments to that kind of life.

So why does it feel like right this minute I’m at a crossroads, trying to decide between the unknown and the known? Between the city and the suburbs? Between risk and safety? Didn’t I already make that choice? I told the guy I’d marry him! I kissed him right there in the diner, and I saw the happy look on his face, and how surprised he was—and now all I have to do is tell him that there’s a little piece of real estate that’s holding things up.

Blix, I am so sorry, but I already decided all this about my life. And now you’ve come to give me a gift that is going to muck up my whole life, and I’m sorry, but it’s just such a huge, huge mistake! I am not the person you thought. I don’t want a big, big life.

I know that if I called Natalie right this minute and told her everything that’s happening, she wouldn’t even have to think about it. She’d say I should run, not walk, back to Charles Sanford’s office this minute and insist that he rip up all the pages with my signature. Refuse to leave until every last shred of my signature is gone.

I’m about to punch in her number when I remember that I am carrying a letter from Blix right in my handbag. With my heart pounding, I take it out and open it, somehow knowing it will change everything.

TWENTY-FIVE

BLIX

Dear Marnie,

Sweetheart, an hour ago I got off the phone with you. You were asking me for a spell to bring Noah back to you, a request that pierced me to the core of myself. You love him. YOU LOVE HIM. At first I thought I’d go over to my book of spells—yes, I really do have one, but it’s more a joke than anything else because the best spells just sort of happen without any need of external stuff—but then I thought, what the hell, I’d try to find just the thing you could drink or eat that would make you a magnet for Noah once again. Maybe it would be only a placebo spell, but it would work because that’s how it all works. They work on BELIEF. And some directed energy. Here’s the truth, sweet pea: we are all vibrational beings in physical bodies, and thoughts actually become reality so you have to make sure you’re thinking about what you want and not about what you don’t want.

But then it hit me: there’s something else I can do instead, an immediate remedy—I could give you my house.

My funny, weird, crazy Brooklyn house. I should tell you: It has a plumbing issue. The floors slope in some of the rooms. It’s filled with tenants who don’t have perfect lives. The light switch on the first floor flickers sometimes, and once it shot a spark at me. I shot one right back. There’s a loose shingle on the roof. A tree branch batters the upstairs windows when storms come. What else? Oh, yes, one of the planters on the roof wobbles even though it’s supposedly cemented in place. The sun coming up in the morning can shine directly in your eyes, even with the bamboo shades pulled all the way down. The full moon will wake you up if you sleep in the front bedroom. Still, that’s the room I recommend. It’s the best because you will hear the sounds of the outside world, and that will keep you grounded and sane.

It’s a messy, forgiving, rambunctious house, filled with love and mischief. There have been so many good times here, and perhaps you already know the truth that good times beget other good times. And so there are plenty more to come. This house wants to be yours.

And I want it to be yours. You and I are messy, forgiving, rambunctious people, just like the house. That is what we share, Marnie dear. I hope you will stay.

Because you see, I am dying. I have this cancerous, tumorous thing growing inside me—it’s been here with me for months, and I know the end is coming soon. I haven’t told so many people, because sometimes people think I should go get treatment, like treatment is something I want to waste my time with. I do not want to have parts of me cut off, and I don’t want to be burned and slashed and poisoned in the interest of “getting better.” I want the kind of treatment where the universe looks down and says, “Hey, Cassandra!” (Cassandra is the name I gave my tumor. I thought she deserved a name.) I think the universe should have said, “Cassandra, you know you don’t belong there. Get out of Blix’s belly, will you, and go evaporate back into the atmosphere. Go turn into part of a glacier, or a little nest for a squirrel, or go back to wherever you were before you came here. Sweet Cassandra, if you kill off our Blix, then you will die, too, because Blix has all the nutrients for you. So think about that.”

But the universe didn’t come through with any such thing, and Cassandra apparently did not think about the consequences, and she has grown bigger and stronger, and she nestles down next to my heart when we lie down together, and I know soon she will be the bigger part of me.

So I’m excited for what I know can happen. I am calling my attorney, and I’m drawing up a will that leaves you the whole mess of a house. My heart beats faster when I think of how that is going to be for you! I know that the house will set your life off on a new course, just the way it did that for me. I know that you and I are in many ways connected, and maybe you’ll feel that when you get here.

Think of me here, welcoming you. Will you do that? See me on the rooftop, or sitting at the beat-up kitchen table drinking tea, or out on the street talking to the people who come by. I’m the car horns, the bus that rounds the corner, the subs over at Paco’s across the street. I am all of it. And you are, too, although you may not know it yet.

I know, I know, this will come as a shock to you, getting a house from someone you think you don’t know. But I know you. I have always known you. And I see myself in you, believe it or not.

And here’s the main thing of what I know about you. I told you when we met that you are in line for a big, big life, and this, Marnie, is where you will find it. There will be love and surprises here in abundance, I promise you that. Be open to what doesn’t seem possible, and you will be amazed what can happen. Darling, this is your time.

Love over lifetimes,

Blix

P.S. Will you stay for at least the three months it’s going to take you to get over the shock of this? Please? Tallyho, my love!

TWENTY-SIX