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“Are you sure? That seems a little rash. Even for you.”
I glared at Sofia. “You’re supposed to be the voice of the maiden, not the crone. Where’s your youthful exuberance? Your avant-garde impetuosity?”
“You’re the one who drank two glasses of wine and is now lying on our living room floor,” said Bethany’s very mature thirteen-year-old daughter. “Seems impetuous enough for the both of us.”
I sighed and sat up too quickly, the blood rushing from my head. I gripped the edge of the wooden table to stop the spinning. “Oh, Sof. We raised you too well.”
The first thick, fat drops of rain plunked against the wall of windows, hesitantly at first, then growing more rhythmic, promising a deluge.
“What did the cards tell you?” Sofia asked.
I froze, staring at this girl I’d helped raise from toddlerhood. The one I’d taught how to brew medicinal teas, and how to interpret the tarot, and how crystals were totally useless, and she’d be bonkers to believe they had any real spiritual value, but none of that mattered if they were pretty enough and made her feel like everything was right in the world.
I cocked my head, looking at her with fresh eyes. Sometime during the past few years, her hair had darkened from its light brown. It was now a beautiful russet with natural money pieces along the middle part. She had blue eyes and a strong jaw like her mom, a deep and innate sense of the spiritual, like me, and an utter practicality that valued reason above all else, like Soula, her second surrogate mother.
Sofia was growing into a woman before my very eyes. The very same eyes that were currently getting misty watching all that light and beauty glowing within her. I couldn’t believe how smart and talented she was. How hard she’d practiced her guitar for her soloist seat in the youth orchestra, or how she’d made captain of the middle school varsity soccer team after only playing one year.
I couldn’t believe what an old soul she’d turned out to be.
And I couldn’t believe she had to remind me to pull cards.
The cards were my everything. The gels over the stage lights that illuminated any problems or possibilities I encountered.
Maybe I was drunker than I thought.
So much for babysitting. Though by now, she and her mom were used to me crying into my wine about the esoteric nature of…stuff.
I hopped onto my feet, my head only spinning one complete rotation. “You’ll be my witness?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Let’s do it.”
I rifled through the deep contents of my purse until I found a deck of cards. They weren’t my cards; it was the deck I used for Bethany, but it’d have to do.
Lightning flashed, highlighting the jagged roofline of the adjacent funeral home. Together, Sofia and I counted the seconds until the thunder rumbled lazily through the air.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three—
A rumbling boom shook the walls and rattled the objects in the room.
Sofia’s eyes widened with a gleeful smile. “That was a good one.”
I nodded. “Get the candles and the lighter. Hopefully the power goes out.”
I stood. My change in elevation gave me a full view of the house across the driveway, of the almost imperceptible glow of the round stained-glass window in the attic gable.
“Does George have any incense? Like church incense? That might set the right tone for Gus.” Sofia’s stepdad was Gus’s brother. He wasn’t that churchy, but maybe.
She shook her head, coming back into the room with an armful of jar candles. “I’ve never smelled anything like their church in here.”
“Okay. I think I have enough of a sense of his presence, anyway. What else?”
“Decca?”
“Huh?”
“I think you’re stalling.”
I sucked in a deep breath, holding it, letting it out in a long, wheezing deflation. “You’re right.”
