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At once, Calvin came over and hugged me. “That’s great news,” he said, then paused. “Or at least, I suppose it is. I can’t really imagine Archie changing a diaper, can you?”
I chuckled, all my worries of a moment earlier evaporating in the face of such a comic mental scene. “Not really,” I replied. “But I suppose he’ll get the hang of it eventually.”
The corners of my husband’s dark eyes crinkled in amusement. “Hopefully. Did you have any idea they were even planning to start a family?”
“None,” I said, reflecting that Victoria had been holding her cards pretty close to the vest on this one. “I always got the impression she wanted to take some time to focus on really getting the design studio up and running before they even talked about having kids…but sometimes this stuff just happens.”
“That it does,” Calvin remarked. Our baby was very much planned, even if we hadn’t known exactly how the timing was going to work out, but I got the feeling he was thinking of his own large family and how his four brothers and sisters had so many kids of their own. Those children were definitely wanted, even if some of them had been surprises at the time.
The conversation moved on to what fun it was going to be for all of us to have babies around the same age, even if Calvin’s and mine was making an earlier appearance in the world than Hazel’s or Victoria’s. Right then, I wished I wasn’t feeling so confined to the house, because if I’d been at the store, I would have been able to go over and congratulate Archie in person on the impending arrival. Yes, I’d already given Victoria my best wishes, but it wasn’t quite the same thing.
But my little world was changing, and I’d just have to roll with it.
Later that afternoon, I got a text from Chloe.
My parents want to go out 2nite to celebrate the dismissal. Can U & Cal make it to the Gold Dust @ 7?
Part of me wanted to decline. I’d already gone to brunch at my mother’s house, and that seemed like enough social gatherings for one day.
On the other hand, the gesture felt like an obvious olive branch from the Fairfields, and it seemed rude to decline. Also, since the restaurant at the Gold Dust casino was on tribal lands, it was only about a five-minute drive from our house and therefore felt a lot more approachable than going back into Globe.
I asked Calvin if he was okay with the plan, and he said, “If you are. It feels like kind of a lot for one day.”
Echoing what I’d thought just a moment before. However, I only shrugged and said, “Yes, but it’s close, and it’s not as if we’ll be out late. I think we should.”
“Then it’s fine with me.”
Which was pretty much exactly what I’d thought he would say, but still, I was glad he was on board with the plan.
So I texted Chloe back and told her that was fine and that we were looking forward to it. Afterward, though, I found myself restless and once again headed into my office, even though I knew I would have been better served to spend the time between now and our dinner date with the Fairfields sitting in the living room with my feet up.
I was getting awfully tired of that, though. I wasn’t an invalid, just a pregnant woman who was ready to pop any day now.
My gaze roamed over the decks of Tarot cards on my bookshelf. Most of the time I used my trusty Everyday Witch deck, but I still hoarded way more decks than I probably should, occasionally reaching out to a different set of cards when my Everyday Witch ones didn’t seem up to the task, for whatever reason.
Maybe now was the time to try something different. Yes, Chloe wouldn’t be going to trial, but I still had no idea who had followed Jack Speros to her Airbnb and throttled him in the living room there.
I went over to the bookshelf and let my fingers trail across the various decks there, looking for that inner twinge or tingle to let me know which one would be better suited for my current purposes.
And then it settled on the Light Seers tarot.
Well, that seemed appropriate. I was definitely trying to shine a light on the situation and find my way to the truth.
I pulled out the deck and took it over to my altar. Because it had been so long since I’d used these particular cards, I lit some palo santo incense and used the purifying smoke to cleanse the deck and ready it for the reading.
Just inhaling the clean, aromatic smoke drifting up from the cone made me feel a little better. While it had been wonderful to see everyone, being around that many people at once could also be draining, and giving myself this time to be in my sacred space and alone with my books and cards and crystals was restorative in a way I wasn’t sure I could ever fully explain.
But now that I’d cleansed the deck and made myself as open to the universe’s suggestions as I possibly could, it was time to see what this particular set of cards had to tell me.
I shuffled and shuffled, waiting for the small inner sign that would let me know it was time to stop and pull a card. It took a long time, and I began to wonder whether I should have switched decks. Every once in a while, I couldn’t get the Tarot to vibe with me no matter what I did.
At last, though, my fingertips tingled, and I stopped so I could pull the first card out of the deck.
The Devil. In this particular deck, he wore the face of a handsome man with wild black hair, one hand reached forward in a beckoning gesture, but still.
Not this again, I thought. It wouldn’t be the first time when I’d had a second card pull turn out to be a mirror image of one I’d already done, but I’d really been hoping for some fresh insights this time around.
The second card was the Seven of Swords.
