Chapter 17 #2
She pressed her lips together, briefly held up her rosary like she was loading a weapon, and followed us to the door.
Inside, the room was small and cool, draped in deep-purple velvet that swallowed the noise of the street.
Incense smoke curled up from a brass holder in the corner.
In the center of the room sat a round table covered in red cloth, a crystal ball catching what little light there was and throwing it back in soft fractured pieces.
Behind the table sat Madame Cecile.
She was somewhere in her seventies, with dark skin, silver hair wrapped in an indigo cloth, and rings on every finger. “Welcome,” she said, eyes passing over us, already sizing us up. “I’m Madame Cecile.”
Doris positioned herself slightly behind the rest of us, rosary moving through her fingers.
“Who would like to know their future first?” she asked, voice low and unhurried in a thick Cajun accent.
Marge’s hand shot up.
But before Marge could launch into the seat, I stepped in front of her and sat. “I’m the captain, so I will.”
Marge grumbled under her breath but didn’t try to push me out of the chair.
“How does this work?” I asked.
Madame Cecile just opened her hand, gesturing for me to place mine in it.
She took it, her hands soft and gentle, her gaze drifting down to my palm.
“Well? What do you see?” Marge asked, her breath in my hair as she leaned over my shoulder.
“She got a long life line? What’s it say?
We talking decades? I need to know if I’m gonna be making fun of her when she’s a shriveled-up 110-year-old prune and the doctors can’t pull her face back up anymore.
I’ve got a lot of material saved up for her centennial. ”
Madame Cecile ignored her, her fingers stroking my palm in a way that should have made me uncomfortable, but a strange sense of ease settled over me.
“You’re at a crossroads,” she said.
I chuckled. “Aren’t we all, darling? It’s Mardi Gras. I’m just trying to decide between a Sazerac and a Hurricane.”
“Yeah. Everyone is at a crossroads. Not a good start,” Marge said, and Sylvie elbowed her in the gut.
Madame Cecile didn’t look up. “Not like this. This road leads to two very different paths. The easier road is the shorter path. The harder road is the longer path.”
“So, go the easy path and it’s shorter.”
Madame Cecile looked up now, a shake of her head. “You don’t want a shorter path.”
I understood suddenly what she meant by a shorter path.
The air in the room felt different suddenly. Thicker.
Her gaze returned to my palm, and she gripped it tight. “You know how to fight. You’ve always known how to fight. But now you need to choose which battle to fight.”
I didn’t even know if it was what she meant, but a question popped into my mind.
My identity or my life?
I said nothing.
Sylvie had gone very still beside me.
The silence stretched.
“You’re stronger than the choice in front of you,” she said. “And your strength comes not just from within, but from outside.”
Madame Cecile looked up, her gaze sliding across the faces of my widows.
“Use every strength in your fight. Internal. External. If you fight the way you know you can, you will win. But do not take long to decide your path, for it will then choose for you.”
Doris gasped.
I pulled my hand back like she’d burned me. I set both hands in my lap and pressed them flat against my thighs and looked at her over the crystal ball, heart pounding as I kept my voice steady despite my frazzled state. “Thank you. That was very—yes. I’m good. That’s plenty. Thank you.”
I stood up.
“Alice—” Sylvie started.
“I need some air.” I was already moving toward the beaded curtains. “Take your time. I’ll be right outside.”
I pushed through into the noise and heat of Bourbon Street, walked six steps, and stopped. I stood in the middle of all that color and sound and let myself be invisible for thirty seconds inside a crowd that was too busy celebrating to notice one woman whose life was shattering around her.
It will then choose for you…
I breathed in. Breathed out.
A brass band rounded the corner two blocks down, the trumpet cutting through, drowning out everything else, including my own thoughts.
I pressed my lips together and looked up at the balconies and the beads and the impossible blue of the sky above Bourbon Street.
How did I know which path was the right one?
I had built a life on knowing exactly who I was.
I was being asked to step forward into a version of myself I couldn’t picture yet.
Three sets of footsteps from behind punctuated the sounds around me.
“Alice.” Doris’s hand immediately found my arm. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You sure? You ran out of there pretty fast,” Sylvie said.
“Yes. I’m fine. Just needed some air. The incense was getting to me.”
She held my gaze and didn’t argue, which meant she didn’t believe me and had decided to let me have it anyway. Sylvie always knew when to push and when to simply stand close.
“I’m—” I stopped and looked back at the street.
The band was closer now, the trumpet so bright and ridiculous and alive that it was almost offensive.
I felt the tightness in my throat that I had been successfully avoiding for several weeks and had no interest in giving an inch to right now, not here, not in the middle of Bourbon Street on a Friday afternoon when I had specifically come to New Orleans to feel something other than afraid.
I squared my shoulders.
“I want a martini,” I said. “Vodka. Very cold. Very dry. I am done with sweet things for the rest of the day and possibly the rest of the week, and I would like someone to find me one immediately.”
Nobody moved for a half second.
I saw the look pass between them. The desire to press me to talk about my feelings. But as they had since I’d dropped my diagnosis, they ignored their own needs and respected mine.
Then Marge pointed down the block. “We’re in New Orleans. There’s a bar within forty feet of us anywhere we go.”
I knew what I’d done to them this past week—making them carry their fear in silence, forcing them to process their grief on mute while I decided how and when we’d face this.
It wasn’t fair. I knew that.
They needed to talk about it, cry about it, research it, plan for it. That was how they processed hard things.
It killed me, nearly drowned me in guilt to deny them their own feelings, but I just… couldn’t process those.
Not yet.
Maybe that made me selfish. Maybe it made me cruel.
But it was the only way I knew how to stay standing while my world fell apart.
I’d make it up to them later—after I decided, after I knew what came next.
For now, I needed them to protect me by staying exactly where I’d put them: close enough to catch me, far enough away that they couldn’t see me shatter.
“As the captain,” I said, “I am ordering a martini. Now.”
“Aye, Captain!” Marge saluted me, then grabbed my hand and pulled me forward into the crowd. Doris took my other arm, and Sylvie fell in close beside us.
I held on to Marge’s hand and let myself be pulled. Pulled away from the fortune teller. Pulled away from my decision. Pulled away from it all for just a little longer.