Chapter 6
Six
“Alex, I’m sorry. No, wait—” I clear my throat quietly.
The guy next to me shifts away. Probably thinks I’m on the phone. I’m not. Just a woman talking to herself. Very cool. Very sane.
“Hey Alex. So. I fucked up.” I shake my head. Too casual. She’ll think I’m not taking this seriously.
Try again.
“Alex, I need you to know that I—” No. Too formal. Like I’m deposing a witness.
The bus stops at 15th. I transfer to the El, finding a seat in the back where I can keep muttering without too many witnesses.
“I’ve been a terrible friend and you deserve better.” I test the words. They taste true but insufficient. Like admitting you broke a vase when you actually burned down the whole house.
A woman across from me raises an eyebrow.
I pull out my phone, press it to my ear like I’m actually talking to someone. The universal signal for not-crazy-just-on-a-call.
“You were right about everything,” I whisper into the phone. “About listening. About trying. About Dahlia. I’m sorry I made you feel like your gifts didn’t matter.”
The words catch in my throat.
Because this is the truth, isn’t it? Not that I didn’t believe in ghosts. Not that I was skeptical or logical or careful.
I made her feel like the thing she is—intuitive, connected, open—was wrong.
The El screeches to a stop. I catch the 47 up to East Passyunk, sitting next to a guy eating a cheesesteak at 11 a.m.—respect—while my chest aches with fifteen years of Alex always being the one who apologizes first.
By the time I reach Thirteen Candles, I’ve practiced a dozen different versions of the apology and they all sound wrong.
The shop sits tucked between a Vietnamese bakery and a tattoo parlor. The kind of place you’d miss if you weren’t looking. No sign except for the number 13 painted on the door in gold leaf. And a small placard: Candles. Cards. Clarity.
Very Alex.
The windows are covered in thick velvet curtains. Wine-red. The kind that make you feel like you’re about to walk into a Victorian murder mystery.
Perfect.
The air shifts the moment I cross the threshold—thicker, charged, like walking into a thunderstorm that hasn’t broken yet.
The shop smells like beeswax and dried lavender. Old books. That particular must that comes from things that have time in them.
Shelves line every wall. Candles in jars, in pillars, in shapes I can’t identify. Crystals clustered on velvet trays. Tarot decks stacked like precious artifacts. Dried herbs hanging from exposed beams.
“You over think.”
A woman appears from behind a display of black candles. She’s maybe sixty, maybe eighty—that ageless quality some women have when they’ve seen shit. Dark eyes. Silver hair wound into a thick braid. Wearing a cardigan covered in cat hair and about seventeen necklaces.
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“You think too much.” She taps her temple. “Up here—all the time. Never here.” She presses her palm flat against her chest. Over her heart.
“I’m just looking for a gift—”
“For the friend you wronged.” Not a question.
She waves a hand dismissively, bracelets jangling.
“You come into my shop on Saturday morning. No makeup. Wearing pajamas under your coat. Looking at my shelves like you will find forgiveness in a candle.” She snorts. “Come. Sit. Let me read your cards.”
“I don’t think I need—”
“Sit.”
Something in her voice. That quality that makes you listen. That reminds you of your grandmother. Or a teacher who actually gave a shit.
“Yes ma’am.” I follow her like a scolded child.
She leads me around displays of herbs and oils, past a section of books that look older than the building itself, through beaded curtains that click and whisper as we pass.
We end up in a back room. Just a storage room, really. A card table pushed against a wall with a purple cloth over it, worn soft at the edges. Two folding metal chairs. Boxes stacked in corners. A space heater humming.
The space feels liminal. Real in a way that makes everything else seem like performance.
She sets a deck of cards on the table. Not Rider-Waite. Not anything I recognize. The backs are hand-painted with botanical illustrations. Flowers and herbs and things that grow.
“Blow on it.”
“What?”
“Blow on it. Exhale. Not hard, no?” She sits in the opposing chair. Waiting.
I lean over and blow on the deck. Feeling like an idiot.
“Yes, yes. Good.” She closes her eyes. Her hands hovering over the cards. Then her eyes snap open, fixing on my chest like she can see through my hoodie. “You carry something. Something that is not yours.”
Cold reading. Has to be. She saw my hand move to my chest when I walked in, or maybe—
The ring burns against my sternum.
Not warm. Actually burns, like touching a stove, like that moment in the alley when Alex first picked it up and handed it to me.
“I’m wearing a dead woman’s ring.”
The words just fall out. Flat. True. Like I’ve been carrying them in my throat for weeks, waiting for someone to ask the right question. Or any question. Waiting for permission to stop being fine.
The woman doesn’t even blink. “Ah.”
“I found it in an alley. Three weeks ago.” I’m still talking. Can’t stop now. “There was blonde hair wrapped around it and I should have left it there, I should have called the police, but I didn’t because my boss—” I catch myself. “I can’t talk about my boss.”
“Then talk about the girl.”
And I crack.
“I don’t know her. I never met her. But I heard—” I stop.
Cover my throat with my hand. The tell I can’t control.
“Someone hurt her. Someone killed her. And I’m the only person who knows and I can’t tell anyone because of this fucking NDA and my best friend thinks I should listen to ghosts but I don’t believe in ghosts except this ring gets HOT and I have nightmares where she’s standing in an alley and I can never reach her and—”
I’m spiraling now. The words coming faster.
“And my best friend left. She’s not speaking to me.
Because I wouldn’t listen. Because I keep making jokes instead of just—” I gesture helplessly.
“Instead of showing up. And her birthday is next week and what if I fucked up so bad she doesn’t come back?
What if I lose her because I was too scared to believe? ”
The woman is quiet for a long moment. Just watching me with those dark, ancient eyes.
“You are not scared of ghosts, child.”
I swallow hard. “I’m not?”
“No.” She shakes her head slowly. “You are scared of what believing in them means.”
My throat closes.
Because she’s right.
She’s completely right.
“It means my dad is really gone,” I whisper. “Not watching over me. Not in heaven. Just... gone. An echo. Something I can never reach.”
“Yes.” She nods. “This is the price of listening. You must hear all the voices. Not just the ones you want.”
She cuts the deck. Flips the first card.
Death.
A figure in white walking through a field of dandelions gone to seed, all the wishes scattered and dying.
“Fuck.” The word escapes before I can stop it.
“Not your death.” The woman’s voice is matter-of-fact. “Not yet. But close. So close you wear it—” She touches her own chest. “—here.”
The ring burns hotter.
“Three deaths.” She flips another card. “One behind. One beside. One ahead. The cards cannot say which matters most.”
Behind: Dahlia. Already dead. Can’t change it.
Beside: Marcus. Bringing death with him wherever he goes.
Ahead: Preventable. Has to be preventable. If I’m just smart enough—
“Stop.” The woman’s hand covers mine. “You cannot organize death into boxes. Cannot make it behave. It comes when it comes.”
“Then what’s the point of warning me?”
“So you make different choices.” She squeezes my hand. Her skin is cold. Papery. “So you say what must be said. Do what must be done.”
She releases me. Flips the second card.
A dandelion. Hand-painted on weathered cardstock. Yellow petals so bright they hurt to look at. White seeds scattering in an invisible wind.
I can’t breathe.
“This one—” She taps the dandelion. “She grows through concrete. Through impossible places. Through death itself, maybe. Yes?”
“That’s what she always says.” My voice cracks. “Dandelions grow through cracks in the pavement. They wouldn’t give up. So neither should we.”
And I’m the crack in the pavement. The concrete crushing down. The thing she’s had to grow through.
That’s dramatic, Dylan. Self-pitying.
But also true.
“And you?” The woman tilts her head. “Are you giving up?”
“No. I just—I don’t know how to fix this.”
“Why does fixing require you?” She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe you do not fix. Maybe you just... be there. Show up. Listen. Grow through the concrete together.”
“I’m not good at that.”
“No.” She smiles slightly. “You are good at organizing. At controlling. At making the world make sense. But some things do not make sense. They only are.”
She gathers the cards. Stands.
“Wait—” My voice cracks. “What do you mean three deaths? Whose? When?”
“The cards show what is, what was, what might be. Death behind you—she is already gone. Death beside—he brings it with him wherever he goes. Death ahead—” She shrugs. “This depends on choices. Yours. Others. The wheel turns.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“Truth rarely is.” She’s already walking toward the beaded curtains. “But it is still truth.”
“How much do I—”
“No charge.” She disappears through the curtains. “Some readings pay for themselves.”
I sit there for a moment. Alone in the storage room with the space heater humming and my heart hammering and the ring still burning against my chest.
Three deaths.
Behind. Beside. Ahead.
Time is not your friend.
I need to apologize. Now. Before—
Before what? Before it’s too late? It’s already too late for Dahlia. Before someone else dies? They will, if Marcus isn’t stopped. Before Alex decides I’m not worth forgiving?
That one scares me most.
I stand on shaking legs. Follow the path back through the shop.
The woman stands at the register, wrapping something in tissue paper.
“I didn’t pick anything yet,” I say.
“Yes, you did.” She holds up a small velvet box. “This came in yesterday. Was not supposed to. Vendor error, they said. But I knew someone would come.”
She opens the box.
Inside rests a dandelion frozen in resin. Suspended. Perfect. The white seeds caught mid-wish, frozen in time like someone captured the exact moment before magic happens. On a rose gold chain. Delicate. Beautiful.
It’s so perfectly Alex I could cry.
“This one.” I grab it like I’m afraid someone else will take it first. “I need this one.”
“I know.” She’s already wrapping it in tissue paper the color of twilight. Purple-blue-pink. The colors of our ritual. Ties it with twine. Hands it to me like she’s passing over something sacred.
“Remember—what must be said, say it today.”
“I will.” I clutch the package. “I promise.”
Outside, the cold is a shock after the shop’s warmth. The traffic on Passyunk is loud after the muffled quiet inside.
I pull out my phone. My hands are shaking.
I open voice memos. Stare at the red record button.
This is it. No more practicing. No more organizing the words until they’re perfect.
Just... truth.
I hit record.
“Alex. Hi. So—” I stop. Delete it.
Try again.
Record.
“Hey. I fucked up. Like, really fucked up. And I know you probably—” My voice sounds wrong. Too casual. Like I’m not taking this seriously. Delete.
Record.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You were right about everything and I was—” Too stiff. Too formal. Like I’m reading from a script. Delete.
Record.
“I’m standing on Passyunk in my pajamas—” I laugh. It sounds slightly unhinged. “Never mind. Starting over.”
Delete.
I’m doing it again. Trying to control it. Make it perfect. When Alex doesn’t need perfect.
She needs real.
One more time.
I hit record. Close my eyes. Let the words come.
“Alex.”
My voice cracks immediately. Good. That’s real.
“Hi. I’m—fuck, I’m standing on Passyunk in my pajamas talking to my phone like a crazy person, so that’s where we’re at.”
A car honks. Someone shouts in Spanish. Normal Saturday sounds.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You were right. About everything. About listening, about trying, about Dahlia. I’ve been making this about me—my fear, my disbelief, my need for proof—when you were just asking me to trust you. And I didn’t.”
My voice breaks.
“I made you feel like your gifts didn’t matter. Like YOU didn’t matter. And that’s—”
I have to stop. Breathe. Keep going.
“You’re my person, Alex. My dandelion. You’ve been growing through concrete since we were twelve and I’ve been watching you do impossible things our entire friendship and I STILL didn’t believe you. How fucked up is that?”
The wind picks up. I pull my coat tighter.
“I went to this witch shop. Found you the perfect present. But that’s not—you don’t want a present. You want me to show up. Actually show up. Not joke, not deflect, not organize the fear into neat little boxes I can control.”
Quieter now. Almost whispering.
“I’m listening now. I promise I’m listening. To you. To Dahlia. To whatever the fuck my intuition has been screaming at me for weeks. I’m done pretending I don’t hear it.”
A long pause. Traffic sounds. My breathing.
“Your birthday’s next week. I know you probably don’t want to see me. Villa di Roma. Wednesday at seven. With dandelion wine and your present and—just. Please come home. Please don’t leave me alone with this. I can’t do this without you.”
My voice breaks completely.
“I love you. Dandelions forever. I’m sorry.”
I let the recording run for a few more seconds. The sound of me falling apart.
Then I hit stop.
Stare at the voice memo. 2 minutes, 47 seconds of me being the most honest I’ve been in weeks.
My thumb hovers over the delete button.
Because hitting send means more than apologizing. It means admitting that logic didn’t save me. That all my careful lawyer training and belief in the system couldn’t organize this nightmare into something I could control.
It means choosing her truth over my comfort.
It means my dad really is just gone. Not watching over me. Just... gone.
It means I can’t un-know what I know now.
I hit send.