Chapter 13
With each descending step, my heartbeat accelerates.
Damien’s arrival was a surprise. What are the odds of another unplanned visitor? And why do the voices drifting upward from the parlor sound friendly, as if the others know this new mystery guest?
As I enter the foyer, Constance is the first to spot me. She beams as she says, “Here’s the guest of honor. The birthday girl.”
She steps to the left, and I’m almost afraid to see who is standing behind her. Relief spreads when I see it’s a woman. She has platinum blond cropped hair and wears a black turtleneck with a red shawl around her shoulders.
“Tippi, I’d like you to meet Opal,” Constance says. “She’s tonight’s entertainment.”
“Entertainment?”
Ava mentioned entertainment earlier, but I’d hoped it was an overstatement. I stare at Opal, trying to predict her talent. She could be anything from a jazz singer to a burlesque dancer.
“Tarot is more than entertainment,” Opal says.
“Ava has the decorating skills. Marlowe is the chef. This is my way of giving back,” Constance says. “A gift of enlightenment for years to come. Opal is fantastic.”
“Oh, good! You’re here,” Ava says, as she descends the stairs. “I was worried you’d gotten lost.”
The tarot reader says, “I would have been here sooner, but there was a horrible wreck on my way here. Must have passed twenty police cruisers.”
“That’s all right,” Ava assures her. “The night is still young.”
I’m surprised Opal didn’t use her gift to predict the pileup, take a more efficient route. A cynical response. Constance would chastise me for saying something like that out loud and explain that readings don’t work like that.
“We’ve set everything up inside the Reading Room,” Ava says, vodka sloshing out of her glass as she prances across the room. “Care if I go first?”
“Sure,” Constance says. “Tippi and I can go upstairs and let the others know she’s arrived.”
Ava leads Opal into the Reading Room. The accordion doors are shut, but I can still peer inside.
Candles are scattered across the various tables and dressers, shadows stretching across the walls.
The women sit across from each other at the table.
Ava’s mouth moves a mile a minute while the tarot reader nods along, shuffling the cards in the deck.
“She really is amazing,” Constance says. She stands beside me, arms crossed over her chest. “Although it’s bad luck to eavesdrop during another person’s reading.”
“I’m not eavesdropping.” I dare for one more look into the room before heading upstairs.
“Only kidding,” she says, following me. “Besides, knowing Ava, she’ll tell us everything that was said anyway.”
I’m not as convinced about Ava’s transparency. She certainly wasn’t being forthright about the tension with Preston earlier; I think the only reason she volunteered to have her reading right away was to create a distraction.
“Are you going next?”
Constance shakes her head. “I meet Opal for weekly readings. She stays pretty busy on the weekends. I was only able to book her for a strict hour. We’ll be lucky if she can complete all the others in that time.”
“What did she tell you this week?”
“She assured me the baby will be surrounded by love.”
I rest my hand on the hard curvature of her midsection. “You don’t need a psychic gift to know that.”
Constance will make an excellent mother, mainly because she knows the hardships of growing up in a fractured home.
The first in her family to attend college, she secured Pell Grants to cover her tuition and never looked back, not even to visit.
She insisted she loved the allure of campus life, and then the city after that, but I always sensed part of her was afraid to return home, as if she wouldn’t get a second chance to leave.
She doesn’t talk a lot about her upbringing, but I know it was more traumatic than mine.
My childhood was a lonely one, but sometimes being forced to live with the wrong types of people can be even worse.
The reason Constance throws herself into so many different practices—aura healing and tarot reading and shadow work—is because she’s trying to carve out a place for herself in this world.
Creating a family on her own terms allows her to do that.
We wander back into the cinema. Preston leans against the snack bar, watching Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh share supper in the parlor at the Bates Motel. Marlowe and Damien sit in the recliners sharing a tin of popcorn.
“Have you noticed anything weird between Marlowe and Ava?” I ask Constance.
“What do you mean?” she whispers.
“I’m picking up on tension between them. There was all that drama at the dress fitting. And Marlowe was saying some weird stuff in the kitchen.”
“I’m sure it will blow over,” Constance says. “Always does.”
We endure the ebb and flow of friendship, of life in general, together, but still I can’t help wondering if my perspective is clouded, the whirlwind of my romance with Oliver and the sinister reception of his ominous notes casting a murky haze over everything.
“Maybe I’ll use my time with Opal to ask what Marlowe and Ava are arguing about.”
Constance narrows her eyes, a sly smile across her face. “Nice try. The gift doesn’t work like that. She doesn’t pick up on petty, worldly things. Her reach is greater.”
We settle into recliners and watch the film.
After a few minutes, I’m distracted by a sudden movement at the corner of the screen.
Marlowe and Damien sit in the front row, and Marlowe’s hands gesticulate in frustration.
She’s facing him, her mouth moving a mile a minute.
The couple is arguing, although their hushed voices are impossible to hear over the booming audio.
Preston and Constance, transfixed by the movie, don’t seem to notice.
Constance waits for a lull in the action onscreen to inform the others that Opal is downstairs offering tarot readings.
“Ooh, I’ll go!” Marlowe stands immediately, her eyes shining in the light of the projector. I wonder if she isn’t eager for an excuse to abandon her date.
Preston makes a beeline for Damien, sitting beside him in Marlowe’s chair.
Sometimes I feel sorry for him. First our group lost Michael, then Oliver.
I imagine he’s cozying up to Damien now for the extra testosterone exposure.
Part of me wants to stay in the cinema, my heart fluttering with excitement for the iconic shower scene to come, but I’m curious to know what Marlowe and Damien are bickering about.
“Trouble in paradise?” I say, once the cinema doors are closed behind us.
Marlowe rolls her eyes. “It’s nothing. Damien’s just a little jealous.”
“Jealous of what?”
“He saw that I’d been texting Michael,” she says, flipping the phone in her hands. “I tried explaining that we’re still friends, but Damien doesn’t get it.”
“You’ve only been dating a few weeks. Are things really that serious with him?”
“Damien’s first marriage was filled with drama. He doesn’t understand that some breakups are amicable,” she says. “It doesn’t help that his first wife cheated on him.”
“He’s been married before, too?”
She nods, eyes darting around the foyer to make sure we’re still alone. “We didn’t actually meet at Hu?tre Maison, although he did complain about his food on our first date.”
“How did you really meet?”
“Online. A website called Second Chance Romance.”
“That sounds like a bad rom-com.”
“I know.” She laughs, never shying away from a self-deprecating joke. Her posture straightens. “I think Damien is embarrassed about it. Meeting online. Being divorced. He thinks it’s easier to tell people we met at the restaurant.”
At our age, people carry a slew of emotional baggage. Oliver did. Divorce is common. It makes me wonder, why is Damien intent on lying about it?
“I hope this won’t spoil your weekend—”
“Don’t even worry about it,” she says, waving her hands. “I’m not. He’ll get over it.”
The doors to the Reading Room open minutes later. Ava exits first, barely raising her eyes as she darts down the hallway in the direction of her guest room.
“Who is next?” Opal asks, emerging from the darkened area.
“Me!” Marlowe says, readjusting her flower crown before following Opal into the room.
I wander down the hall and push open the heavy oak door leading to the Fairy Room.
Wallpaper covers the walls, hand-drawn images of pyxies and other flowers and sprawling willow trees.
When I was younger, the intricate designs reminded me of being lost inside a forest from a fairy tale, hence the name I gave the room.
Ava sits on the antique bed, dabbing tissues under her eyes.
“How’d your reading go?” I ask, sitting beside her.
“It made me emotional, clearly.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Ava’s chin quivers as she decides what to say next. “She brought up children.”
“I wouldn’t take anything she says to heart,” I say, shifting uncomfortably. “Tarot isn’t exactly science.”
“No, what she said was good.” Ava clenches a fist around the tissue. “She said children are in my future, but I must strike a balance between work and home.”
“That’s great,” I say, even though Opal’s prediction carries the same weight as a fortune cookie in my mind. “You should be happy.”
“This past year has been so overwhelming. I feel all this pressure to take on every event, build up my career enough for the both of us. I’ve always wanted a family, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to find space for it in all this chaos.”
“Talk to Preston.” I lean forward, squeezing her hand. “He wouldn’t want you going through all this alone.”
Preston doesn’t see how his own actions, and sometimes words, impact his wife, tonight’s spat at dinner a prime example. He’s going through his own existential crisis, the trees in front of him so dense and overbearing they prevent him from seeing the forest beyond.
Maybe Marlowe is right, and the problems between Ava and Preston are bigger than I realized. We spend the next several minutes gossiping about the night so far and the upcoming events she has booked, all surface-level chatter, but it feels good to reconnect.
Marlowe pokes her head inside the room. “Last call for the psychic. She has another event to get to in the city.”
“She’s barely been here an hour.” Ava wipes her cheeks, reverting back to planning mode.
“It’s fine. The guys didn’t seem that interested. And Constance already had her reading earlier in the week.”
“Guess that means it’s your turn, Tippi,” Marlowe says, leaning against the doorframe.
Ava squares her shoulders and squeezes my hand. “You should do it,” she says. “It will be fun.”
“My reading was mostly positive,” Marlowe says.
I reach inside my jacket pocket where I stuffed Oliver’s most recent card.
The appearance of a second note is unnerving, but I wonder if Opal will be able to make sense of it.
Normally, I don’t indulge in the supernatural, but something about tonight, whether it’s the petty arguing between friends or the mysterious presence of the messages, makes me curious.
I feel the eyes of both women staring at me, waiting for a response.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”