Nine October 20, 2023
TODAY, THE barn door to Zander’s private quarters is open as he leads Elsie down the hall to his office.
Inside, there’s a small white kitchen with a sink full of dishes.
A couch with a blanket and king-size pillow on it, like Zander slept there.
The open living area is decorated with antique chairs and tables, tiffany lamps.
Not things she would expect a guy of thirty to own.
A china cabinet gathers dust in the corner, filled with an expensive setting she’s sure he never uses.
It’s like he moved into some old lady’s house and never got rid of the previous owner’s things.
When he sees her snooping, Zander slides the barn door closed, grinning like he’s embarrassed. “I know,” he says. “It’s a mess.” Still, it’s so much tidier than Elsie’s suite.
In his office, she perches on a stool and, as he pours himself coffee and makes her tea, she takes another look around.
There’s a collection of astrology books on one of the shelves.
And below it, dual monitors and a printer on an oak desk, a tower computer on the floor.
There’s also a rubber duck on his desk like the one Elsie has on her own at work, although hers is covered in gold glitter.
A programmer’s duck, for rubberducking. Elsie talks to her duck all the time as a way to work through problems.
“Cookie?” Zander asks. He holds out a plate of homemade snickerdoodles.
“Oh, yes, thank you. You made these?”
He picks one for himself and slides the plate to the side. “My grandmother’s recipe.”
She takes a bite. “You have a duck,” she says, chewing. “You’re a programmer? Why don’t I know this?”
“I don’t talk about it much. I got a master’s in computer science from UVic. I was in game design for a while, but it sucked. Total burnout. You went to VIU, right?”
“I did a bachelor’s in geography and computer science, a master’s in geographic information systems.”
Zander nods with respect at her tech skills.
“Then how did you fall into reading people’s astrology charts?” Elsie asks. “Was it your grandmother? I know she was an astrologer. Mom had sessions with her.”
He finishes his cookie before answering. “She taught me everything I know. I inherited this house and her client list from her when she passed away.”
That explains all the antiques in his house, the tiffany lamps.
He sips his coffee. “But I’d like to think I’ve made the business my own.
Nana always encouraged me to offer my own interpretations, build my own client list. To take things in my own direction.
Like, I programmed the software I use to create my astrology charts.
” He puts down his cup. “Speaking of which, how are things in the third house?”
Elsie laughs a little, sadly. “Let’s just say I can see, now, how I need to work on my communication skills.
” She’d missed so many cues with Marcus and left so much unsaid.
She’d always blamed him for leaving her when she needed him.
But she was the one who left. Things will be different this time—if she chooses to pursue things with him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Zander asks.
She shakes her head. It’s all too embarrassing and strange.
“I understand,” he says. “It can be agony, right? To talk about personal things?”
Such a simple statement but Elsie is almost reduced to tears.
No one, except her mother, has ever understood this about her before.
(In sixth grade, on returning from summer break, Elsie’s teacher asked the class to write a paragraph on what they did over the summer.
Elsie couldn’t, she just couldn’t, as the thought of sharing anything about her personal life with her bullying classmates was excruciating, made her nauseated.
And yet the teacher felt the incident warranted a call home on how “uncooperative” Elsie was within the classroom.)
“You saw that in my charts?” Elsie asks Zander. “How private I am?”
“You’re a Scorpio,” he says, as if it should be obvious. “You’re going to be cautious about what you share with others, and who you share it with. I’m a Capricorn, so I’m also very private. I have social media accounts for my business, but I keep my life off the internet.”
“I know, right?” Elsie never uses her real name on any online account, of course, and offers nothing of her personal life there.
Zander takes another cookie from the plate. “But I also picked up on your private nature from the way you interacted with people at Bailey’s parties. You’ll talk about gaming and movies, but never much about yourself. And you spend most of your time off in the corner alone, observing.”
So, while she was watching others, he was watching her. She takes a moment to enjoy the roll of her socked feet over the rung of the wooden stool. “Bailey makes me go to these things,” she says. To get her out of the basement. “I really don’t like parties.”
“Me neither. I’d rather be out on the trails.” He studies her with those golden eyes as he finishes chewing his cookie. “You want to dive into the fourth house?”
“Yes!” Elsie slips the atlas out of her backpack. “I’d like to know when the moon transits into the fourth house.”
“Sure.” Zander rubs the cookie crumbs off his hands and turns his laptop towards himself. “Okay, the moon enters the fourth house at just after five P.M. tomorrow, Saturday. You should start to feel the effects then.”
“And what does the house govern, exactly, other than the obvious?” The title of the chart is: “The Fourth House: Home.”
“It really is about home and family, our foundation. The stuff we’re made of, where we came from. Our roots can define us, but, of course, as we mature, we often need to leave much of that behind as we change and grow. Breaking out of that cocoon can be hard.”
Elsie taps the central map. “The coordinates are for the house we lived in before Mom and Dad divorced.” Does that mean she’ll get to see her mother again?
The thought raises goosebumps in the skin of her arms. She hugs herself as she looks up at Zander.
“What’s the date for the outer ring on that chart? ”
He turns to his laptop again. “Christmas day, 2002.”
Elsie sits back on her stool. “The first Christmas after our parents separated.”
But Zander is focused on the chart. “This is insane.”
“What?” Elsie asks.
“The first quarter moon, which almost always brings on conflict and readjustment, will reflect the sun’s energy to your fourth house nadir or cusp, where both Neptune and Uranus are clustered—”
Elsie grins.
“Am I going too fast for you?”
“Maybe a little.”
Zander talks slowly to Elsie, the way she talks to her duck. “You already have a highly volatile lunar cycle. Neptune and Uranus will bring even more transformative power, so the fourth house is going to hit hard, at your core.”
“What does that mean?”
He laughs a little (worryingly). “I guess you’re about to find out.” He slides the plate of cookies back her way as if he thinks she’s going to need it. “Feel like talking about your family? It might help you figure out this house.”
She takes another snickerdoodle, chews. “I’m not sure there’s much to tell. You probably know Bailey better than I do. My parents were all about their work, building their business. They didn’t do much else.”
“Is that why you went into GIS, because your parents were mapmakers?”
“Mom was a cartographer. Dad never was. He has a degree in business administration, so he doesn’t always understand the particulars of the mapping work. Before he and Mom started the forestry consulting firm, he worked in a municipality’s administration department, as an operations manager.”
“Bailey didn’t fall far from the tree, then.”
“Dad always says Bailey’s like him, and I’m like Mom.
We even looked a lot alike.” She takes out her phone, shows him a picture of herself with her mother.
“After Mom died, Dad asked me to work full-time for him. He wanted to make it a family business. At the time I’m not sure I was up to working for anyone else.
” She shrugs. “Then I just got stuck there.”
“So why isn’t Bailey working for Brian? If your dad wanted to make it a family business?”
“He asked her to, in the past. But Bailey wasn’t into it. She said she wanted something of her own. I think she didn’t like the idea of working under him.”
“And you?”
“It’s fine.” Elsie’s eyes slide to the tropical plant by the window, a bird of paradise.
She had thought she would start up her own GIS business when she left school.
But she lost all energy for the idea after her mother’s death.
And now that she’s worked full-time for her father, she knows what’s involved in running a business.
It would be a massive amount of work. And what if it fails?
She waves her hand. “Anyway, that’s how Mom and Dad met.
The municipality brought in Mom as a GIS analyst, but she didn’t like working for the city.
Dad convinced her to step out on her own and helped her set up her own forestry consulting firm, and then, when it started to take off, and she needed to hire others to keep up, he quit his job and took over managing the office.
Mom oversaw all the mapping projects. They ran the business together for years, even after they separated, right up until Mom’s death.
After that, Dad just kept it going, taking over management of the mapping department too. ”
“Wow. Good on them. Working together after their divorce.”
“They remained friends, but they argued a lot. My dad’s kind of high strung, easily hurt, sensitive, I guess.”
“You didn’t fall far from that tree either, then,” Zander says, smiling.
But there’s no judgement in his voice. He just spoke it as fact, like he knew her.
And he does now know a whole lot about her, more than anyone else currently in her life, other than her sister.
As he pointed out earlier, she rarely talks this much about herself, her family.
“What about you?” Elsie asks. “It sounds like you and your grandmother were close.”
“Nana was more a mom to me than my mom was.” He looks around the office. “I grew up in this house.”
“Your parents weren’t around?”
“They never married. My father disappeared when I was young. I haven’t had much contact with him since. And Mom always needed more care than she’s capable of giving.”
“She’s sick?”
“She struggles with addiction.” Zander closes his laptop. “I help her out when I can. When she lets me. Nana left her enough to get by.”
“No other family? Brothers, sisters?”
“No.”
Elsie contemplates this, a life without a sibling, a lifebuoy to keep her afloat. “That must have been hard, then. Losing your grandmother.”
“It was. Is.” His face flushes and his eyes glisten, with loss.
So, he understands, then, her grief. That the pain doesn’t end, only lessens. She puts her hand on his and leaves it there.
He takes a deep breath as he rolls his shoulders back. “But I have my work, my clients,” he says. “I’ve found something of a community here. Friends.” He clasps her hand in both of his. “I found you here.”
Outside, the clouds part and the autumn sun shines through the high windows, immediately warming the space. And Elsie thinks, I have a friend.