Page 107 of A Fool's Game

I text Gem about the new development but don’t expect an answer. She’s taking the very last of her finals right now. I include some love and good luck in the message and tuck my phone away, turning back to my computer screen and the paper on aqueducts I desperately need to finish—now in less than an hour.

I’m two words in when a knock at the front door sends Doc skittering and howling through the dining room.I follow him with a smile on my face, ready to take Gem in my arms and hear how great she did on her exam.

But that all changes when I open the door.

“Hello, Son.”

Chapter 36

Gemma

“I’m so proud of you. Really, just congrats. I can’t wait to see what amazing things you have waiting for you in your career. The publishing industry doesn't know what’s coming.”

I blush slightly as my gaze drops to my hands. My professor’s praise is certainly nothing new, but on this day, the last day, it has a new kind of weight to it. “Thanks. I…I’m really excited.”

She laughs softly, knowing me too well at this point to let my little lie slip past. “That’s your excited face, huh? It looks more like you’re off to fire your favorite employee.”

I cringe and drag my gaze back up to meet hers. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

Her smile is warm. “You’ve been worrying about this all year, Gem. And putting it off. Well, that ends now. There’s no more time to procrastinate.”

I nod, unable to form a response.

“Everything’s going to be fine, you know,” she says in that way olderpeople do. Ones who’ve lived through enough to know it’s generally the case.

And I believe her. It is going to be fine.

Or, they are at least.

And that’s what’s important.

Alone in my room, I take a break from packing to flop onto the soft, blue rug, sage my cards, and shuffle them through my fingers. I think of a handful of questions I could ask, each sounding stupider and more self-pitying than the last.I’m about to give up and just throw the deck in my suitcase with everything else when a thought occurs to me. Dragging myself off the floor, I cross the hallway and tap lightly on the ornately carved wooden door of the master suite.

Marisol answers in a cloud of incense smoke. “Oh, dear,” she says, taking one look at me and pulling me inside her dimly lit room.

She brushes off the offer of my deck. “I think we’ll bring out the big guns for this one, don’t you agree?”

After cleansing and shuffling her own cards in silence, Marisol leans forward, elbows on her knees in her green velvet wingback chair and looks deep into my eyes. “What shall we ask?”

That’s what I’ve been pondering this whole day, this whole month, this whole year. What can I ask the deck, the universe, that will get it to tell me I’m on the right path? That I’m not making the biggest mistake of my life? How can I get the confirmation I need to keep going forward when all I want to do is run back?

“Am I making the right decision?” I finally say, my voice weak and unsteady.

“Would you like to be more specific?”

This woman has trained me over the years that specificityin the question can lead to better insights from the cards. Now, however, I can’t bear to elaborate.

I shake my head. “The cards will understand.”

Marisol nods and turns her attention to the deck. “Three cards. First, what you need for your current mindset. Second, what you’ll need for your mindset moving forward on this path. Third, what you’ll need to find the happiness you desire on this path.”

I can’t help but cringe at the way she correctly calls me out with the spread, holding nothing back like she would with a regular client. But in the end, I nod.

The first card comes before I’m ready, Marisol fearlessly flipping it onto the low table between us with a well-practiced snap.

The Chariot.

We blow out an audible breath in unison as we consider the strong figure on the card. He’s dressed regally, like a prince or a royal knight. He wears a crown of laurel leaves and starlight, looking straight ahead, into the eyes of the reader. In front of his chariot are two resting sphinxes, one dark and one light, unharnessed and also looking straight ahead, as if filled with mysterious stories they can choose to tell—or not. It’s the card of battling your own personality and life decisions with the mystical powers of the unknown and supernatural. It’s the card that tells us to go ahead and be clear about our desires and intentions and then settle in for the ride—because the path will offer bumps, stops, and detours not even the wise sphinxes can predict at the onset.

---