Page 9 of The Sun and the Moon
She smiled.Well, as long as you stay close by, you’ll find a soulmate all your own.
This tickled my brain, piquing my interest, turning me vulnerable. I wanted to know more. My mother had a reputation more specific than justweird psychic witch lady who lives in the haunted house by the canyon and sells metaphysical shit out of her livingroom. She was known to accurately and regularly predict soulmates for anyone who came looking.I can see the thread that connects souls seeking souls, she said often, even though once I got smart, I repeatedly dragged her for appropriation of an Asian legend.
She didn’t see it that way, no surprise.
It’s all here, she said, touching the cards one by one. Claiming them, it felt like.You’ll meet your soulmate at Kismet, all because of me.
I understood how she got that from the reading. I wasn’t ignorant of the cards’ meaning. I had grown up watching over my mother’s shoulder. Memorizing everything, inspecting and interrogating her interpretations against my own ideas.
Still. No part of me wanted to believe it.
And no part of me has ever agreed to it.
I pick up the invitation now, the memory of that night in Solvang ringing poignant and palpable. My eyes scan the details.
celebration of the engagement
My mind reels over the events that would have had to occur to make this outcome possible at all. Moira loved to predict soulmates, but Moira had always said she would never be tied down. Not to anyone.
Not even my father fit the bill.
Not that I ever met him or know anything about him. She said he was a deadbeat and that he therefore had no right to a role in our story. I was always too scared to go looking for him. At first because I feared what I’d find if I did. And later because I feared finding him would prove her right, and the only thing I wanted by then was to show her how very wrong she was.
About everything.
So much would have had to change for my mother to get engaged. And even though the one constant in existence is change, my mother doesn’t.
Wild things can’t be tamed.
At fifty-eight years old, there’s little incentive to turn over a new leaf and loads of inertia. Therapy might have taught me how to cope with my inherent and insatiable inclination to believe the worst about her, but the training of trauma runs deep.
This poor Richard guy has probably been duped. I don’t know what possible ulterior motive Moira would have, but I’m guessing it’s shitty and monetarily motivated. It wouldn’t be the first—hundredth, thousandth—time she did something just because there was cash on the table.
Fuck.
Not a single fiber of my being wants to go back to LA—especially not since I will have to use some of my precious vacation time to do it, regardless of that extra day I just earned. But my stupid, dumb gut says I should. I can’t let this go. I can’t let her win.
And my hideous, voracious appetite to catch Moira in a lie is more compelling than my desire to never step foot in Kismet again.
I have to go.
Home.
Back to the lion’s den.
Chapter Six
Sydney
I’m pacing the floor, my stomach full of sashimi and gyoza and some of Joe’s hamachi because he didn’t order me enough considering the sheer amount of stress rattling my system right now, lighting up my limbs, firing through my brain, and making me absolutely ravenous. Every time I unlock my phone to call Dad back, my fingers freeze up as they hover over his name in my speed dial.
“Just call him,” Joe spits from his reclined position on the couch, remote control poised in his hand. He’s desperate to start the next episode ofSelling Sunset, which he was in the middle of binging hard before my freak-out turned into a meltdown.
“I’m a horrible liar,” I say, stopping momentarily in my pacing. Right in front of the TV. His eyes grip the screen behind me. “You know I can’t hide anything in my voice.”
“You aren’t great at masking with me, or your dad, or Dr. Jackie,” he says, referring to our shared therapist.
“Which is relevant considering Dad is the person I am trying to hide my true emotions from right now,” I exclaim, almostdropping my phone into the mess of empty sushi take-out dishes, discarded soy sauce packets, and chopsticks.
