"What was it?"
"That I should read the cards for you."
I sighed and shook my head.
"I'm not dissembling, Olivia. I had a premonition that bothered me. I don't wish to say more until I've done the reading."
"All right. Tell
me my future, Rosalyn Razvan. When will I be rich and happy?"
She closed her eyes. "I predict you will come into great wealth in approximately three weeks. Roughly...wait...I see a number. Is it...? Yes, five million."
"With interest," I said. "I'm told there has been interest. Okay, I walked into that one."
"As for happy...The pursuit of happiness may be written into our Declaration of Independence, but that only means our founding fathers were hopelessly sentimental. You don't pursue happiness. You pursue everything you need to have a fulfilled life, and then, if you achieve it, you'll be happy some of the time. The rest of the time, you'll be content. One can't sustain happiness forever."
When I looked skeptical, she said, "Do those cookies make you happy?" as I reached for another one.
I took another bite. "Yep."
"Imagine if you ate nothing else. What would happen?"
"I'd get fat. But I'd be very happy."
"No. After two days of nothing but chocolate chip cookies, you'd be sick of them. Even having them every day would dull the effect. The trick is to eat them just often enough that you still savor them. Too much of anything reduces the overall effect of happiness and satisfaction."
"Not everything."
"That includes sex, which is what you're thinking even if you believe you're being coy. How would you like it ten times a day, every day?"
"Ouch."
"I rest my case. My point is that the cards can't tell you how to be happy, because it varies for every person. You are happy, in the sense of mostly ranging between content and truly happy, and that range is the goal. Onto the cards, then..." She took a deck from her desk. It looked like an Italian version, hand-painted and gorgeous antiques.
"Can we use the Victorian tarot?" I asked.
A small nod, as if she'd only been testing me. Tarot cards from the Victorian era are actually rare. Many modern versions are done in a Victorian style, because the era brought with it the mystique of spiritualism, but tarot reading was uncommon in that period. These cards, though, were the real deal.
When I said so, she nodded. "Gabriel got them for me when he was young. As a solstice gift."
I'd seen these cards many times, and she'd never mentioned where they came from. In that, she was also like her nephew, keeping her past and her personal self under lock and key, but in a way that you never realized how little you knew until she opened that box and let one scrap escape, a sign that you were moving from acquaintance to friend.
"That's some gift," I said. "Must have been expensive."
"Oh, I'm sure it was. He even earned part of the money through perfectly legal means."
When I laughed, she said, "He was very quick to tell me that he took on errands to raise money for gifts. Note that he never said all the money."
"It was important for you to know that he'd worked for it. Not that picking pockets isn't work, but that your gifts were special. He put both thought and effort into them."
She fingered the cards, her gaze distant. "Yes, I suppose so. I always thought he didn't want me to think poorly of him, but in our family, light fingers are a skill to be admired. It was the additional effort that mattered to him."
A long sip of her tea, as if to wash away any sentimentality, and then she laid the cards out for me. I knew the drill and took one.
"That was fast," she said. "Not surprising for someone with a touch of the sight herself."
It was the Queen of Swords, which Rose says is my card. I looked it up once, and got as far as seeing that one of the meanings, under the reversed format, included the word "bitchy." The card today, though, was right side up. The next one I drew was the King of Pentacles. Gabriel's card. Then the King of Wands.