but this one wasn’t legit, and it wasn’t from a man. And that
somehow made it something she wanted to keep private. Even
though that made no sense. She didn’t keep things private.
Things didn’t matter enough to her that she wanted to keep
them locked away like a secret. She knew she shouldn’t feel
protective of the information.
“It was fine,” Dani said, but her voice came out sounding
watered down and she had no idea why. Andi’s head came up
and her eyes narrowed. “Just family stuff.” Dani grabbed for
something behind the counter and came up with one of her
decks of tarot cards. She handled it carefully, without taking
the purple velvet bag off. She just kept it in her hands as
something to cling to, as she had so often done in the past.
“Family stuff?”
“Drama.”
“I see,” Andi muttered in the way that meant she still held
Dani under suspicion for messing with a tarot deck and trying
to scare the heck out of a client.
Dani knew she deserved every ounce of that suspicion. She
knew better and she silently apologized to the deck in her
hand, as if her apology could go further, to every deck in the
shop she might have inadvertently offended with her
childishness and crass sense of humor.
Andi was good at reading people and situations, and she
could tell she wasn’t going to get any further by pressing Dani.
“Anyway, there’s a letter in there from the landlord. I didn’t
open it, but I saw the name at the top. Maybe just see if it’s
anything instead of leaving it sitting on your desk forever.”
“I don’t do that,” Dani protested, and received a dark look
from Andi. “Okay, so maybe I’ve left a few bills unopened.