Phoebe doesn’t nod or shake her head. “I don’t hate you. You’re not my ex-husband. And honestly, I don’t even hate him.”

“That’s a relief.”

“To be honest, the only reason I’d hate you is that you aren’t very kind to Lila.”

Marla nods. “It’s true.”

“If you bothered getting to know her, you’d realize she’s actually an interesting person,” Phoebe says. “And a good friend.”

“That’s very hard to picture.”

“You make her nervous,” Phoebe says. “She’s different around you.”

“Look, I know she’s your friend or whatever,” Marla says. “But I don’t have to like her just because she’s marrying my brother. She’s so spoiled. And ridiculous.”

“Well, you’re mean,” Phoebe says. “And having an affair.”

“See, you do hate me for it,” Marla says. “And I don’t blame you. I hate me for it. Some days, I just can’t believe I did that to Robert.”

“So why did you?”

“I felt like I would die if I didn’t.”

Twenty years of attending events together, twenty years of her husband looking at her in her dress and saying, “Not so shabby.”

“So the judge had something that your husband didn’t?” Phoebe asks.

But Marla doesn’t see it that way. She can see now that it wasn’t really about either of them.

“It was more about what I didn’t have,” Marla says. “According to our therapist, at least. The affair is the easy way out—the fantasy of believing someone else can give you what you don’t know how to give yourself.”

Phoebe imagines this is likely true about her husband.

“I think my husband fantasized about losing control,” Phoebe says. Her husband, so tightly wound, like his belt. A man who would only eat Oreos in private. “He couldn’t loosen up fully around me, and I don’t know why.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” Marla says. “It’s his fault. For not being able to do that. For not asking for whatever it was he needed from you.”

“I am starting to see that, I guess,” Phoebe says.

“I’m learning how to ask Robert for compliments. And he says he can’t, so the therapist suggested we start sexting. Like some kind of gateway drug into real compliments. And now I’m on the path to forgiving Robert and Robert is on the path to forgiving me,” Marla says. “That’s how the therapist describes it. And when we get to the end of the path, I guess we’re allowed to start having real sex again.”

She’s worried about how long this path will be.

“We’ve only been sexting since Tuesday and I’ve already run out of ways to describe my vagina,” Marla says. “It’s also very difficult sexting with one hand.”

“Is it working?” Phoebe asks.

“Inconclusive,” Marla says. “Mostly we just say filthy things to each other in between other very practical things, like, Suck my balls, dirty girl, and then, Did the guy come to check out the dishwasher leak?”

They laugh. “That’s marriage,” Phoebe says.

Phoebe thinks back to the failed sext she sent her husband, how scared she had been, how afraid. Phoebe feels such tenderness for that person who pressed Send.

“Do you regret it?” Phoebe asks.

“I regret hurting Robert,” Marla says. “I regret lying. I regret that I’m going to have to resign. But even before the affair, the trust was already gone. We were fooling ourselves to think it wasn’t. We had hurt each other in a million ways over the years, but then pretended like we hadn’t. The affair just brought all of that to the surface. And now look at us! We’re sexting! Look! My husband is telling me that he wants to pound my pussy as we speak!”

She holds up the phone.

“Progress,” Marla says. “Maybe when he gets here, we can actually have sex. That’s what I’m hoping for.”

BY THE TIME it’s Phoebe’s turn to meet Thyme on the yellow couch, the candle is melted.

“It’ll still work, even without the candle,” Thyme says. Thyme picks up the cards. “Do you have a question for me?”

“Oh,” Phoebe says. “I haven’t really thought of one.”

“We can do a general time period, if you like.”

“No,” Phoebe says. She wants to have a question. “I guess I’ve been wondering what to do.”

“About what?”

“About anything. Like, where do I go from here? What’s next?”

She hasn’t yet let herself think about it—what happens after the wedding is over. Where does Phoebe go?

“Okay,” Thyme says. She pulls the cards. “Oh, wow. So the two cards I thought might appear appeared. The children and the career card. The Ten of Pentacles—it’s a card where she’s very focused on the pentacles. There’s no other focus. It’s one thing or the other for you, it seems. Which means you have probably been facing a big decision. Does that seem right to you?”

“It does.”

“The Empress is on her way out, so to me that reads as pregnancy is on the way out. This is tarot, okay, it’s your life, only you know, but what I am seeing is that children are not happening for you right now.”

Phoebe nods.

“But you have here the Hermit card. Your card. That’s you.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“That’s a great sign, actually. I am really happy to see that, because that means that no matter what happens, you will always be here.”

She feels embarrassed at how quickly this has moved her. She doesn’t even believe it, and yet it’s affecting her. Sort of like watching horror movies that you know are fake, and yet you pull the blanket over your eyes every time someone gets stabbed. It feels so real.

“I’m seeing the Hanged Man,” Thyme says. “Your soulmate? He is hesitant. Or you are. One of you is stepping back. One of you is concerned. You’ve had a big conversation, it seems? Something has been decided?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever it was, here is the Eight of Wands. That means moving. Travel. You are going to be moving. Not Eat Pray Love–style. No. I am sorry, you will not be going to India. I am not seeing India in your future. But you may do something else. Something smaller. You may … buy a small property. And this property, it has something to do with money. It is a lot of money or there’s money in it. I’m not sure.”