Eve didn’t seem to mind. “Hah, look at your amazing hair,” she said to her husband. “It was so luscious.”
He swept a hand across his head. “I might grow it back.”
Eve reached out to stroke it, too. “I don’t think that’s gonna work, babe.” They leaned across the table and kissed.
Carla’s jaw began to ache.
She pointed to a photo of a group standing outside Fidele’s diving center. Eve stood to the far left of the shot wearing a red bandanna and not looking very different at all.
“A real trip down memory lane.” Eve sighed contentedly after browsing through them all. “I’ve been sorting out some old photos, too. When Fidele mentioned you’d been in touch, I dug them out. I think we should design a page for our website showing the history of the diving center and use some of the shots.”
“I love this idea,” Fidele said.
“Mwah.” Eve blew him a kiss and disappeared inside to fetch the pictures.
“I thought meeting Eve again would be a nice surprise for you.” Fidele grinned, topping up Carla’s glass with water. “I knew you would enjoy catching up together.”
Carla smiled and nodded. The truth was, she remembered Eve used to have a reputation for being a party girl, known for hopping in and out of bars and beds. Not that it mattered now. Eve had gotten her man, and she and Fidele seemed extremely happy. And besides, Carla wasn’t jealous about their relationship at all. Not one little bit.
Eve returned and placed three paper envelopes on the table with dates written on the front. “Remember when it took days to develop photos?” She laughed, opening the first pack and then leafing through them. “Happy days. I’m looking for any of you, Carla. I think I may have several of our diving adventures.” She turned the shots this way and that, passing the images across to Carla to take a look.
It was strange seeing shots of herself she hadn’t seen before, laughing and drinking beer on board a boat. Carla remembered she’d joined a group of others on a sailing day trip. “Where was this taken?” she asked. “Where did we go to?”
Eve peered across the table. “We sailed across to Corsica for the day and stopped for a picnic and a swim. Do you remember we went to the caves of Bonifacio and were supposed to visit the castle? Instead, we all found a cute terrace bar overlooking the harbor and stayed there drinking all afternoon.”
“Oh, yes.” Carla only semirecalled this. She recognized some of her fellow travelers but not others. She looked at her own sun-kissed cheeks and her unlined skin and she wanted to say to herself, Don’t go home, Carla. Not just yet. Stay and see where things lead with Fidele.
“Here’s one of you and me. Just look at us, we’re so young,” Eve gushed, sliding across another photo.
It had been taken as a portrait format shot, with Carla and Eve occupying the bottom half of the image. They pressed their cheeks together and laughed as they clinked beer bottles. Above them, photobombing the shot, was a young blond guy who wore a T-shirt with the name of the bar on the front. He wore a napkin over one shoulder and held up two fingers behind Carla’s head, to make bunny ears.
Carla’s smile froze. It then fell away from her lips completely, and her blood cooled in her veins. She knew this man but hadn’t realized she must have randomly encountered him while day tripping in Corsica twenty-one years ago. Her fingers stiffened as she gripped the photo and she tried to avert her gaze, but she couldn’t stop looking at him.
Then, out of the blue, an unwanted thought hit her like a freak wave.
Oh god, he couldn’t possibly be the man represented by The Lovers card, could he? She felt the blood drain from her face.
“Are you okay?” Eve asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Carla swallowed and tapped on the shot. “Do you remember this guy?”
Eve’s curls shook. “No. He looks like he worked in the bar...”
“Did we meet him?”
Eve shrugged. “If we bought drinks at the bar, or if he served us, we must have.”
Carla scratched her arm without realizing it.
“Are you cold?” Eve said. “I can bring a blanket, and the boys can make coffee for us.”
Carla started to stand up, wanting to distance herself from the photo. She dropped it back onto the table face down. “I should go,” she said hurriedly. “It’s been so lovely to see you again, but it’s been a long day.”
“Oh, sure...” Eve said with a surprised shrug. “Are you sure you don’t fancy another drink?”
Carla shook her head and gave an involuntary shiver.
Eve stood up, too. “We should meet up tomorrow, if you’re free,” she offered. “I can take you up to the citadel. Do you remember the amazing views out to sea?”
“Yes, sounds lovely,” Carla said. She hugged Fidele and Eve good night and set off back to her hotel, feeling like she’d borrowed someone else’s legs.
Carla swiped her room card and entered her bedroom, then switched on her bedside lamp. She yanked the doors open to her balcony and stood leaning with her arms outstretched against the railing. A breeze had picked up and she looked at the expanse of inky-black sky above her and the sea below. She googled The King of Cups on her phone and again saw a distinguished man clasping a gold goblet in front of the waves. The card represented a stable relationship and told her not to suppress her impulses. It was connected to the water, and she just knew it had to be Fidele.
Which only left The Lovers.
Carla felt shaky again and she gripped the railing, taking several gulps to try to catch her breath.
Could the man in Eve’s photo really be the same person Myrtle had seen in her reading?
“Please don’t let it be him,” she said aloud. But her voice was swallowed up by the sound of the waves and the hot night air.
Twenty-Four
Insect
Sleep evaded Carla that night. She drank water from a bottle, pulled her covers up to her chin and wrestled them off again. She went to the bathroom a couple of times and reopened the patio doors to let some fresh air into her room. Back in bed, her legs wouldn’t stay still, jerking as if they wanted to dance without her. She refused to look at her phone, in case she had an urge to search for the man in the photo, to find out where he was now and if he was single. She prayed he was happily married, the same as Fidele, so he couldn’t possibly be the only contender left for The Lovers card.
Carla tried to distract herself by thinking about all the other pressing issues in her life. It had now been several days since she’d spoken to Tom, and part of her wondered if he’d been in an accident, or if he was just taking time to let the pregnancy news sink in. Was he still dead set against having children?
