Jess glanced at her. “I never thought of it like that.”

“I didn’t mean for you to feel overshadowed at work,” Carla said. “I need to make lots of changes.”

“Like what? Did you see the report I left in your office? Most couples I investigated are happy.”

“Traveling and meeting people has made me see things differently.” Carla took hold of her sister’s damp hand. “Please stay at Logical Love to help me fix this business. It could be a joint project, not just you working for me.”

Hope glimmered in Jess’s eyes. “You really mean it?”

“Yes.” Carla realized she was still holding Vadim’s ticket and held hers up. “Perhaps we should read our fortunes before they disintegrate.”

Jess opened her ticket and read her fortune aloud. “‘You are creative and thrive on ideas. Pay close attention to details and you will fly, finding the answers you seek.’” She stared at it for a long time. “Were they always this vague?”

“Probably.” Carla smiled as something caught her eye, a flicker of light inside Myrtle’s hut. She pointed toward it. “Perhaps we should visit Myrtle and have our fortunes told properly. It looks like she’s there now. We can get out of the cold.”

Jess shivered and she blew a droplet of rain off her nose. “I think I’m going to go home and get warm. I’ve had enough of fortunes for some time.” She removed the coat from her shoulders and passed it back to Carla.

“Let me call you a taxi,” Carla offered.

Jess stood and began to walk backward in the rain. “I’m a grown woman now,” she said defiantly. “I can do these things for myself.”

“Okay,” Carla called after her, knowing she was fighting a losing battle. “Do whatever you want but stay safe.”

“You, too.”

Carla watched until Jess hailed a taxi and got inside it. She waved to her sister as the car pulled away and found she was still holding her own ticket. Carla peeled apart the soggy paper and read her fortune.

Your magpie nature allows you to gather a variety of people and objects. Now you need to gather the truth. You’re nobody’s fool, so don’t let others take advantage of you. Seek the truth and prosper.

The words made perfect sense and for the first time Carla wasn’t creeped out by Vadim. She slipped the ticket into her pocket and started to march toward Myrtle’s hut.

Thirty-Two

Shadows

Carla stood in front of Myrtle’s hut, and the rain did little to cool her burning desire to get some answers. Had the curse caused Bertrand’s death, and which man from her travels was supposed to be the one? Could it really be Aaron? The sea churned, and the granite-gray sky tried to swallow the hazy sliver of moon.

No one else was around and the amusements on the pier were closed, so it was unlikely the fortune teller was still open for business, but Carla sensed Myrtle was inside the small wooden building. She tried to peer through the tiny windows into the darkness.

“Myrtle. Open up. I know you’re in there.” She rapped on the door and waited. When there was no response, Carla banged her flattened palms against the wood, refusing to leave until the door creaked open by a few inches.

Carla inserted her foot in the gap, pushing the door open farther to barge her way in. There was a flash of silver from Myrtle’s running shoes as she moved through the waiting area and disappeared back into her room.

Carla locked the front door behind her and followed Myrtle into her lair.

The flames from a multitude of candles reflected golden in the crystal ball, and shadows writhed across the walls. Myrtle sat there looking remarkably calm with her fingers laced in front of her. “I knew you’d come,” she said.

Carla slammed her hands on the table and leaned forward. “You owe me some answers.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“I can’t believe you had the nerve to turn up at Lucinda’s house after Bertrand’s death, to tell our relatives’ fortunes. Do you enjoy making a living out of peddling suspicion and misinformation?” Carla snapped. “You told me Tom wasn’t the right man for me, and then, because of your interference, I went overseas searching for men from my past. My relationship is now hanging together by a thread.”

“Nobody made you do it,” Myrtle said with a sniff.

The two women locked eyes with a ferocity that made Carla’s cheek twitch.

She yanked out a chair and sat down opposite the fortune teller. “I need to know something right now. Are Tom and I supposed to be together or not?” she demanded. Rummaging in her pocket, she took out her purse and thrust two twenty-pound notes in Myrtle’s direction.

“I usually charge more than that.” The fortune teller made a show of holding the notes up to the light, checking to see if they were real. She placed them neatly under her crystal ball. “As a family member, I’ll give you a discount.”

Carla glared at her. “I was happy with Tom, until you told me he wasn’t the man for me...now everything’s ruined.”

“You can’t lay all the blame at my door. I’m a medium, not a mind reader.” Myrtle folded her arms tightly. “Do you still have the recording you made of my reading?”

Spotting the defiance in her eyes, Carla huffed and took out her phone. She hadn’t listened to the recording since playing it to her gran and she reluctantly pressed the play button.

Myrtle leaned forward and listened to it, nodding throughout. “Everything I told you is true,” she said afterward, with a triumphant air.

“I traced and met several men from my past and none of them are going to be part of my future.” Carla took the box of tarot from her bag and thrust them in Myrtle’s direction. “I want to know if The Lovers card relates to my ex-husband.”

The fortune teller opened the box, located the card and turned it over in her fingers. She looked at the picture and then into her crystal ball. “I can see you and a man who has dark curly hair.”

Carla frowned, ruling out Aaron. “Does he have a beard?” she asked, wondering if she could also jettison Fidele from the running.

Myrtle shook her head and looked again. “He is dressed all in white, and I can see he’s with a woman who has red hair.” She pointed at Carla. “It’s you.”

Carla blinked several times, instantly picturing Diego’s white fedora hat, and a thought began to glimmer in her mind, growing bigger and brighter. Did the six tarot cards Myrtle gave her only relate to her exes? Could one of them, The Lovers, possibly indicate a different man from her past instead? Carla tapped into her intuition and what it was telling her.

And everything suddenly became crystal clear.

“You didn’t see me in this card at all,” Carla said, fixing her eyes on Myrtle. “You saw my mother. I met my father recently and didn’t know we’d met during my gap year. Suzette and Diego were The Lovers. Not me and anyone else.”

Myrtle bristled. “I never said Tom wasn’t the right man for you. I said I saw someone overseas waiting for you, someone you met twenty-one years ago while traveling, of great importance to you, who you’ll love forever. Isn’t all that true? Does it not relate to your father?”

Carla was about to retaliate, but she considered Myrtle’s words. “You said the man I met would help to end my family curse,” she said, feeling suddenly weary. “I discovered my ancestor Agatha was happily married to her husband, Lars, for many years, so she managed to escape it.”

Myrtle raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t Evelyn and Bertrand recently succumbed to it?”

“Is that really true? Or it was just bad fortune, due to Bertrand’s medical condition? What do you know about the curse?” she demanded.

Myrtle toyed with her earlobe while looking upward, taking time to consider Carla’s question. “I sit here month after month, year after year, listening to our many relatives and their variations on the story of the curse when I’m actually the only one who knows what really happened,” she said smugly. “Lars Aakster was indeed betrothed to Isabelle Roelof when he met and fell in love with Agatha Vries.”

Myrtle knows all their surnames, Carla thought. She sank back in her chair to listen. “What else do you know?”

Myrtle continued her explanation. “Isabelle was so incensed when she discovered her fiancé’s affections lay elsewhere that she tugged out a lock of her own hair and issued a curse upon Lars and Agatha, calling for their union to crash and burn. Not only that, she also cursed every generation of their families, so that all relationships would fail from then on—”

“It didn’t work,” Carla interjected. “Lars and Agatha got married and—”