“It’s a valid question.”

“It’s for privacy. It makes it harder to track down guests from the water because they’re looking for the house they could see from the road.”

“I thought it was poor planning,” I say.

“Quite the opposite,” Rini says with a slight smile.

“Very clever.”

“Let’s get into your chart. Your sun sign is Virgo. My teacher called them the healer of the zodiac. You’re a doctor, is that right?”

“Exactly like I wrote on my forms for our stay, yes.”

Rini doesn’t look ruffled, but maybe she should be. Her reading better go deeper than the Daily News horoscopes, or this Virgo will have a field day on Yelp.

“You’re a perfectionist grounded in reality,” she continues.

“What does that mean?”

“You think perfection is attainable, not an out-of-reach ideal,” she says.

“Oh, absolutely,” I say. But she could have inferred that from my profession. There aren’t a lot of sloppy half-assers who go to medical school.

“Capricorns are perfectionists who use it as a tool for self-flagellation. Pisces are more idealists than perfectionists. The differences are subtle, but important,” Rini says, as if reading my mind. “You work a lot,” she continues, “but not to stay busy like Leos or to outrun their pasts like Aries, but because you believe in what you’re doing.”

“What I believe in more than anything is science and the wonders it provides.”

Rini nods. “That’s your bigger reason. Your purpose.”

I wait for her to go on.

“People can accuse you of being critical, harsh, arrogant,” she says.

I raise my eyebrows at how blunt she is.

“But you never hear those words from people who are close to you,” Rini continues. “It’s an initial reaction to the fact that you’re very practical. Cerebral.”

I lean back in my chair and fold my hands at the back of my neck. I understand why she starts with personality traits. She’s winning me over. If I were naive, I’d consider buying a bridge from her by the end of the weekend.

“Yes,” I concede.

I might be impressed, but I’m not giving her anything. I’ve seen these things on TV, where the person says something vague like I see a man, and the other person gives it all away: My father, he died when I was fourteen and we had a strained relationship. Then the charlatan runs with those insights, and the duped thinks they’re witnessing a miracle.

“What’s the deal here?” I ask bluntly. If she wants my buy-in, she’s going to have to give me a peek behind the curtain.

“I’m not sure I understand the question,” she says.

“Do you just deep dive on our social media or do you hire a private investigator? That seems impractical for every guest.”

“I don’t know anything about my guests other than what you provide on your booking forms and what I see in your birth chart. And that’s far more complicated than knowing which horoscope to read in a magazine.”

“How?” I ask.

“Your Mercury sign is how you communicate, your Venus sign is how you connect, your Mars sign is how you take action. Together these give me a more nuanced picture of who you are as compared with every Virgo in the world.”

“And what’s a Mercury sign?”

“It’s the zodiac sign and house where Mercury was situated when you were born.”

“Mercury the planet? So there is some connection to astronomy?”

Rini explains the origins, limitations, and unique wisdom of astrology, and I realize the mistake I made when I came into my readings. I had the kind of attitude I hate in new patients. They treat me like I’m here to sell them something, as if I personally profit from epidurals or C-sections, when I’m a professional trying to give them the best prenatal care and birth experience.

At this point in my career, I have nothing to prove. However, first-time mothers, as they typically are, do—and by all means, I’m not going to get in their way. I give them the tools to know what’s happening, and to trust me enough to take over if things go sideways. Rini might deal in magical thinking, while I operate in the realm of researched science, but she and I aren’t as different as I’d imagined.

“Most people come in here with lots of secrets,” Rini says. “Women who have a favorite child, crushes at work, desires for their spouses to lose weight. Little secrets. But you have a major secret that you’re holding back.”

I watch her, waiting for more. She looks up from her papers. I avoid her gaze.

“It’s marked in your eighth house,” she says. “That house governs household finances, sexuality, and death.”

She puts emphasis on the last word like that’s the bloody scalpel, but my heart skips at sexuality. I don’t say anything. I can’t. Honestly I’d rather she think I was a murderer than an almost-forty-year-old questioning her sexual orientation because she’s in love with her best friend.

“The Venus transit through your eighth house is happening now,” she says.

“And that means?”

“This secret connection is something you’ve recently realized. About three weeks ago.”

“My dream,” I blurt out without thinking. That dream.

“You had a vision?” Rini asks.

“Vision?” I shake my head. I don’t have visions. I won’t even use the expression “dream come true.” Goals are accomplished through hard work. There’s no magic to it.

I clear my throat.

“The square with Mercury, the planet of communication, ends on Monday,” Rini says.

I don’t try to hide my shock. Monday. That’s three days to reveal a secret I’ve been hiding for three weeks. Maybe even three years, if I’m being honest with myself.

“And what does that mean?” I ask.

“It all depends what you’re wrestling with.”

I watch her. She likes this game. I’m so far forward in my seat, I’m practically leaning into her personal space. She’s hooked me. I scoot back in the chair and say nothing. Rini breaks the silence.

“You can get a good telescope if you want to see the planetary transits. But if you want a truly tailored reading, you need to give me context,” she says.