“Good news,” Rini announces. “Weather forecasts put Tropical Storm Clementine two hundred miles off the coast of South Carolina tonight and moving east. The wineries won’t close even for heavy rains, if it comes to that. So tomorrow’s plans are intact.”

I should be glowing in the execution of my vision come true, and yet all I see are the cracks, unable to gloss over them for the first time in my life.

Adam continues to rebuff Aimee’s simple gestures of affection. Farah and Joe aren’t even looking at each other. At least Ted is distracting Eden, and Joe is talking Rick’s ear off about the Fed.

And Rini. She’s been here with us, but at the same time, not here at all. Not engaged with us, but not ignoring us. She’s been watching. Cataloging and storing information. I know because I’ve been doing the same thing, keeping an eye out for danger lurking in the dark. And even though I know why I’m doing it, the behavior looks ominous when I watch Rini. Good staff should be both attentive and invisible, but this feels wrong. She catches me tracking her and approaches with fierce eye contact. I look away nervously as she approaches.

“I know what you want,” Rini says.

“You do?”

Rini nods. “Your reading. It looks like you’re finished with dinner. If not, I can come back.”

“No, I am done.”

“Good. Let’s sit.” She gestures to the Adirondack chairs around the firepit, away from the main stage of dinner.

“I thought you meant something else,” I say. “When you said you knew what I wanted.”

“I know that too. You want to protect and grow your family. It’s all over your chart. Up and down. The generation before you and the generation after you.”

“The generation after me? Is that Adam’s kids, or—”

“I’m talking about your child too,” Rini says.

Her tone is ominous, a stark contrast to the heart-exploding joy I feel. “She—or he—is coming soon? Your website says you can see eighteen months out in our charts.”

“Yes, the baby is coming much sooner than that.”

My hands quiver with excitement. I tuck them under my thighs. “You’ve been dropping hints all weekend, but I’m still shocked to hear this.”

“Hints?” Rini asks.

“Like me changing my last name, and the tarot card you left.”

Rini’s head tilts to the side as if she’s trying to recall something.

“Tarot card? I don’t work with them in my readings anymore. They were more of my sister’s thing,” Rini says.

“It was the Empress. I found it in the dumbwaiter.”

“The dumbwaiters aren’t for guest use. I use those for housekeeping. To deliver the flowers and horoscope cards to each of the rooms without anyone seeing me move through the hallways upstairs. I feel my cover is blown,” Rini says with a tentative half smile.

“Your secret’s safe with me. Besides, I’m used to old homes. And the tarot card? Does it mean what I think?”

“The Empress is the number-one card to predict pregnancy. Was it right side up or upside down when you found it?”

“I can’t remember.”

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s look at your chart.” Rini pulls out her phone and shows me her screen, but all I see is a bunch of dots and lines and symbols. “Jupiter will be transiting through Pisces in conjunction with the Moon in your fifth house in nine months. It could be a metaphorical birth, but given that Saturn is transiting through Ted’s ninth house at the same time, the context tells me it’s literal. I see it plain as day.”

I share with Rini that we’ve been trying to conceive for five years, unsuccessfully. “I’m so relieved to hear I didn’t mess up by waiting to make partner at my law firm before trying to get pregnant.”

“The law is an important part of your journey. You had to choose to be an advocate for others. Your chart is deficient in air signs, which means you have difficulties expressing yourself verbally. Your experiences in speaking up in conflict have often ended in devastating miscommunication.”

Logically, what Rini’s saying doesn’t land, but emotionally, it hits hard. Like a lump in my throat.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m choking on what I can’t figure out how to say. So I just swallow it all down.”

“These issues began way before you were born,” Rini says. “They have been passed down in your family lineage. With every generation, more lessons are learned, more healing occurs. You’re going in the right direction.”

My parents fought when I was a kid, and of course it upset me. But it was scarier when I knew they were mad and they ignored each other. The tension was so thick I couldn’t breathe. Any terse words passed back and forth were communication, clues for me, and I could track the progress of their resolution until I felt safe again.

I pick my head up to check on my brother and the rest of the crew, chewing the tiny piece of skin I’ve ripped off from my thumb.

“If you stop ignoring what you don’t want to see, you could find more confidence to speak your truth,” Rini says. “Margot, your family is figuring out a lot karmically. And even though your baby is coming, there’s much work to do.”

My stomach drops. She must be able to see Adam’s troubled marriage. I’ll have a child, but the rest of us will fall apart. Adam and Aimee will get a divorce, I’ll have to coordinate visits, Christmas will be broken up, school events will be tense. It will be a juggling act that I can’t manage. I’ll drop every ball.

“I feel like everything falls on my shoulders,” I admit.

Rini scrolls through her phone again before turning the screen to me. “This is Saturn. Saturn takes about twenty-seven years to orbit the Earth. Does that time frame mean anything to you?”

“My parents died in a car accident twenty-seven years ago tomorrow.”

Rini nods as if it all makes sense, but I’m not seeing the big picture.

“There’s something big coming to you around their death. Some new information, or a new perspective. It’s going to be a life-altering realization. Maybe a story that’s different from the one you’ve been telling yourself.”

“For that, I’ll have to ask Adam. He’s the storyteller,” I say.

“You are too, Margot. You tell yourself stories all the time. It’s what makes you a survivor. Maybe you’ve neglected the creativity of your Pisces stellium in favor of your hardworking, practical Capricorn Moon, but it’s there.”

The story I hear loud and clear is how I need to keep my brother’s marriage intact so I can bring my baby into a solid extended family.

Rini puts her hand on my forearm, her grasp damp and heavy. With her touch, I’m grounded in this very moment.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Rini says, her brown eyes shining black as night. “Getting what you want isn’t the same as getting what you need.”

Out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of a shooting star, and all the dots connect. I would have missed it if Rini hadn’t laid her hand on me.

In third grade, we read a poem in which the author reimagines stars as openings in the sky where loved ones shine down to let us know they’re happy. After I heard that, I would make Nana bring us out to her country house in Southold a few times a year so I could see Mom and Dad. There were no stars at all in the city, and I hated to think that meant they weren’t happy. Or worse, that they were happy and they forgot to shine down to tell me.

Nana, Adam, and I would lie on Nana’s lawn bundled up in our winter coats and hats. Nana would point to different constellations and name all the people she’d lost. Back then I would talk to my parents in my head all the time, but I’ve stopped. I thought it was a child’s game, but I can do that anytime I need. Tears spring to my eyes.

“I should get back to the kitchen. S’mores in a few,” Rini says.

I nod. Rini taps the arm of my chair as she walks by me.