How had I not seen it? She must have always suspected something was off. Deep down, no matter what she said, she always knew I wasn’t psychic. At first she wanted to believe, but she must have wondered what was happening. Then she did what she always did when she didn’t know something—?she snooped. I couldn’t be sure when she finally put it all together, but it was likely when Paige wasn’t at the cabin when I’d predicted she would be.
Detective Jay told me that Mom had made a prediction about Disney. She’d left it general. She hadn’t used the word Pluto. She’d seen the notes between Paige and me, overheard our conversations—?she would have known the name. She thought of the dog, not the planet. She didn’t know it was an alias that Paige came up with—?she thought it was a nickname. That’s why she mentioned it in her vision—?she thought it would be an easy hit. She’d found my hiding places before. She’d listened at doors because she liked to know what I was up to, like a nosy sister.
I pulled out my deck of tarot from my purse and shuffled. The sound of the cards whispering as they touched was oddly soothing. I dealt three cards. I closed my eyes and formed the question in my head. What should I do? I flipped the center card.
The Hanging Man. Appropriate. That was me, the hanging girl, always trying to turn things upside down and see them in a new way.
I flipped the card on the left, five of cups. A card for loss and grief.
I stared at the card still lying face-down. Was I prepared to do whatever the card said?
I flipped it quickly as if I wanted to sneak up on my future.
The Wheel of Fortune. Fortune turns—?sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.
I tapped the card on the table. It didn’t really tell me much. It was all in the interpretation. If I believed in destiny, then whatever I was going to do had already been decided on a cosmic level. What happened next was already determined and there was no point in being anxious or upset, because whatever I did would still lead me to where I needed to be. What happened next had been set out as my future from the moment my mom pushed me out into the world. Instead of fighting against destiny, perhaps what I needed to do was surrender to the universe. Time to stop sitting on the sidelines and join the action.
Or maybe that was just a cheat. Saying it was destiny was a way to justify my own actions. To give me an excuse to do what I wanted.
Fate and destiny might be what you make of them. And what you’re willing to live with.
Fifty-One
The apartment was silent when I pushed open the door just before five a.m. After the library closed, I walked for hours, ending up in the Pancake Palace nursing a cup of coffee and a greasy breakfast of eggs and veggie sausage until the waitress started giving me dirty looks. I hadn’t wanted to go home, but I couldn’t hide forever.
I stepped into the living room. My mom clicked on a lamp next to her on the floor. I blinked in the sudden light.
“You okay?” she asked. She was bundled up in her worn sleeping bag, surrounded by boxes.
I nodded.
Her gaze traveled over me. “Graduation can be overwhelming,” she said finally.
I nodded again. A tear fell from my eye, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand. I stared out over the window into the apartment parking lot. The sky was already growing brighter. “You went through my things.”
“I’ve always kept an eye on you. I’m your mom. When you didn’t talk to me about things, I paid attention. Listened. Looked around.”
I glanced at my mom. “It wasn’t just about me, though, was it? If it hadn’t been for Paige and your . . . visions, you wouldn’t have a book deal or any of it.” There it was. My biggest fear. That she hadn’t done it to protect me and instead to get what she wanted.
She didn’t look away. “And I wouldn’t have been able to offer you the money to go away. We’d still be here.” She waved her hand to the room around us.
“Still, the way things turned out is good for you.”
“Good for us. And this time it went our way; other times it hasn’t. Haven’t you figured out by now that things aren’t fair? Maybe this is just good luck. The wheel of fortune turning in our favor for a change.”
I thought of the tarot cards I’d dealt mere hours ago. Was it that easy? Just choosing which way to read the cards, or the decisions we made. We were still dancing around it. If I asked her straight out if she’d killed Paige, she’d tell me. But she might not be honest about why she’d done it. Maybe she wasn’t even being honest with herself. My mom was great at the reality that served her best. But if I knew the full truth, I’d have to deal with it. “Paige’s dad will go to jail.”
She shrugged. “He’ll get a trial. With his money, there’s a good chance he’ll get off.”
“What if he doesn’t? He could sit in prison for the rest of his life.”
Mom sniffed dismissively. “What happens in the court case is out of my hands. The man’s a pig. He used his daughter. If he wasn’t guilty of this, he had plenty of sins that he was never held accountable for. The idea of him sitting in prison isn’t going to keep me up nights.” She heaved herself up from the floor. “And speaking of nights, this one is pretty much over. I’m going to put these last few boxes in the car. I want to be on the road before traffic gets bad.”
She pulled a fleece top over her T-shirt and yanked her hair into a ponytail. She hefted a box onto her hip and headed for the door. She paused in the doorway. “You gonna help?”
The back seat was packed to the roof. Getting everything in had been a high-tech game of Tetris, putting boxes in different combinations until they all fit. She stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts to buy us each a coffee, and the smell of it filled what space was left. It was still so early that we had the road mostly to ourselves. My eyes were gritty from the all-nighter. She’d insisted she’d drive so I could sleep. She’d even tucked a pillow in the front seat for me. I held it close to my face. It smelled like Febreze.
She pulled the car over in front of the police station. People were already going in and out of the building. The tulips that had been in bloom just days ago were already limp and dying. My mom’s fingers were white where they gripped the steering wheel.
“You have anything you need to say to the detectives before we leave town?” She glanced over quickly and then back out the windshield. “Any unfinished business? Because once we leave town, it will be hard to come back.”
I stared at the door. She was right. There was a limited window of opportunity. Would anything change if I told them what I knew? Paige was still dead. And it was still partly my fault. I could tell myself that I had no idea how things would turn out, but then neither did my mom or her dad. Destiny spun the wheel and did what it wanted, and the rest of us just had to hang on for the ride and do the best we could with the cards we were dealt.
Or maybe that’s what I told myself. That if destiny wasn’t happy with my decisions, karma would find a way to pay me back.
“Nope, I don’t have anything else to say,” I said finally.
Mom took a deep breath and popped the car back into drive. “Well then, let’s hit the road.”
Fifty-Two