Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77170 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77170 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“So there’s really no love lost there.”
“Hell, no. My mother can’t stand her own mother. You heard her when we were talking.”
“Right. Family squabbles and all,” I say.
“What happened with us goes way beyond family squabbles. My mother suspects that her own mother orchestrated the rape that resulted in my half brother.”
My jaw drops. So does Dad’s, but probably for a different reason.
Ryan’s theory… That Wendy had her daughter raped by those three…
“I see that surprises you,” Jack says.
Dad nods. “For sure it does. Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. I was only three years old, and I was staying with my grandmother at the time.”
Our waitress comes by then, and I’m thankful to have the chance to stop talking about this.
Damn.
Ryan Steel seems to know his mother very well…and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Chapter Twelve
Ava
I head home in the morning after security for Wendy is in place and the nurse Dad hired has taken over her care. I make some preliminary arrangements for the contractor to come in for my remodel, make sure Luke and Maya are taken care of, make a few calls to get the necessary permits started, and throw out all the deli meat that will expire in the next few days. Ugh. I hate wasting food. Then I put up a sign.
Temporarily Closed For Remodeling
Then I head up to my apartment, take a quick shower, and text Brendan.
He doesn’t respond right away, which is odd.
So I head to my cards.
I’m going to do a reading. My question is, why was I chosen by my grandmother?
I remove the deck from the scarf with the daisy print that belonged to my Grandma Didi.
And I feel…
I always feel a connection to Didi when I touch the scarf, but this time I feel something different. A connection, yes, but something more.
I feel my two grandmothers together.
It’s an odd sensation, to be sure, because Wendy has nothing to do with this scarf. It was Didi’s.
Perhaps I’m imagining it.
I remove the deck, shuffle them once, twice, three times, and then I hold them to my heart, infusing them with not only my own energy but also the energy of my paternal grandmother, Wendy Madigan.
I choose the three-card spread.
The first card is the hermit.
An old man with a walking stick holds a lantern.
It’s a card I’ve drawn many times before, but it signifies something different this time.
The hermit usually implies some kind of healing or recovery.
Odd that I would draw it first, because I’m not getting a healing sensation at all. This represents the past for Wendy. Her mind.
She has certainly never done any healing or recovery in the past—at least not from what I know of her.
Yet…she did keep her distance from my father—her son.
So much that he didn’t even realize she was still alive.
But was she healing? Recovering? Unlikely, since as Dyane Wingdam, she committed many crimes.
Felony forgery, insider trading. What else did Brock say? The list is endless.
Yet Wendy didn’t serve a second of time for any of those crimes. She’s smart. She covers her tracks. She gets out of bad situations.
Then I understand.
The hermit. She withdrew. She allowed her son to believe she was dead. The hermit now makes sense to me.
She was thinking. Hiding. Waiting to strike again.
And she did strike.
She struck with me. She reached out to me.
The second card—death. The reaper.
Most people cringe when this card comes up, but I always tell them not to. It doesn’t mean literal death.
It simply means change.
And God, does it make sense for both Wendy and me for the present.
Change is definitely coming.
And then the third card…
The wheel of fortune. A circle that constantly moves, flowing, always cycling. Perhaps a moment of clarity at the top, but before you know it, you’re at the bottom once more.
It’s inescapable.
It’s…destiny.
Destiny.
My destiny or Wendy’s?
Probably both.
What is her destiny?
She doesn’t have much longer to live. She’s in her late eighties now.
The reading makes sense, but something feels off about it. I gaze at the cards, looking for the connection. They’re all from the major arcana. A tarot deck consists of seventy-eight cards. Fifty-six in the minor arcana—the numbered and suited cards—leaving only twenty-two in the major arcana. The chance of drawing three cards all from the major arcana defies the odds.
Something doesn’t feel right.
“Oh!” I say out loud.
I’m not feeling negative.
I’m not feeling positive, either, but that horrific foreboding I felt with the tower card is not manifesting.
Perhaps because I know my heritage now. I’ve accepted it.
Perhaps because I don’t see an old woman as a threat.
And perhaps I should.
Clearly she was a huge threat in the past. She put my family through hell. But she’s an old woman now. A sickly old woman, at that. A woman who has been kept under sedation at her own request.
I don’t know why.
But I do know—from talking to my father—that his mother does nothing without a good reason. Every move she makes is calculated.