The Violets of March (26 page)

That afternoon we walked on the beach, we listened to music, we looked at old photos of Evelyn. We sulked. It was a day for remembering, and for me, reading. And by the next morning, we would both be ready to face the world again, each in our separate ways. I wondered if Esther would be too.

“You need a reprieve,” Bobby told me one day. “The way you’ve cared for me these past weeks, you’ve been a martyr. Why don’t you call up Frances and Rose and plan a lunch out or a shopping trip to Seattle? I can have my mother help with the baby.

It was a generous offer, and one I was eager to accept. I called Rose.

“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing later today?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Want me to come over on the next ferry?”

“I’d love that,” I said. “Bobby said I could have a girls’ day, a day off. I was thinking we could have lunch. And there’s the street fair on Main.”

“We can’t miss the fair,” Rose said. “I’ll call Frances and invite her to join us.”

“I don’t know,” I said, hesitating. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s no time like the present. I’m calling her. You two will put this all behind you.”

I hoped she was right.

I was glad that Rose showed up at the restaurant first. I didn’t think I could bear to be alone with Frances.

I hadn’t told Rose about the pregnancy yet—or anyone, for that matter. But my condition would be obvious before too long.

Frances walked in and sat down at the table. “Hi,” she said blankly to both of us.

Then she turned to me. “Sorry about Bobby.”

“Thanks,” I said. It was all I could say.

“Look,” Rose said, breaking the silence at the table. She pointed out the window at a pair of schoolgirls with painted faces, sharing a brown paper bag of roasted peanuts. Their arms were linked together as they skipped down the sidewalk outside the restaurant. “The fair! Let’s go have some fun. Just like old times.”

The traveling fair made its way into town every year, usually in April, when the winter chill was a distant memory, but this year it had come early, catching us all by surprise. Every year since we were young, the three of us had reenacted our own traditions, eating cotton candy, riding the Ferris wheel, and having our fortunes read. This year we skipped the Ferris wheel and the cotton candy, and headed straight for the fortune-teller’s booth.

But something, or rather someone, stopped us first.

“Esther,” a man’s voice called out from the crowd behind us. I turned around. It was Billy.

“Oh, hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said, smiling, staring into my eyes a little too long. “Your purse,” he said, handing it to me. “You left it at the restaurant a while back. I’ve been hoping I’d run into you so I could return it to you.”

He looked hurt, but I wasn’t sure exactly why.

“Thank you, Billy,” I said, with a tone of apology in my voice. It had been years since we’d dated, but every time I saw him, I was reminded of something Frances had said, about the sight of me breaking his heart all over again.

“Are you coming, Esther?” Rose called out. She and Frances were standing in front of the fortune-teller’s tent. I nodded and said good-bye to Billy.

Inside the tent, which was draped in exotic tapestries, a fiftyish woman with dark hair and olive skin approached us. I didn’t recognize her from previous years. “How can I help you?” she said, in a foreign accent.

“We’d like to have our fortunes read,” I said.

She nodded and then led us through an entryway lined with strings of beads. “Fifty cents each, please,” she said. It always seemed like a lot of money, but we paid it year after year in hopes of leaving with a single grain of truth.

The three of us sat down on the cushions that were scattered over the floor. The woman spread out three cards before us. “Who wants to go first?”

Rose raised her hand.

“Good,” she said, “Choose a card, please.”

Rose chose a blue card depicting an elephant. The woman gestured for her to extend her hand, which she studied intently for at least a minute. Then she looked up and smiled, and simply said, “Yes.”

She added the card Rose had chosen to a stack to her right, and then dealt out three more. “Aha,” she said. “Just as I expected. A happy life, prosperity, and joy. I see no rain clouds in your future—in fact, not even a drop of rain.”

Rose smiled knowingly. “Thank you,” she said.

“Next?”

Frances nodded. “I’ll go. Better to get this over and done with.” She had always been uncomfortable with the idea of fortune-teller readings, yet she went with us year after year.

“Pick a card, please, dear,” the woman said.

Frances reached for a purple card with a bird on the front. “This one,” she said cautiously.

“Yes,” the woman said, examining Frances’s hand. She ran her finger along the length of her palm.

“What is it?” Frances asked impatiently, retracting her hand. “What do you see?”

“My vision is not clear,” she said. “I need to consult the cards to be sure.”

She added them to the deck as she had done with Rose’s card and then dealt three more in front of Frances.

After she flipped them over, the woman’s expression clouded. “You will live a long and full life,” she said. “But your love line, there are problems there. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“What do you mean?” Frances said.

“It seems there will be two great loves in your life.”

Frances’s cheeks flushed. Rose and I giggled.

“But wait,” she continued, “there is deep grief, too. And someone at the center of that grief.”

“Stop,” Frances said. “That’s enough. That’s all I want to hear.”

“Are you OK, dear?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” she replied stiffly, rubbing her palm as if to rub off the fortune she’d just been read.