Certainly not me.
“Are you two dating?” a younger woman with round cheeks asks Bea at one point as I’m signing autographs for two older gentlemen.
“We’re trying to see how much trouble we can cause,” she replies before I can say a word. “You know he got me tossed in jail for a hot minute?”
“I heard your apology dinner was completely ruined because Jake rigged the bathroom door to lock you in.”
“I have no idea why the door broke, but clearly, things happen when Simon and I are involved.”
I slide a glance her way as I finish with the two gents.
She’s wearing that devious smile that somehow makes her dimples even more attractive.
And I desperately wish to know what else I said to her last night as she was cooking me willy—corn dogs.
TheBestememory came out of nowhere, and it was accompanied in my head by rainbow disco lights and a dancing cartoon crocodile.
Certainly not a solid memory.
Eventually, we reach the edge of the arts and crafts booths, and we have a rare moment where no one stops to talk to either of us.
And that’s when I spot it.
An enclosed tent.
With a bright sign declaringMadame Petty’s Fortunes.
I nod toward it. “Have you ever—” I begin, but Bea cuts me off abruptly.
“No.”
“No, you have never, or no, you do not wish to?”
“Both.”
“Truly?”
“Ryker and a bunch of his friends went to see her three weeks before the fire, and she told him his life was about to get hot.Daphne went right before she was disinherited, and Madame Petty told her that she needed to hoard cash. My mom went once, and two weeks later my grandma died.”
“Did Madame Petty predict your grandmother dying?”
“I don’t know for sure, but at the visitation, I was hiding with some friends because I didn’t want to look at her body, and Madame Petty came in, and I swear I heard her tell her friend that she called it. And what’s really eerie is that she was twelve. Not even kidding. She started doing fortunes like other kids do lemonade stands, and everyone humored it because it was funny. Until it wasn’t.”
“Does Madame Petty only predict bad things?”
“No, Daph went back to her after the great disinheriting, and apparently Madame Petty told her that she’d do great things in her life. And Griff was at a bachelor party where she was booked, and Madame Petty told him that he’d find the love of his life near death—wait. Yeah. That one was dark too. We’re still not sure if she meant he’d save her or if he’d lose her, but I definitely have more anxiety every time he travels. Which is basically every week. Why are you smiling? Why are you smilingbigger?”
“If Madame Petty can truly tell the future, do you not want to know what your future is to prepare for it?”
“You believe in fortune tellers?”
“Not a bit. But I do believe in fun. And in the unorthodox. And in puzzles.”
People continue to glance in our direction, but no one stops us as I steer Bea toward the fortune teller’s tent.
“You’re doing this one alone,” Bea tells me.
I cluck like a chicken.
