I pull out my phone, press it to my ear like I’m actually talking to someone. The universal signal for not-crazy-just-on-a-call.
“You were right about everything,” I whisper into the phone. “About listening. About trying. About Dahlia. I’m sorry I made you feel like your gifts didn’t matter.”
The words catch in my throat.
Because this is the truth, isn’t it? Not that I didn’t believe in ghosts. Not that I was skeptical or logical or careful.
I made her feel like the thing she is—intuitive, connected, open—was wrong.
The El screeches to a stop. I catch the 47 up to East Passyunk, sitting next to a guy eating a cheesesteak at 11 a.m.—respect—while my chest aches with fifteen years of Alex always being the one who apologizes first.
By the time I reach Thirteen Candles, I’ve practiced a dozen different versions of the apology and they all sound wrong.
The shop sits tucked between a Vietnamese bakery and a tattoo parlor. The kind of place you’d miss if you weren’t looking. No sign except for the number 13 painted on the door in gold leaf. And a small placard: Candles. Cards. Clarity.
Very Alex.
The windows are covered in thick velvet curtains. Wine-red. The kind that make you feel like you’re about to walk into a Victorian murder mystery.
Perfect.
The air shifts the moment I cross the threshold—thicker, charged, like walking into a thunderstorm that hasn’t broken yet.
The shop smells like beeswax and dried lavender. Old books. That particular must that comes from things that have time in them.
Shelves line every wall. Candles in jars, in pillars, in shapes I can’t identify. Crystals clustered on velvet trays. Tarot decks stacked like precious artifacts. Dried herbs hanging from exposed beams.
“You over think.”
A woman appears from behind a display of black candles. She’s maybe sixty, maybe eighty—that ageless quality some women have when they’ve seen shit. Dark eyes. Silver hair wound into a thick braid. Wearing a cardigan covered in cat hair and about seventeen necklaces.
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“You think too much.” She taps her temple. “Up here—all the time. Never here.” She presses her palm flat against her chest. Over her heart.
“I’m just looking for a gift?—”
“For the friend you wronged.” Not a question. She waves a hand dismissively, bracelets jangling. “You come into my shop on Saturday morning. No makeup. Wearing pajamas under your coat. Looking at my shelves like you will find forgiveness in a candle.” She snorts. “Come. Sit. Let me read your cards.”
“I don’t think I need?—”
“Sit.”
Something in her voice. That quality that makes you listen. That reminds you of your grandmother. Or a teacher who actually gave a shit.
“Yes ma’am.” I follow her like a scolded child.
She leads me around displays of herbs and oils, past a section of books that look older than the building itself, through beaded curtains that click and whisper as we pass.
We end up in a back room. Just a storage room, really. A card table pushed against a wall with a purple cloth over it, worn soft at the edges. Two folding metal chairs. Boxes stacked in corners. A space heater humming.
The space feels liminal. Real in a way that makes everything else seem like performance.
She sets a deck of cards on the table. Not Rider-Waite. Not anything I recognize. The backs are hand-painted with botanical illustrations. Flowers and herbs and things that grow.
“Blow on it.”
“What?”
