Semele motioned to the box. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
Helen nodded.
Semele already knew what was inside, but she still couldn’t allow herself to believe.
Her heart pounded in her ears like the ocean in a shell. She unwrapped the paper with shaky hands to find Rinalto’s wooden box, the one so perfectly described in the manuscript.
When Semele opened the lid she felt like a part of her was no longer in the room. Her world and Ionna’s had finally collided.
“My word,” Helen said. “What are those?”
Semele placed the cards on the table.
Time had preserved their brilliance. The twenty-two cards—Ionna’s originals—looked more weathered than Rinalto’s matching fifty-six. But together they created the oldest tarot deck in existence.
There was a photo tucked inside the box. It was a small black-and-white of two women: a mother who looked about forty-five and a young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen. Semele knew exactly who they were.
There was no mistaking the dark-haired girl, posed with a hand on her hip and a dare in her eyes—Semele’s real mother when she was young. Her grandmother looked just as Semele had imagined, except for the sorrow in her eyes.
Nettie was staring straight into the camera lens, as if she knew the picture was meant for Semele. Semele turned the photo over.
Semele,
I cannot cut the card in half
and come back for you.
Forgive me.
We are always yours,
Nettie
Semele took a seat at the table, unable to speak.
Nettie had foreseen Semele’s question from the card exhibit in Amsterdam, the one she had carried inside her heart every day afterward.
Her grandmother had written the answer before Semele had even asked the question.
Semele could feel her reality shifting. Her grandmother wastheNettie in the story. These cards had been kept forher,entrusted to her father, who had known their worth and hidden them in the safest place he knew. As curator of the Beinecke, he had recognized their incredible significance.
Her mother hovered beside her, looking concerned.
“Do you want to open the other package?” she asked gently.
“No,” Semele whispered. “You do it.”
While her mother opened the envelope, Semele studied Nettie’s handwriting, analyzing every line and curve. Nettie had been left-handed. Her hands had been shaking with nerves—or illness—when she wrote the message. The script slanted downward with sadness, yet the lines showed strong conviction.
“Oh, I’d wondered what happened to this,” Helen said as she pulled the pages from the envelope. “Why is this here?”
When Semele saw what her mother was holding her whole body went rigid. She had been prepared for the cards, but not this.
Reaching out, she took the pages. It was a photocopy of Ionna’s writing alongside her father’s handwritten translation.
“How did Dad get this?” Semele asked, her voice now barely a whisper.
“Some collector in Europe asked for his help earlier this year. I don’t remember his name. Your father was shut up in his office for weeks translating it.”
