“Fine.” Birdie exhales. “You’re stubborn like him.” Grabbing the deck, she starts to shuffle it as she says, “Yes, we were...more.”
“Birdie,” Wyn says quietly.She didn’t know either.
I already assumed, but hearing it out loud has me bracing for more. I bite down on my molars, trying to keep my emotions in check for this.Dad, why wouldn’t you have told me any of this?
She puts the deck down in front of me and looks at it, waiting for me to do as she asked and cut it. The chatter behind us around the table kept pace—plenty of their own conversations happening to focus too hard on what we’re discussing.
I glance at Wyn, whose attention is on me already. There isn’t anything I’ll ask or likely hear that I wouldn’t end up telling her, so I cut the deck and ask my next question. “How long had that been going on?” The reality is that Birdie might be Wyn’s grandmother, but she’s close to my father’s age, give or take a few years.
“Almost as long as you’ve been alive, Julian,” she says, draping the silk cloth over the cards, and then holding out her hands, palms up.
The detail feels like a gut punch. Like I’ve been too selfish for never knowing this. I feel guilty for not asking him the question he’d always ask me:Is there someone worth mentioning?
“Let me see your hands, please. You’re too closed off for cards tonight, and I need some assistance here,” she rushes out.
What else could I do other than what she asks. I wanted the truth, so I put my hands on the table, palms up. It doesn’t matter if I believe in any of this—she does, and I want to hear what she has to say.
“Wyn always enjoyed reading palms,” she says, glancing at Wyn. “I taught each of the girls a little part of all this. You can call them gifts, beliefs, rituals. You can believe or not believe in it.” She runs her pointer along the deepest and longest line of my left palm. “But for me, they allow a sense of grounding. A better presentation of a choice I can make.” Her eyes meet mine for a moment, moving her fingers along the lines of my right hand next.
She exhales, and then gets up, moving to the bar cart that holds jugs of water with lemon slices and herbs floating inside, along with bottles of liquor and plenty of crystal glasses. Wyn pops off a stopper on a round glass bottle and pours out what looks like two whiskeys neat.
“Seems like you’re at a bit of a crossroads right here. I wonder if you even realize the impact your decisions might have if you choose one way versus another,” Birdie says. “I know there’s something that will shake you.” She looks to Wyn, and then back to me. “And how you choose to handle it is the crossroads.”
When Wyn brings me one of the two glasses she’s poured, and moves to sit back on the chaise, I stop her. Wrapping my arm around her hips, I tilt my head up and smile at her, coaxing her to sit on my lap. I need her close to me for this conversation. She loops one arm around my neck, sitting across my thighs. I like that she didn’t hesitate to sit with me like this in front of her grandmother and the rest of the people here.
“Don’t ask me what it is; I don’t know that much. I am not clairvoyant,” Birdie says as she takes a pull of what she’s smoking.
I sip the whiskey. “This was the last place my father had been before he—” Clearing my throat, I shove down the emotion that naturally comes every time I think about him. “Rumor was on our books as the last job he’d been on. I don’t care what the hell he cleaned up here, or if he cleaned anything at all, but he didn’t come home after it. He took a detour up to New York, a place he’d never just go and visit on his own.” I swallow before I say, “He went there and never came back.”
I can feel Wyn’s body tense as she looks at Birdie.
Birdie sits motionless for a beat as her eyes water. But instead of answering me right away, she looks down at the table and at her deck again. Moving the satin cloth first, she flips over a card.Queen of Cups.It means nothing to me as it faces me upside down. She studies the picture for a moment before looking back up at me.
“I fell in love with your father over the course of three decades,” she says softly. “It’s not what most people would consider a love story, but I like to think that every story needs to be a little different, simply based on who people are.”
She gives her granddaughter a placating, tight-lipped smile. “Imagine having a secret that makes you a morally gray person, and then finding another who can understand it, embrace it...live with it.” Glancing between the both of us, she adds, “I feel like youcanimagine.” She bats away a tear that starts to fall down her cheek. “There wasn’t going to be a ‘happily ever after.’ He had his life, and I had mine. We didn’t ever talk about a future, and when we saw one another, it was always business. Until, one day, it wasn’t.”
She takes a sip of her whiskey and flips another card over.Strength. The Roman numeral eight is at the top, and below it, an upside-down image of a woman and a lion.
“The last time I saw him, I wasn’t okay.” She looks at Wyn first, and then lifts her chin a little higher before she says, “Wyn had been missing for more than two months, and I knew in my heart that she wasn’t gone.” Birdie looks down at her hands and then at the deck of cards on the table before she lets out a steadying breath.
I grip my hands along Wyn’s hip tighter, knowing whatever comes next is something that I’m not sure I’m prepared to hear.
“I begged your father to help me find her. Somehow. And I thought he would, at the very least, just hold me for a little while, let me feel the loss of someone who’s so important to me. We talked about all the dead ends and last people who had seen her, and then the next morning, he was gone. Left me a note on a piece of paper that said, ‘I'll do everything I can.’”
From my back pocket, I pull out the picture of the two of them I found in the workspace at Tommy’s place. I slide it across the table toward her, but not before Wyn sucks in an audible breath when she sees it. She stands up abruptly, pulling away from me. Holding her chest, visibly upset, she nods like she’s trying to work out what Birdie just shared.
“Wyn?” I ask, concerned, wanting her to say something, but instead, she stumbles back and takes long strides back toward the vined archway. I don’t understand what has her spooked.
“Wyn,” Birdie calls out, but she doesn’t turn around or add anything more. When I stand to follow Wyn, she adds, “Before you go chasing after my granddaughter, you need to hear this, Julian.” Something about her tone halts my steps. “She hasn’t told me much about where she was. I shouldn’t have told you this with her here. We did everything we possibly could while looking for her. I didn’t mean for him to get involved.” Her facesquints, not able to hold back how much she’s feeling all of this. “I’m so sorry your father didn’t go home right away. Maybe if he had...”
“I don’t understand any of this, or why my father never told me about...” I shake my head and stand. “Is it strange to say that I’m relieved that he had someone. And that there was more to his life than just me or making jewelry or our fucked-up legacy?”
“It doesn’t sound strange at all,” she says.
I look down the length of the table at the group of women who have now stopped their individual conversations. I don’t care about anyone else or what people might overhear. I need to make sure Wyn is alright. “I need to?—”
“Julian,” Birdie says, her eyes watering as she covers her mouth, “When you told me he was gone, I had this feeling.” She shakes her head. “He made me a promise, and then I didn’t hear from him again.”
