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won’t you?”
    â€œHow much stuff can she possibly have?” he called back.
    â€œNot much. But she’ll need help regardless.”
    â€œShe always needs help,” Todd grumbled, and returned to his laps.
    Monica sighed, and went back into the house.
    Aunt Paulette sat at the dining table, laying out her tarot cards in front of her. “Well,” she said, placing one card down in the middle of all the rest. “The Lovers. What an interesting way for this reading to turn out.”
    â€œMaybe it means you’re finally going to find a man,” Monica said, pouring herself a glass of red wine from the bottle they’d opened last night. It was only eleven in the morning, but she had a feeling she was going to need some help in getting through this day.
    â€œOh, no, silly goose, that’s not what the card means,” Aunt Paulette was saying. She held it up so that Monica could see the image on its face from across the room. An angel hovered over a naked man and naked woman. “Now, it’s true that The Lovers can mean romantic love, but as a point of fact, it’s much, much more than just that. It’s about duality .” The chubby woman with the shoulder-length gray hair replaced the card on the table, then turned around in her seat to flash a broad, red-painted smile at Monica. “It’s associated with the star sign Gemini, and in some decks, it’s known as The Twins.”
    â€œAunt Paulette,” Monica said, leveling her eyes at her. “You know I don’t believe in any of that crap.”
    The older woman looked offended. “I just think it’s an interesting card to turn up on the day we’re celebrating your sister coming home.”
    â€œJessie and I aren’t twins,” Monica said, taking another sip of wine. “There’s eleven months between us. And four days.”
    She wanted to add that “celebrating” was hardly the word she would have chosen to describe Jessie’s homecoming, but she held her tongue. At least for now.
    It had been five years since her sister had scandalized them all by taking up with that filthy thieving murderer. Monica would never forget the spectacle of police cars all along Hickory Dell, their quiet little cul-de-sac. That obnoxious Gert Gorin from next door had had her long nose pressed up against Monica’s windows for days trying to learn what was going on. When the news hit the papers that Emil had killed a man, everyone whispered that Jessie must have known about it, or possibly been in on it. The police tore through Monica’s house and Mom’s old house for any evidence of Jessie being involved in Emil’s drug and porn trade. They found nothing to link her to Emil’s crimes, but Monica was never entirely convinced of her sister’s innocence.
    â€œShe’s done nothing wrong,” Aunt Paulette had insisted, claiming she had read Jessie’s mind and seen no villainy there. “She’s merely an innocent victim in all this.”
    Monica wondered why she had been cursed with such a bizarre family. Jessie was a rebel, and Aunt Paulette was a loon. She read tarot cards and told fortunes, and honestly seemed to believe in all that malarkey. Mom had been similar. She didn’t go so far as Aunt Paulette, her younger sister, and claim to be clairvoyant, but she was always taking about fate and karma and was always burning incense in front of little green jade Buddhas. Monica was definitely her father’s daughter: sensible, rational, business-minded.
    Daddy would be proud of me , Monica thought, sipping her wine.
    Todd might be the real moneymaker in the house, establishing a name for himself on Wall Street as a young up-and-comer for one of the largest multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firms, but Monica had shown she could make a penny or two all on her own. Soon after they were married, Monica had dropped out of