The Sky Beneath Her(31)

“Frau Werner, what a lovely surprise. Are you our new dinner companion?”

“I must be.” The steward pulled out my chair, and I sat.

“May I introduce the DuPonts. They’re from New Hampshire.”

“Good evening,” I said.

Both greeted me as I accepted a fresh napkin from the steward. I unfolded it and spread it over my swollen belly.

“Just in time for the first course,” Dr. Brooks said.

The waiters placed bowls of beef consommé in front of us.

“Frau Werner, do you like to play games?” Dr. Brooks asked.

My polished smile was careful, cautious. “Who does not?”

“Excellent. But first, you must eat,” he said.

As we sipped soup from our silver spoons, we exchanged pleasantries. My story was as well practiced as my new name. I was from Innsbruck. My husband had passed in the war. I had a cousin in New York.

The next course was beef tips with a side of rice and green beans. The food was delicious, and it had been some time since I’d eaten in a formal setting. It was oddly comforting and reminded me of dinners with my uncle.

The three discussed their travels, the state of the war, and books. The locations weren’t all familiar to me, but I’d seen and read enough to know the war was far from finished. Books were my forte, and I was familiar with all of them, especially the ones now banned in Austria. When we finished the main course of roasted chicken and then the sorbet, Dr. Brooks took the conversation toward a lighter topic.

“Is everyone ready for a little magic?” he asked.

“Magic?” Mrs. DuPont looked delighted and a bit terrified. “More magical than your wish coins?”

I found the older woman’s childish delight amusing. For all her money and world travels, I suspected Mrs. DuPont had lived a cloistered life in a rarified world.

“Ah, there are all kinds of magic,” Dr. Brooks said. “I would say we are always surrounded by it.”

“Magic? Is that truly real?” Mrs. DuPont asked. “One thing for primitive natives to believe, but we’re educated people.”

Dr. Brooks looked delighted by her curiosity. “I’m here to tell you it’s very real. And it’s very powerful. Do you want to know your future?”

It was a question many had contemplated of late. I had dared not look more than a day or two into the future. Each day brought potential challenges that could end it all for me.

Dr. Brooks shuffled a deck of cards and then divided them into three even piles. “Restack the cards, Mrs. DuPont.”

She carefully lifted the middle pile and set it on the first. The last became the top.

The steward brought the others after-dinner drinks and for me a cup of tea.

Dr. Brooks set three cards face down on the table. Mrs. DuPont shifted closer in her seat. He flipped the first card. It was the Death card.

The older woman paled, and for all that I’d experienced, I felt a chill. Ghosts of the past swirled around. We were crossing waters infested by wolf packs ready to devour us.

“Not to worry,” Dr. Brooks said. “This card simply means change. Your life is about to change.”

The next card was a tower being hit by a thunderbolt. More change, he insisted. The final card was the final word. It was the Sun. “Prosperity.”

Air whooshed from Mrs. DuPont as she sat back. She sipped her drink as if she needed fortification and then, lowering her voice, said, “I hope it means my husband’s ships to England make it there intact. He’s invested everything in them.”

Dr. Brooks tapped the last card, a gold, gleaming sun, before calling the steward over to refill wineglasses. After the steward had filled the DuPonts’ glasses, Dr. Brooks said, “His shipments will be just fine.”

She looked relieved. “Excellent. The food will help those poor, starving people.”

Mr. DuPont looked slightly embarrassed by his wife’s oversharing. “My dear, no one wants to hear our boring news.”

Unrebuked, Mrs. DuPont sipped more wine as she picked up the Sun card. “How do you know the cards have magic?”

“I bought them from an elder in a Roma encampment who insisted they were very accurate.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Mrs. DuPont said. “Those tribes can spin all kinds of lies.”

I thought about the kind Roma who sailed the Danube River, and my mother’s love of her family.

Dr. Brooks nodded. “I’ve read the cards for myself dozens of times. They’re always right.”

“And what do they say for you?” I asked.

Dr. Brooks chuckled. “They confirm my greatest wish—that I grow old and fat in a small house by the ocean.”

“And me?” Mrs. DuPont said.

“You have a very bright future,” he insisted. “Wealth beyond your dreams.”

The woman’s tight features relaxed.

The man was charming. A deceiver and a con artist, no doubt, but delightful. For so long, I’d been on guard, weighing all my words and actions.

When Dr. Brooks laid out three stacks of cards face down and asked me to restack the deck, my lightheartedness shattered. The idea that anyone could peer beyond the false life I’d created into my real one was too dangerous. All my protests slid behind a waterfall of reserve.

He slowly turned the first card over. It was a woman standing by water. The next was the Sun again. And the final one was the Moon. “Very interesting, Frau Werner.”