The Eggnog Chronicles (17 page)

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Authors: Carly Alexander

BOOK: The Eggnog Chronicles
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That plan changed as I stepped into the cottage and discovered the electricity was out. I fumbled my way to the fuse box and flipped switches to no avail.
So I was alone in a dark, isolated cottage—the stuff of a suspense novel. I fumbled to the door and stumbled over something heavy—the empty tree stand. Where was our tree? I hadn't noticed it leaning against the garage on the way in.
Back outside, I circled the house. Not a trace. How far could the wind blow that thing?
I found it down on the beach, lolling in the surf, ruined.
For the first time in my life, I didn't want to believe in symbols and signs.
20
“S
o you've had a rough night, sugar,” Cracker said as he buffed the wooden surface of the bar with a soft rag.
“I've had better.” I had told him about Lila and Joey's dilapidated home, the power outage, and my runaway Christmas tree, figuring that was enough bad news without going into my sham of a life and a relationship. A girl's got to maintain a little privacy.
“I can't believe that you walked all the way here, though. What if our power was out, too?”
“I would have banged on the door and demanded that you stay open by candlelight.”
“Now that I would have liked to see.” Cracker tossed the rag over one shoulder. “I'll help you put up your tree, if you want,” he offered, his voice suddenly sympathetic.
“I think it's a lost cause.” I took a sip of chardonnay and plunged into the worst-case scenario. “What if I don't put a tree up at home this year? God knows, I've got a dozen of them set up at the shop. I mean, how much Christmas does one person need?”
“Get outta town. You told me yourself you can never get enough Christmas.”
“Well, perhaps I've reconsidered.”
“Ooh! Big talker!” Cracker folded his arms. “Have another glass of wine and then we'll see where you stand.”
“Or if I
can
stand,” I said, knowing that was more big talk. Although I enjoy an occasional glass of wine, I've never had much of an aptitude for alcohol. Two glasses of wine and my body simply shuts down, lips sealed tight. Pathetic, I know, but I couldn't even bury my troubles in an alcoholic stupor.
Behind me the door opened and I turned to see Ben rush in, his hair tousled and stark against his black leather jacket.
“Windy,” he remarked, joining me at the bar.
“A nor'easter,” I said, oddly happy to see him. Maybe if I surrounded myself with friends I could put off thinking about the things that were bothering me. Wasn't that the point of a night out?
“Really? It seems to be moving through quickly.” He grabbed the remote and clicked the TV mounted by the ceiling to the weather channel. “Is that what blew you in here?”
I laughed. “Well, yeah, pretty much, but I've been in here before. I used to be a regular when I first moved to the OBX.”
“Before you were gainfully employed.” Ben took the bar stool beside me, his eyes on the TV. “What's for dinner, Cracker? Got any crab chowder left?”
“Just enough for you two,” Cracker confided, glancing over one shoulder at the occupied tables in the corner. “You want that now, or should I heat up some bread for you?”
Ben turned to me. “What do you say?”
I lifted my wineglass, settling in for the long haul. “Bring it on, bread and all.”
As we broke into a crusty loaf of bread and made small talk, Lola and Tito sneaked in, called a hello, and took a table in the back. “It's date night,” Cracker explained. “They're here every Friday, just the two of them. They make the kids eat pizza while they step out for fine dining.”
“That's sweet,” I said.
“Sweet? It's a necessity when you've got a houseful of kids. People need time alone.”
Savoring a bite of sherry-laced soup, I wondered if I could fool myself into believing that Nate's time away would be good for our relationship. Doubtful, but now that he was hundreds of miles away Nate seemed to be the least of my problems. He'd been bumped from the list by a much more personal dilemma—my insignificant life. My tinsel existence. I was a Christmas Carpetbagger.
 
 
Elbows on the bar, I was watching the end of a rerun of
Full House
and thinking about heading home for those two Tylenol P.M.s when Lola appeared beside me, a hand on my shoulder.
“Come join us,” she said.
I tried to decline, but she insisted that they'd finished eating and, “I see you're in a bad way, sweetie. Come. I'll read your cards.”
Not exactly what I had in mind, but when someone offers to provide a glimpse to your future, the bait is irresistible. “Maybe just a few cards,” I said. I excused myself, and Ben nodded as I followed her over to the table, where Tito sat scrolling through the mini-jukebox selections.
“Uh-oh!” He stood up and scooted his chair back. “Looks like Madame Lola is open for business.”
“A short reading,” Lola told him, reaching into her big patchwork bag.
I tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. “You can stay, Tito. I don't care if you want to witness the tangled web of my life.”
Tito held his hands up, his thick fingers spread defensively. “Oh, no, I try to avoid tangled webs, and I'm happy to join my friends at the bar.”
Already Lola held the pouch in her hands, its pattern of gold moons and stars in a sea of deep indigo silk reminding me of tales of wizards and witchcraft. From my college studies of the tarot I remembered that mystics wrap their decks in silk and stow them in wood boxes, the theory being that the fine cloth and wood protect the cards from negative influence. I also remembered the electric charge that sparked the air every time I sat for a reading.
“Nervous?” Lola shuffled the oversized cards. That was the thing about Lola; she was good at reading cards, but she was even better at reading people. With her psychic abilities, she seemed to know the questions before I even asked them. “We can throw four cards if you want to keep it simple. One to symbolize you, and one each for past, present, and future.”
I nodded.
She laid the deck on the table. “Cut the cards into three stacks.”
I realized I'd been sitting on my hands. I separated the deck into three sections, then pulled my hands onto my lap, trying not to look too desperate and pathetic but probably failing.
Lola flipped the first card, the Four of Cups, which showed a naked woman dancing away from a king on his throne. The second card nearly made me choke—the Eight of Swords, showing a knight slumped over in his horse with eight swords staked in the ground behind him, eight swords resembling gravemarkers.
Lola must have heard me sucking the air between my teeth, because she patted my hand before she turned over the next card. “Oh, don't you worry. This is pain that already exists—it's in the place of how your life is now. And it's a good thing to talk about it, get it out there.”
The next card was definitely better: the Star, with its image of a goddess pouring water into a river under a starry sky. “Now that's more like it,” I said, though I couldn't quite recall the card's meaning. The final card, the one meant to symbolize me, was the Fool, a man dressed as a jolly jester strolling merrily toward the edge of a cliff.
“Oh, darn. I hate that card,” I admitted. “I always used to get it, and it drove me crazy.”
“And why would that be? The Fool is about unrealized potential—the young soul at the beginning of the journey with much to learn, much to experience. I wish I could draw the Fool now and again.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said. “Not so easy when it keeps coming up in your readings on the campus green. One of the less mature guys in our group called it the Asshole Card.”
“Of course!” Lola rolled her eyes. “I forgot. You learned the tarot as a way to show off for other Ivy League students.”
“Worse than that. We were studying it in one of our humanities classes, and we became tarot junkies. We started doing readings for each other once, twice a day. Then, more. Like . . . every hour. It was as if we could change our fate by drawing the cards more often. I remember once, walking across campus, I stopped to throw a few cards about a test I was taking. Then, once I got to class, I snuck the deck out and turned over a few more. It was that intense.”
“Until you learned that you couldn't trick the cards.”
“Right. No matter how many times I shuffled, that damned Fool card turned up in my spreads.”
“Well . . .” Lola tapped a red-lacquered nail over the Fool. “Here he is again, honey, back to tease you until you learn your lesson from him. But this time, I want you to stop the denial and realize it's telling you that you have great potential you don't see, perhaps capabilities you're currently blind to.”
“Mmm.” I wasn't going to get up and do a happy dance over the card, but Lola's interpretation made it more palatable.
“So.” Lola clapped her hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “The Fool is you, honey. You and your undiscovered potential, whatever that means.”
I thought of my sister and her perplexity and disappointment with the fact that I owned and managed a Christmas shop. “You needed an M. F. A to . . . what?” she'd asked. “To sell poinsettia quilts and Styrofoam balls stuck with sequins?” Jane would be thrilled to know she'd been right all along.
“Let's see what else we have here.” Lola tapped the card with the woman dancing away from the king. “The Four of Cups,” she said, nodding. “This card is in the place of your past. Do you remember what it means from your studies?”
“Not exactly.” I frowned. “But I have a feeling that dead soldier in the corner is not a good sign.” I was referring to one of the cups, which was spilling red liquid all over the palace floor.
“The overturned cup . . . yes, that's sad, isn't it? A hint of disillusionment, disappointment.”
Nate's face came to mind, his brow twisted with anger. “Disappointment in love? In a relationship?”
“Well, you know that cups are hearts, sometimes considered the suit of affairs of the heart, of emotions. And on the Ace of Cups we see Venus, the symbol of love and the beginning of the romance cycle. But by the time we get to four, well, the bloom is off the rose. The Four of Cups represents the stage in any relationship known as the end of the honeymoon. A stagnant period of decline.”
“Been there, done that.”
“Yes, I think you have. I'd say this is about your relationship with Nate. But no surprises there. You've been stressing about Nate for awhile, sensing that something wasn't quite falling into place. Such as, his divorce.”
I looked down at the table with dread. “Which brings us to the scary card. The Eight of Swords.”
Lola shrugged. “What can I tell you? This card usually stands for disillusion. See how the knight is deflated? He's fought a battle that he now realizes is futile. Not that you've fought any battles, honey. But it could also symbolize a crisis of conviction, the discovery that something you once thought was noble and honorable proves to be false.” She shook her head. “I'm sorry, honey, but I'm not making any solid connections here. Does it make sense to you?”
As she spoke I noticed the lights of my shop reflected in the side window of the bar—the warm red glow suddenly glaring and brash. My shop. I enjoyed working there, and there was no denying that I had a talent for creative Christmas atmospheres.
However, that atmosphere was wearing thin in the real world, where tinsel blew away in a single storm. I hated to think that pinecone ornaments were going to be my only contribution to society. Children in the neighborhood didn't have winter coats, and here I was wrapping the town in tinsel.
Adjusting her puka shell necklace, Lola stared at me curiously. “What is it, snookie?”
“Nothing.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Just . . . a few priorities I need to sort out.” How could the cards know about my disillusion? I hadn't been able to put a word to the way I'd been feeling until that moment, but once Lola said it recognition clanged in my head like the bell down at the volunteer firehouse.
Disillusion.
At least I had a name for it now . . . and a card.
“Well, good. Honey, if you can make the connection, that's all that matters. So . . . here we have the Star card in your future. She's one of the Major Arcana and some people think this is the card of wish fulfillment. This is the goddess of renewal. She restores by means of love and peace.”
As I studied the card I thought of the shooting star we'd seen the other night, of my wish, of my worries over Nate's state of mind. The man could definitely use this goddess's waters of renewal. Come to think of it, I'd be happy for a splash myself.
“It's a very nice card,” Lola said, patting my hand.
“I can see that. I guess I'm just a little overwhelmed.” To put it mildly.
She gathered up the cards and worked them into the deck. “Here's the thing to keep in mind, Ricki. These cards show the situation as it stands today. You can think of it as the astrological forecast, similar to what that Mike Seidel is saying on the Weather Channel. He tells us the weather without any value judgments. Rain: good for the plants, bad for a picnic. That's what the cards do, only they speak to an emotional level. They don't cement your destiny; they only tell you the elements that are at play in your world.”

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