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Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Seven

LUNA

Mom and Laro sit on opposite ends of the table. At the head, Carmine cuts the cards into three piles. Mom feels around for them. Laro pushes them to her.

“Grazie,” she says.

“Prego.”

Carmine side-eyes his son for the tenderness in his voice, but shuts up as he should.

She stacks them and peels off the top three, laying them face down in front of Carmine. Laro straightens them.

“All right,” she says in Carmine’s general direction. “Now say your first impression of what you see. Second-guessing’s going to get you plain stabbed.”

“No pressure, Ma,” I say.

Carmine flips his leftmost card. It’s a raven standing on a rooftop, looking backward. It has a golden starburst behind it and… I look over his shoulder to read the banner at the bottom.

PRAISE

“This one is irrelevant,” he says, putting his hands over the next.

“It’s the raven spirit,” Laro says, describing the card to Mom. “At rest. Left facing, right seeking. Gold corona.”

“What’s he resting on?”

“Good question.” Laro leans over to get a closer look. “Sovereign summit, but cut off? Shortened, I guess.”

“Irrelevant.” Mom scoffs.

“Next.” Carmine tries to pinch up the center card, but struggles to keep his hand still. “Fine.” He lets his arm drop. “Immediate thoughts. That raven on the card isn’t real.” With the vigor of spite, he flips the middle card.

A skull with eyes. One eye has a red X over it with the fat proportions of a hospital cross. The banner says:

OUR LORD

“There’s your answer!” Dr. Watanabe says. “We go through the eye to the brain.”

“You!” My mother juts out her arm, pointing, and says, “Go stand over there.”

The doctor backs away and stands by the door, next to Ario.

“First impression, Dad.”

Carmine sighs. He hates looking inward. “I hope you’re not expecting me to tattoo this on myself.”

“Dad.”

“That’s what it looks like. A bad tattoo.”

“Is it a skull with eyes?” Mom asks. “Red clouds behind?”

“More of a maroon,” Laro says while the rest of us are agape at a blind woman’s sight.

“You find this card wasteful,” she says. “That’s why you’re cracking jokes and making aesthetic pronouncements.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I have no idea.” Mom taps the card one last time. “We’re not done. I can do this all night. Flip the last one.”

Carmine stills his hand enough to turn the last card.

“Anatomical heart with a knife,” Laro reports.

“And?” Mom asks as if she knows there’s something more.

Carmine lets his hands slip from the table, staring down with tight lips and eyes just a little wide. He’s afraid of this picture.

“A snake around the knife,” Laro says. “Dad? You okay?”

He doesn’t answer. He just keeps staring at the card as if he’s afraid to take his eyes off it.

The doorbell rings. Everyone jumps, then laughs at the broken tension.

Dr. Watanabe is closest to the door, so he opens it while coffee is refilled and whispers fill the room.

“Are you okay?” I lean down to whisper.

“Yes, love.” Carmine kisses my forehead. “I am fine.”

I touch the card. The banner says:

AMEN

“Can you read the deck yet?” he asks.

“You know I can’t.” I jab him gently. His eyes meet mine. I let myself get lost in the kaleidoscope of colors.

“Don’t create limits for your powers that the goddess did not impose, my love. ”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Mom gathers the cards as if this part of the evening is over. “Look who it is.”

“That’s enough of that,” Carmine mutters as the guests part for the newcomer.

But he is not new.

I gasp and stand straight. He is in his fifties, side-parted straight hair, fifty percent gray and half indiscriminate brown.

His eyes are blueish green and his short beard is more trimmed than I remember.

When he finally speaks, his voice is otherworldly.

It contains multitudes, but is empty, as if it’s not vibrating the air to make sound, but slipping between oxygen molecules to shake the tiny bones in my ear.

I have heard it once before, in a room full of portraits.

Sorry to interrupt, fam. Not tryna flex, but that card the kid just pulled—it’s mine.

I push through everyone to get a close look at him, but I knew him from the minute he walked in with his brown utility jacket and carpenter jeans.

You must be Luna. Don’t sweat. I come in peace. No cap.

It’s him, but it isn’t, but it is, and I’ll never know unless I ask.

“Dad?”