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and hers alone. She lived upstairs in a tiny apartment, and it
made the entire building feel like the home she’d never had.
The shop was everything to her. Everything she had to show
for the passage of time that just creeps up on a person. Except
that for her, time had never crept. Those years between ten and
eighteen, when she’d aged out of the system, were the longest
of her life. She would have loved for them to fly past, but
unfortunately they crawled like a slug, leaving a trail of slime
wherever they went.
“I’m sorry, are you okay?”
Dani started. “What?” She’d been so lost in her thoughts
that she forgot Summer was sitting right across from her,
which was silly, given that the thoughts included her, at least
in speculation. “Yeah.” Dani nodded. She indicated the deck.
“Should we start, or do you have any other questions?” She
was thinking a three-card spread. Not only would it be easy,
but it would also be something Summer could easily handle.
She felt bad about stacking the deck and quickly reached for
it, shuffling it thoroughly so that the cards that looked scary at
face value went away. She did this because she loved it.
Because she truly felt there was value in it. Because it was the
one thing that had always given a meaningless life meaning,
had gotten her through the worst of it, had marked out life for
being something more than merely an existence. She shouldn’t
have stacked the deck like that. It was wrong and she knew it.
“Yeah.” Summer leaned her arms on the table. She stared
Dani down so intently that Dani actually shifted in her seat,
and she never did things like that. She’d been stared down and
worse, much, much worse, over the years, and nearly nothing
could ruffle her prickly feathers. “I do have one more
