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Mary had been musing over the puzzle that asked the player to remove the ring from the whole. She had no clue how one would go about solving this enigma short of taking a blow torch to the game. When the door swung open, Mary quickly dumped the puzzle back in the bowl and pulled her hands back like a child who had broken a don’t touch rule.
It was a strange reaction, but this had been a strange forty-eight hours. Mary was bruised, achy, sore, and jet-lagged. And this hocus-pocus stuff—even though nothing so far seemed made for tourists and crystal-clutchers—had Mary out of her element.
The helper lady who had answered the door when Mary and Deidre first arrived moved into the sitting area. The woman had the feel of someone who had done yoga all their life—centered and balanced, unfazed by someone else’s thoughts or prejudices about how she chose to spend her time.
It was a cultural difference, Mary reminded herself. She’d seen it firsthand. There were a number of nursing students and nurses from India that Mary met along the way who thought having one’s charts done was banal. Just part of a decision-making process. Granted, they usually sent the inquiry via a website and got the answer back. Mary had never heard of someone having to travel halfway around the world. Okay, not halfway; that was an exaggeration, but still.
The helper smiled at Mary as if she could hear Mary’s inner monologue and found it amusing. She scooped her hand in a follow me, and said, “If you would please come with me, your friend is just concluding.”
Mary glanced at the clock and was surprised to find that nearly two hours had gone by. It had felt like ten, maybe fifteen minutes. “Oh,” she said. “You know that I don’t have an appointment, right?”
“Yes, your friend Deidre was asked to bring you.”
“Bring me? Me specifically?”
Helper lady smiled and turned to walk down the hall.
Mary scrambled around the table to follow.
Emerging from an ornately carved door, Deidre clicked it gently shut behind her.
As they came toward each other, they grasped hands. Mary leaned in, “Weird?”
“Interesting.” Deidre frowned. “A decision to be made.”
“Borneo?”
“Career came up Fairbanks, Alaska.” Deidre’s eyes looked troubled.
“That’s the traveling nurse’s program.” Mary squeezed her friend’s hands harder. “That’s exactly where they wanted to send you in the summer if you took the fall rotation to Mississippi.”
“Yeah, I know. Uncanny, right?”
“I don’t know,” Mary whispered. “Did you mention it to anyone? Did you post about it on social media?”
“And have our bosses know I’m looking for another job? Heck no. You and my cat, but Socks promised not to meow it to anyone.”
“Okay.” Mary released their grip to brush a hand down her arm. “Goosebumps.”
“Please.” The helper lady looked at Mary and gestured into the room, indicating Mary should go in.
Deidre leaned in to whisper. “We’ll talk about it later.” Then, back in normal conversational tone, she added. “I’m going to walk in the garden and think. If I’m not back in the sitting room, that’s where you’ll find me.”
Mary nodded and then moved into the office. Could be a therapist's office or a lawyer’s. It was professional, with a large desk that Mrs. V. sat behind. There were scrolls of charts in front of her.
“I’m not sure why I’m in here,” Mary said as the door clicked close behind her. She stood wary and uncomfortable on the oriental carpeting. “I’m between jobs and not getting a paycheck, so funds are tight. I can’t afford,” Mary looked around the sedate luxury of the room, “this.”
Mrs. V. scratched her nose. “Yes, well.” She extended her hand toward a chair. “Please sit.”
Mary perched on the edge, lacing her fingers in her lap.
“It’s in the stars.” Mrs. V. smiled a stress-free smile, and Mary wondered what it felt like to be like that, like a brook babbling along, swerving out of the way of rock and obstruction, easy. Mary hadn’t felt easy in her skin since she peed on her at-home pregnancy test back in her teens.
“I was looking at my own chart a few days ago,” she swept her hand over her desk where the rolls of parchment formed a pyramid. “And it was so curious. I saw that a client who was to come this week had died.” She leaned back, folding her hands beneath her bosom. “Within moments of reading that, the phone rang. It was a client’s daughter saying that her mother passed away unexpectedly. She was asking if I would reimburse her mother’s payment as they needed that money for the funeral.”
Mary blinked. This cost Deidre some amount of money sufficiently large enough to pay for—or make a significant contribution to a funeral? What was she thinking?
“I have found that everything is aligned,” Mrs. V said. “A space was open, the last in my day. So I searched the charts, asking who needed an intervention?” She stopped. “You do know the time of your birth, correct?”
