The Fortune Teller(16)

“Come on. It’s a cheek swab.” He opened the kit on the table. “You get your own ethnicity chart.”

“Lucky me.”

Cabe grew solemn. “Sorry, Sem. I’m an idiot.”

“No, it’s fine, really,” she said, trying to reassure him. “Swab away.”

Her family background had become a touchy subject lately, and Cabe was one of the only people who knew why. After her father passed away, she had spent days helping her mother locate important papers. In her search, she had unearthed adoption papers in an old file—her adoption papers.

She joined him at the table. While he swabbed her cheek, she noticed his bike in the corner. “You know you shouldn’t bike when it’s slick outside.”

“Already back and giving orders,” Cabe teased. He put the swab in a plastic capsule and labeled the sticker. “Wanna grab dinner tonight?”

“Can’t. It’s our anniversary.”

“How are you and Bren the Pen?”

“Good,” she said quickly. At least they were until yesterday.

She would have loved to tell Cabe what happened in Switzerland, but she owed that confession to Bren, and only to Bren.





The Emperor

Bren had gotten new glasses while she was gone, square tortoiseshells that had a distinctive professorial air. Semele kept staring at him during dinner, wondering how a pair of glasses could be throwing her off so much. The frames made his face, the angles, look completely different. She much preferred his oval wire-rimmed glasses; they had more character, looked antique.

His chestnut hair was officially longer than hers now after the month they’d been apart. He had tucked the unruly waves behind his ears. Tonight he was wearing a suit instead of faded jeans and one of his quirky T-shirts. She had never seen him wear the suit and wondered if he had bought it for tonight.

She had donned a silk 1960s cocktail dress, paired with ruby lipstick and a clutch from the 1940s that reminded her of Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz. They sat nestled in a back corner, hidden behind an enormous spray of orchids. So far she hadn’t found a way to confess what had happened. Her conscience and good intentions had left her when the salmon tartare and Veuve Clicquot arrived, but still she knew she had to tell him.

“You look far away.” He gave her hand a lingering kiss.

“Sorry, just thinking about work.”

“How was the trip? Did you have a chance to make it to any of the places I recommended?”

“You love to imagine that my trips are more glamorous than they are,” she teased. “I spend all my time in libraries and attics.”

“Please. You were holed up in a chateau in Switzerland. Nothing happened the whole month?”

Her conscience screamed at her to tell him, but a muddled sound emerged from her mouth instead.

“Did you listen to my poems? Or were you saving them?” he asked, seeming sure she’d done the latter. “The truth.”

“Saving them, mostly.”

“And that’s why you’ve been acting guilty all through dinner.” He looked slightly upset.

She hesitated. This was the perfect time to tell him—or the worst. There wouldn’t be a better opening.

The moment sailed by without her.

“I did make a point to listen to them on the flight home, all of them. They were beautiful.” God, she hated her lack of courage. Why couldn’t she tell him? “How’s the new book coming? Did you get a lot of work done while I was away?”

Bren searched her eyes. “You know … I don’t want to talk about work either. Let’s talk about us.” He squeezed her hand.

She swallowed. She already knew what was coming.

“I don’t want to wait anymore. Let’s be done with it, combine furniture, closets, the whole thing. Just move in. Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”

His request hovered in the air between them.

Semele knew that at their age, moving in together meant a proposal most likely would come next; it could be six months or six years from now, it didn’t really matter. Once they were on board, things were pretty mapped out. Her father’s death had been an excuse not to hop on, and then afterward, her assignments were, which sent her all over the world, sometimes for over a month at a time.

Before Switzerland she had been in Italy, sequestered in the damp, moldy library of a wealthy grandmother who possessed a trove of manuscripts, a few even penned by Catherine de Médici, the queen of France. Semele identified several astrological charts that had been written by the queen, along with personal letters to her friend Nostradamus. She had no idea how they had ended up in Florence, the city of Catherine’s birth, but the letters had been a thrilling find. In New York the collection sold for a huge sum at Sotheby’s. The family was elated that “Nonna’s treasure” had been rescued from the attic and returned to the world.

This was just one electrifying moment in a career that had many of them. She knew without a doubt her calling was to rediscover and help preserve history. The problem was she didn’t know what a future with Bren looked like alongside that. A small part of her wondered if she was subconsciously sabotaging her chance at happiness, if she was afraid of commitment.

“Okay,” she said, regretting her answer as soon as it was out of her mouth.