“I’m not afraid of anything, and I don’t have to justify my decisions to you. It’s bad enough she did a spell in my freezer. I’m not letting her take an astrology class.”

“You’re still blaming astrology for what happened that night. Evil is what happened that night. It had nothing to do with astrology.”

“I know it wasn’t astrology’s fault, but it reminds me of it, okay? When I see your books and charts and all of the stuff, it brings back that night. And I don’t want to bring it back, so the answer is no, regardless of what Phil says. Katie isn’t going to a beginner astrology class.”

“You’re letting them win, even after all these years. You’re still giving them power.”

“Maybe I am, but I’m not changing my mind.”

“Do you remember this?” Alice asked, holding out a book on palmistry. “You used to have fun with this. You were even pretty good.”

Lina took the book, her eyes traveling over her name inside the front cover. “I remember.”

“You believe in this stuff?” Phil, shirtless and in a pair of exercise shorts, paused at the bookshelf in Lina’s bedroom as he pulled out a book on palmistry. It was Saturday morning, and he’d told his parents he was spending the night before at a friend’s, which was what he told them most weekends so he could stay with Lina.

Lina stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around him. “I think so. Why? You don’t?”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

“Do you want me to read your palm?”

Five minutes later they were sitting cross-legged on the center of her bed, his palm covered in baby powder as Lina stared at the lines, trying to remember everything she could from the crash course she’d been given by one of her mother’s friends a couple of months earlier. “Long life,” she said as she traced her index finger over his heart line in the center of his palm. “You’re going to make lots of money,” she said, touching the soft padding below his thumb.

“How about wives and kids?” he asked. “Does it show that?”

She turned his hand to the side and looked at the lines below his pinky. “There I am,” Lina said, touching a deep horizontal line. “And you see these, the ones that cross through vertically?”

“Yeah.”

“Those are our children.”

“Three?”

“Yeah,” she said as she looked at his hand. “Wait—four,” she said, touching a line that wasn’t as deep as the others. “I think that’s one too.”

“I want us to have at least three.” Phil lay back on the bed, staring up at his hand.

“Let’s give them unique names that no one else has.” She snuggled into his side.