Celeste closed the shop with a handwritten note taped to the door: “We’re off scouting more treasures for you. Be back soon!”

“Can you really leave?” Gemma said, following her to the street.

“In the beginning, when it was just Jack and me, we had to close down to go to estate sales or do errands.”

Gemma had noticed that it wasn’t uncommon in town to, say, stop by a bakery in the middle of the afternoon only to find a handwritten note from the proprietor reading, “Closed for a mental health day.”

“And this is important,” Celeste said. “You need to learn to let go of things that are clogging your aura.”

“Okay. But for the record: I don’t believe in this sort of thing.”

Maud met them in the garden behind her house.

“Welcome, ladies. Who’s going first?”

“She is,” Celeste and Gemma said at the same time.

“Don’t be shy,” Maud said to Gemma. “I promise I don’t bite. Have you had your cards read before?”

“No,” Gemma said, glancing at Celeste.

“Come,” Maud said, leading them to a small table and a set of wooden chaise lounges with purple cushions. “Tarot cards have been used since the Middle Ages as a tool for divination and self-discovery. Now, the clearer your intentions, the more accurate my reading will be. So I ask that you hold a question in your mind.”

“I don’t really have a question,” she said nervously, again glancing at Celeste.

“Not to be too leading here,” Celeste said, “but I know Gemma is interested in the comings and goings of a certain object, and perhaps needs to know if she can let this object go.”

Maud focused her sharp eyes on Gemma. “Is this accurate?”

“I guess?” In reality, there was nothing this woman could say that would make her feel better about the disappearance of her mother’s engagement ring. And yet, she felt anticipation as Maud slid the deck of cards across the table and instructed her to cut it three times. Gemma hadn’t held a deck of cards since she was a teenager and played gin with her grandfather.

“Now, think about the object in question.”

Gemma envisioned the diamond ring. She focused at first on the gem itself, the remarkable shade of petal pink that appeared lit from within. The name Electric Rose truly captured it. She remembered how it had looked on her mother’s slender hand, the stone covering half her knuckle. And finally, she let herself remember trying it on, the way it made her feel pretty, and special, and most of all, close to the mother she adored.

“Now, halve the deck, and draw three cards one at a time, placing each facedown.”