“I want you to meditate on what concerns you, what questions you bring with you today,” Maud said. After a few minutes, she told Celeste to keep her eyes closed, but that she was going to place her hand on the stones and she should retrieve three. “Now set them on the table.”

The stones she picked were Venus, Mars, and the Universe.

Maud contemplated them, then looked Celeste in the eyes with her steady gaze. “Venus is connected to love and happiness. Mars suggests the need for courage and a potential battle ahead. The Universe suggests a reshuffling of your place in the grand scheme of things. So I would say that you’re right to be on guard. Proceed with caution. Change is ahead.”

“But what does that really mean? Should I go ahead with the wedding?”

Maud said she couldn’t tell her what to do, she could only give her the information at her disposal. But the information wasn’t enough; Celeste felt the universe was giving muddled signals just when she needed it to guide her the most.

“I was thinking we could have the wedding in the garden,” Jack said.

“In our backyard?”

“No—not our garden: Suzanne’s Garden.”

Suzanne’s Garden was a floral wonderland open to visitors for the past decade. It began as a private garden created by a longtime Provincetown resident named Suzanne, who hired a landscaper to plant a small orchard, and then a few years later began collaborating with a new next-door neighbor to create a joint flower garden. The pair even traveled to Monet’s garden near Paris for inspiration. The result was both whimsical and thoughtful: pear trees, hazelnut bushes, roses, irises with shell pathways throughout, and a central wisteria arbor.

As she thought about it now, the arbor made it an obvious choice for a wedding, although Celeste had gone there to sit and read so many times and it had never crossed her mind. It was a perfect place for quiet contemplation, especially in the middle of the summer when so much of the town was overrun with visitors and every outdoor space seemed to be teeming with tourists. Most people didn’t know about the garden, and even during the busiest theme week she could usually find an hour or two of solitude in the arbor.

Jack knew that she loved the place. It was a thoughtful idea.

“Um, sure,” she said.

“We can go look at it tomorrow,” he said, kissing her neck, then her collarbone, then gently tugged her down onto the muddy ground.

“Someone could walk by,” she said, her body already responding to him.

“After all these years, you still pretend you’re not every bit as adventurous as I am.”

For the moment, her fears about the future were forgotten.