Celeste met Maud a decade and a half ago in a moment of sudden, crushing grief. By 2004, she’d created a happy life for herself up on the Cape. She had Jack; she had his family, who lovingly embraced her; and she had their store, Queen Anne’s Revenge. Jack gave it the name after Blackbeard’s pirate ship. At first, he’d hesitated to join her antiques store venture. But once he saw how important it was to her, he was all in. Now, all these years later, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to manage without him.

So yes, Provincetown gave her many gifts, the most important being distance from her own family’s drama—a distance that came at the price of her father cutting her off financially. But Provincetown gave Celeste something money couldn’t buy: peace.

That came to a swift end with a phone call in the middle of the night from her mother.

“There’s been an accident . . .” Constance was hysterical; it took Celeste a few minutes to make out the news. Her sister Paulina had died.

She never went back to sleep that night. Instead, she walked on the beach and then, after the sun came up, she wandered the side streets. That was when she noticed a tiny storefront tucked down an alleyway near Freeman Street. The sign read, Life is full of questions. The stars have answers.

That wasn’t the beginning of Celeste’s interest in astrology. No, it had started with the horoscopes in the back of her mother’s Vogue magazine. But what was once a casual curiosity changed that morning when she felt everything she believed about the world had been pulled out from under her. Her baby sister—dead. Celeste rang the bell above Maud’s door, and kept ringing it in the years that followed.

Maud’s storefront was long gone now. Over the years, she’d become one of the town’s most productive businesswomen, with a successful restaurant and several rental properties. Now she only read cards and astrology charts by appointment at her home, and always made time for Celeste.

“I want to know what this summer might bring,” Celeste said, settling back in the lawn chair with a deep inhale. “I love this time of year. So many possibilities!”

Maud instructed her to cut the deck three times, and Celeste felt the usual frisson of anticipation. In a world full of uncertainty, there was something comforting about being able to commune with the universe.

When the deck had been adequately shuffled, Maud directed her to ponder her question. Celeste then halved the deck, and pulled the first card and set it facedown in front of Maud. She pulled another card, and then one more.