We headed back in through the front door, the small chime announcing our arrival, and again, Annie met us. Her eyes were wide. “You went out through a different door?”

I shrugged and tried to answer around the stitch in my side. I pointed at my cheeks and the sweat dripping down. “You see my face? You see the sweat and the redness?”

There was no answering smile on her face, no female understanding in that moment. Maybe she floated up and down the stairs. Maybe she never had to do them.

Annie pointed at the stool with a gesture that would have made Vanna White jealous. “Sit, we will pull your card.”

Sarge gave a gentle shove to the small of my back when I hesitated, which made my shirt stick to my skin. I grimaced and pulled it loose. “I’m going. Don’t be so pushy.”

I lowered myself onto the stool that was on one side of a small square table made of wooden planks. The smell of saltwater and old rot rose off it, and I made myself put both hands flat on the surface. There was nothing on the table except a small incense cup, not yet lit.

Annie sat across from me in a far more comfortable chair, then lit the incense with a single match. The smell of sage floated around us on a literal curl of smoke. She reached for a deck of cards and handed them directly to me. “You done this before, darling?”

I took the deck in my right hand and shuffled the cards slowly. “Not for a long time.”

The last person to read my cards had been my gran, just before I left Savannah. She’d told me that Himself was going to be the death of me, not in the literal sense, necessarily, but in every other way. She’d been right, the cards had been right. I’d let so much of myself die in that marriage for the sake of keeping the peace, for trying for a child that was not meant to be.

Yet another reason I’d run home to Savannah.

I sighed and closed my eyes as I shuffled, waiting for that one card to reach out to me. That’s what Gran had always said, that one card would just feel different and that was the one you needed.

My hand brushed over a card that stuck to the tip of my index finger. I slid it out, face down, and pushed it across the table to her.

“That was impressive,” she said softly.

I shrugged. “Like I said, not my first time.”

“That’s what she said,” Sarge mumbled. I shot him a look and realized Annie had done the same thing.