Riley had her own collection of weird stuff in her apartment: animal bones, a crystal ball, tarot cards, and pendulums. She was always meditating and setting up little altars for various occasions, like if she wanted a new job or for some guy she liked to like her back. She liked to talk about dreams and always made Olive tell hers when she spent the night. She believed dreams were important and bought Olive a little blue journal with a sun and moon on the cover so she could write them down. Olive thought the notebook was too pretty to write her dumb dreams in, so she put it on her bookshelf to save for a time when she might have something worthwhile to use it for.

“Have you ever had an experience where you knew something was going to happen before it did?” she asked Olive once. Olive said she hadn’t and Riley looked disappointed. Sometimes she’d read Olive’s tarot cards, to tell her future, which always seemed hopeful and promising when Riley interpreted it—even when she got cards that scared Olive, like the Tower, which showed a tower on fire after lightning struck it and blew the top off, two people tumbling out of it to the ground.

“The Tower, that’s turmoil, sudden change. Your life might feel like it’s in upheaval, but really, you’ve got to remember that with change comes positive stuff, too. You’re gonna grow from this. With destruction comes transformation, right? Sometimes you’ve gotta break down the structures you surround yourself with to get to the truth, to find the core strength of who you are. Does that make sense, Ollie?” And Olive nodded and they finished the reading, drinking bitter herbal tea that was supposed to help them both get centered and find clarity.

Riley tried hard, almost too hard, to make things better for Olive. She’d always been a fixture at their house, mostly hanging out with Mama. Riley and her mom went to antique shops, went out to play bingo and to hear bands perform at the Cider Mill out on Route 9. Daddy would get irritated (or at least pretend to be) when Riley showed up at the house to take Mama off somewhere. “My god, woman,” he’d say. “You spend more time with my sister than you do with me!” She’d laugh as she hurried off on some adventure with Riley, saying, “I only married you so I could have the best sister-in-law ever.”