Mercedes closed her book, looked up, and waited in silence.

“I keep trying to figure out how you’re trying to scam me,” Nora said.

Mercedes held up her hands, palms up and empty.

“You see me asking for money? I’m not trying to sell you a thing.”

“A month after that reading, I met my boyfriend. A Frenchman who acts like a knight-protector. He’s calm and gentle and makes wine. My mother died of advanced lung cancer three months after that reading. Don’t pretend you knew all that months before it happened.”

“I didn’t know. The cards did.”

“If you really knew my mother was dying, why didn’t you tell me that?”

“You wouldn’t have believed me,” she said. “And your mother would die anyway, and in addition to your sorrow, you would be saddled with guilt for ignoring what I told you.”

“I might have believed you.”

“You don’t believe me now. Why would you then?”

“Okay, forget that,” Nora said. “What about the fire? Burning innocent people? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“The closer events are, the easier they are to see. The further out, the harder. I can see the titles of the books on the shelves near me. I can’t read the titles on your books across the room. The future is the same. But I think it’s getting closer.”

“Could you be any vaguer?”

“You don’t know. Why should I? It’s your choice, not mine.”

“I would never hurt innocent people.”

“I don’t think you would…not on purpose. But even if pain is unintentional, it still hurts, doesn’t it?”

Nora had no answer to that. It was true. Couldn’t argue with the truth.

Mercedes slipped her book into her bag and stood up.

“Are you leaving?” Nora asked.

“I have to be at the shop at ten for deliveries. Thank you for the wine.”

Mercedes rose to her feet and Nora had no choice but to walk her to the door, like she was some normal houseguest.

Nora opened the door and Mercedes looked at it, didn’t leave. Apparently, Mercedes still had something to say to her.

“This is between women,” Mercedes said. “About women. For women. Men will only make it more complicated than it already is. Men will only make it worse.”

“I trust the men in my life.”

“You got to learn to trust the women, too. You’ve got to. Even the silence of a woman is wiser than the words of a man.”

“Then let’s be wise, shall we?”

Both of Mercedes’s elegant eyebrows went up at that. But she playfully ran her fingers over her lips to zip them. She nodded, and Nora opened the door again.

Mercedes slipped on her shoes, turned to leave. She stepped onto the porch, but before Nora closed the door, she had to ask one more question.

“I saw you cover up a paragraph when you were reading to me. What was it?”

“You ask me that like you believe it’s real.”