((Disclaimer: I know nothing about tarot cards or how they work. She's not doing a traditional reading, anyway.))
Jane Crawford
January 2020, Age 18
The first time he met Mrs. Crawford—the name quickly became distasteful to both of them, and she quickly offered he call her “Mom”—she read him.
Well, she was a telepath, so she could read anyone, really.
But her chief skill was in telepathy in the future.
She was a super, obviously. She was never registered as one and her power was hard to prove, so the PHMA left her alone.
She looked at Dirk queerly the first time she laid eyes on him, and said, “You’re going to marry my daughter.”
Dirk had gulped and Joan had tried to salvage the situation, but she only went on, still staring at him with that deep, probing stare, like he was a book in a language she had forgotten. Then, suddenly, the moment was past. She blinked, smiled, and offered them cookies and lemonade, asked him about school, his parents, whether he was planning to go to college, and what he liked to do for fun.
He had almost forgotten her strangeness at their meeting when she turned and whispered something to Joan. Joan blushed and half-grinned, but then she frowned deeply.
“I don’t know, Mom, ask him.”
“Ask me what?” Dirk said, the bemused smile giving way to wariness.
Joan took his hand. “My Mom can…see things. Like, the future.”
Dirk nodded slowly.
“And the past, too, kinda. It’s her, you know,” she lowered her voice, as if she expected the floral wallpaper to be listening, “superpower.”
“You don’t have an inhibitor chip, Mrs. Crawford?”
She shook her head. The stare was back.
Joan blushed pink to her ears. “She says…she wants to read you.” There was something left unsaid in this, the reason why, and Dirk could pretty well guess what it was.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“You can’t—she can’t tell you to. You have to want to,” Joan corrected. Her wings fluttered in apprehension.
Dirk nodded. This seemed to be some sort of test—he knew in his heart that Joan was the one, and he would prove himself to her family any way he could. “I want to.”
She took him, alone, into a back room. It smelled strongly of about a million things Dirk couldn’t place: not unpleasant, but overpowering. It was dark. She motioned to a chair, which he stood at until she seated herself across from him.
She waited, staring at him for a long time, not saying anything, until he began to feel uncomfortable.
“Am I supposed to—”
“Shh,” she said, and he quieted immediately, trying not to avoid her eyes, though they bored into him with the weight of all of time.
There was a deck of cards on the table in front of him, and he jumped when he noticed it, because he was sure it hadn’t been there before and he hadn’t seen her move.
“Take a card,” she said.
Dirk began to suspect that this was sounding more like a magic trick, but he didn’t think it too loud, just in case.
He slid a card from the middle of the deck.
“Lay it down. Face up.”
He did. It looked like a Two to him.
She looked down, and exhaled hard, as if she had been holding her breath for a long time. “The Two of Cups,” she said. “Now another.”
He did.
“The Two of Pentacles. Another.”
He drew another.
“Two of Swords.” She sat up a little. “Another.”
He drew another, set it down so the four cards were in a row.
“Two of Wands,” she said, staring intently at the cards, her eyes flicking back up at him. “A man of twos. Are you a twin, Dirk?”
“No,” he said. “Well. Not…really.”
She sensed his apprehension, but didn’t pry further, perhaps not needing to. “A split, then.”
He nodded. “Yeah, more like that, I guess.”
Now she took the deck and set it in front of her. “Your life is ruled by twos, Dirk. Not duality, as it is with most, but actual pairs.” She drew four more cards and laid them sideways atop the four. “Death on the Two of Swords. Death and Rebirth—they will come to you in pairs. Not to you, but around you.”
She raised her eyebrows at the next card, and eyed him with borderline suspicion. “The Lovers on the Two of Cups.” She narrowed her eyes. “There is another besides Joan.”
“Um.” Now it was Dirk’s turn to blush. “No! I mean, well, not any more.”
Mrs. Crawford nodded, as if sensing what he left unsaid.
“Justice on the Two of Pentacles—two careers, perhaps, or even two lives.”
She pointed at the last crossed cards: “The High Priestess is also a two. On the Two of Wands she is two sets of two—and it speaks to what you will create. You may build something, be the originator. You may father children.” She nodded at that. “I see children. Boys and girls, in twos.”
Dirk nodded dumbly. This was so beyond weird.
She drew two more cards, placing them in front of him next to each other.
“The Wheel of Fortune. It is upside-down. You will struggle with control. But since you are a two, I drew another card: so you have the Star, right-side up, giving you hope. These will war in you, always, until the split is rendered whole.”
…
Dirk never forgot his first meeting with the woman who was to be his mother-in-law, and, really, more mother to him than his own. He quickly added more meetings, more memories, to this woman, who, when not seeing the future, was the kindest, wisest woman—except for Joan, of course—he could ever hope to know.
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