Midsummer's Eve - By Kitty Margo Page 0,3

back in her seat, which sounded like someone balling up wax paper, with a look of abject misery that I recognized as similar to mine. I would bet my last penny that the basis of her sorrow was nothing more than a vile, despicable, lying, cheating, scumbag of a black-hearted rogue. I know. I know. I read way too many historical romance novels.

Two hours later, I was feeling slightly ill from the elderly lady’s lingering perfume, which mingled with a rather nauseating stench permeating from the youngest child’s diaper. Then, there was the added aroma of good ole boy’s breath. Let’s just say when he exhaled, it could singe every last hair in your nose, trickle through your digestive tract, and seize up your bowels.

“Eve?” I heard my name called and with a sigh of relief happily plowed through the inhabitants of the waiting room from Hell.

Lady Wonder turned out to be a short cheery woman in her sixties with big white hair, a ponderous mid section and gentle, caring eyes. She was nothing at all what I expected. You know? Pointed chin. Hairy wart. Not even a crystal ball! She began shuffling a deck of regular playing cards as she offered me a seat on a white leather wing chair. Then turning over the card on top of the deck, the ace of hearts, she glanced up.

“Let me see your hands,” she said without preamble. Obediently, I showed her my hands palms up. “You have an odd number of children.”

“Yes, I have one son.”

“He works out of town and you don’t get to see him as often as you would like.” Her eyes fluttered and almost rolled back in her head, as she appeared to go into a trance-like state.

Wow! How did she know that? The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt goose bumps pop up on my arms and thighs. This woman had never laid eyes on me, yet she knew intimate details about my life. “Yes. He is a foreman on a construction crew and he travels up and down the east coast.” I glanced toward the exit when her upper body appeared to twitch uncontrollably. Lord have mercy! I hoped this was normal behavior for her and she wasn’t going into a seizure brought on by my tragic life.

“You caused your husband a great deal of pain.” Her eyes slowly rolled back down to their normal position and her jerking upper body became still once again.

Wow! She even knew about the ex. “Yes. He treated me like a queen for 18 years. The condensed version of the story is that I left him for a man who turned out to be a raging alcoholic and recently dumped me for some little oriental trollop.” There, happy!

I still hated myself for the pain I had caused my ex, although I, unlike Lady Wonder, tried not to pick at that old scab. “It did hurt him when I left, but he has since remarried a wonderful lady and they are very happy. So everything turned out okay in the end.”

“You thought he was too good for you. You only want men who will treat you poorly.”

She had effectively put my life in a nutshell. Men who will treat me poorly? Hah! Treat me like something to be scraped from the bottom of their shoe you mean! Use me, abuse me, and walk over me on their way out the door. This was the first time anyone had ever actually verbalized it, but thinking back over my past relationships…she was absolutely right!

“What happened when you were four years old, Eve?”

Huh? Where did that come from? Nothing had happened to me when I was four. “I don’t have any memories of my childhood, so I can’t answer that.” She leaned toward me with a worried frown and peered intently into my eyes. “Would you like to know what happened?”

Judging from her look of deep sadness, if anything had happened, it couldn’t have been pleasant. I couldn’t deal with more bad news. Not now. I was better off not knowing, at least until I came out on the other side of my current crisis. But what exactly was she alluding to? What could have happened when I was four? “No. Not really.”

“You are self employed and very successful in business.” Thankfully, she had abided by my wishes and decided to move on.

“Yes. I own a commercial cleaning company.” Wow, old girl was good!

“Men really like you.”