by Allen Kent
“Will you all be having tea?” Edith asked, seating Lilia Haddad closest to their chairs on the right and Grace to their left. Raca Haddad and I took the chairs facing them.
“We still have some of that dark tea you brought during your first visit,” they said to Lilia. “And you, Grace. It is Grace, isn’t it? We have the jasmine tea you liked so much. Can we prepare a cup of the Oolong for you, Sheriff?”
I raised a declining hand as I tipped back on my assigned seat, guessing from the way we were positioned that the sisters had anticipated my refusal and were expecting to read for the women.
“Then you and the young lady can choose from what we are fixing for the others,” Ethel suggested. “Everyone must have tea. We can all just sit and have a visit for a time. Please, Mr. Tate, tell us how your mother has been.” Though they had sensed that we were coming and remembered each of our tea preferences, they seemed to have forgotten since my last visit that mother was long since gone. When I reminded them, they fussed about it as if they were hearing about it for the first time.
While Lilia Haddad looked on with a distant, nervous smile, we chatted about my sheriff’s work, Raca’s interest in becoming a nurse, and why Grace’s father had come to the Ozarks as a teenager from Chiapas to work in the chicken plants. When cups were close to empty, the twins exchanged a glance that signaled it was time for what had brought this unlikely foursome up onto Webber’s Mountain.
“Now,” Ethel said to Raca. “If you will have your mother pour her last bit of tea onto the saucer and place the cup here between us, the handle toward her, we will see what the leaves have to tell us.”
Lilia drained the cup before her daughter had time to speak, setting it carefully between the two seers, the handle in her direction. Edith and Ethel leaned intently forward, peering into the porcelain bowl. After an unnerving moment of humming and murmuring as they studied the scatter of dark flecks, they exchanged another knowing look and Edith spoke.
“We see no danger in the leaves, my dear. Your family will be safe here.”
Lilia’s eyes welled with tears and she pressed folded hands against her lips, nodding gratefully toward each of the sisters. Raca bent toward her mother and laid a hand on the woman’s quivering shoulder, blinking back moisture from her own eyes.
“Do you see anything else for the family?” she asked.
The twins smiled slyly at the girl. “Have you met a friend at school? Someone you care about very much?” Raca looked down with surprised embarrassment while her mother cast her a troubled frown. The girl eased her own cup away from the sisters who tittered like a pair of house wrens. “Perhaps we are mistaken, and you will need to come back for another reading,” Ethel said in a failed effort to calm Mrs. Haddad.
“We will talk on the way home,” Lilia said in Arabic, then looked quickly over at me, realizing I understood. “. . . or after we get to the house,” she corrected. It occurred to me that Miriam Haddad’s interrogation when we were driving out to Farley Buzzard’s goat farm about loving someone of another faith hadn’t been for her benefit at all, but for her sister, Raca.
Edith turned to Grace, who now seemed reluctant to offer her cup. “Come, dear,” the old woman said. “We know you have also had a very painful time. Perhaps there is comfort for you as well.” Grace hesitantly emptied her last drops of tea and positioned the cup between the sisters. The twins fussed over the leaves for a few moments, then Edith reached over and took Grace’s hand.
“New love is coming to your life, my dear,” Ethel said. “And this will be a kind and loving man.” She leaned over and whispered to Edith who nodded with a secretive smile. “And you will have children,” Ethel confided. “One will be a beautiful girl like her mother.”
Grace is about as stoic a woman as I’ve known, but the revelation brought a sudden rush of tears. While I was debating whether to reach over and give her other hand a supportive squeeze, Edith lifted my cup and poured the remaining drops onto the saucer. I reached for it, but she shooed my hand away.
“This is a morning of happy news,” she said. “Perhaps there is some for you.” My thoughts flew to my last reading and the sisters’ prediction that my dilemma would resolve itself.
“Let’s make it some impersonal happy news,” I suggested. Ethel smiled over at me broadly. She and Edith peered into the cup. This time, when they exchanged glances, Edith shook her head and they returned to their examination.
“You have a difficult year ahead of you, young Mr. Tate” Ethel said finally. “Two lost children. A friend who will need your help to save what is most important to him. Travel to a distant place.”
I grinned at her nervously. “That doesn’t sound like very happy news. Is that all you see in there?”
“All we can see today,” she said solemnly.” And some things, Mr. Tate, are not for two tired old women to tell.”
other books by allen kent
Unit 1 International Thrillers
The Shield of Darius
The Weavers of Meanchey
The Wager
The Marburg Mutation
Straits of the Between
The Whitlock Series (Historical novels)
River of Light and Shadow
Wild Whistling Blackbirds
Suzanna’s Song
Mystery/Thrillers
Backwater
Guardians of the Second Son
The Colby Tate Mysteries
Murder One
The Talisman Murder
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allen Kent is the “USA Today” and Amazon bestselling author of the popular Unit 1 thriller series, the Colby Tate Mystery Series, and the celebrated Whitlock Trilogy in historical fiction. His books, with summaries, can be found at his website,
https://allenkentbooks.com.
