more ominous considering both Julienne and Rafe are dead now.
“That’s insane,” I mutter.
“You mean freaky,” Daisy whispers. “Shh!”
“My house in order,” Julienne is saying. “Oh. My. God. Becky. My in-laws get my house if I die. I mean, Rafe gets it first, and then—oh my god. Oh my god. What if they’re going to kill him too? What if they’ve realized he’s a huge disappointment and they want to murder us both to take the baby and try for a better son?”
“You must get your house in order,” Becky repeats.
“Yes. Yes. Anthony and Margot aren’t getting shit from me. She said my hair looked awful. Can you believe her nerve?”
“That should be stupidly funny,” Daisy whispers. “One star for her hair.”
“The stars have written your destiny, Julienne. You must correct your wrongs.”
“I’m not dying today, bitch. Forget it. But I’m fixing my will. And I’m making Rafe fix his too, and then I’m shoving it in their faces when I catch them and their hit man. But—but who? Fuck. I’m not leaving anything to my grandmother. She’s such a haughty asshole.”
“This is insane,” I mutter. I can’t stop saying it, because it keeps getting stranger and stranger.
“I see—I see a man,” Becky suddenly gasps. It’s an overdramatic kind of gasp, the kind that normal people don’t make, the kind that makes me ask who believes this shit, and I almost shut the phone off, but Daisy swats my finger away when I try.
“A man? For me?” Julienne asks. “Should I leave Rafe?”
“A man…you can trust… He’s tall. Dark. Handsome… Have you met anyone new lately, Julienne? Has someone tall, dark, and handsome come into your life?”
“Oh my god, my general contractor. For the baby’s room. He’s totally tall, dark, and handsome.”
Oh, fuck me. No.
No.
“Yes. Yes!” Becky the Psychic says. “And his name… His name starts with…a…a B? No, a…a T? No, I see…a J?
Julienne gasps.
“Yes! I see a J!” Becky says.
“His last name?” Julienne whispers.
“This is forking insane,” I say, stronger.
“It explains everything,” Daisy replies while Julienne shrieks my name.
“Should I leave Rafe for Westley?” Julienne breathes.
My nuts, the randy suckers without any taste, retreat so far into my abdomen that they bruise my stomach on their way to hiding behind my lungs. She’s dead. She’s not coming after them. And they’re still in hiding.
“No, you must stick by your husband to survive,” Madame Becky says.
“So name Westley as my baby’s guardian if Anthony and Margot take us both out.” Julienne’s leaning forward like she believes every bit of insanity that she’s spewing. “He can take my son away. Keep him safe from them.”
“And…I see a woman…”
“Probably a lot of them, with the way he looks,” Julienne whispers.
“She’s…blond. No, brunette. No…purple. Purple? Surely not—”
“Daisy!” Julienne shrieks.
Another full-body shiver hits me, because this cannot be real. “You have got to be shirting me.”
“My cousin Daisy!” Julienne shrieks again. “She never wears the same hair two weeks in a row!”
“She’s a scam artist,” I say to Daisy while panic swells up in my veins. This is what they need. This video is all they’ll need to one day prove I shouldn’t be in Remy’s life. Julienne let a psychic tell her who to put in her will. That’s why I’m here. “She guesses until she’s close enough for her clients to reach their own conclusion.”
She kills the video. “Julienne thought of you during a psychic reading when she thought her mother-in-law was plotting to kill her with peanuts.”
“She was allergic?”
“Highly. But West—she knew you’d be good for her baby. Better than anyone she’s related to.”
She still took parenting advice from a scam artist.
“Where’d you find this?”
She tosses her phone onto the other chair and shifts deeper into my arms. Remy’s little eyes have closed. He’s breathing through his mouth and drooling on her chest. “Julienne one-starred Madame Becky the week Remy was born.”
“You read her blog?”
“Not on purpose. I was—” She cuts herself off, and the pieces tumble into place.
“You looked up what formula and diapers he was used to.” Of course she did. Daisy isn’t stupid. Never has been. And she knew she needed to figure out how to take care of a baby.
“I remembered this afternoon, and on a whim, I reached out to ask Madame Becky if she knew anything—and not about my future, just about Julienne’s last weeks—and she sent me the video.”
“She videotapes her readings?”
“Just some. She’s running a how-to fortune teller course soon.”
“You think Margot Roderick would’ve poisoned her if—if the dolphins hadn’t gotten to her