In the Cards

 This is a true story. I imagine Memère is smiling at this.

* * *

The Tarot reader didn’t look up as she flipped over her cards.

“You’re here for someone else.” It wasn’t a question. 

“My grandmother,” I said.

The reader nodded. “I see one-oh-three.”

I said nothing and played along. Memère was ninety-seven, lucid and still cheating at cards. She wasn’t going anywhere.

A little more than three years later, I got The Call from my mother.

The Tarot reader came back to mind and I thought, Memère made it to one hundred, not quite your prediction. Then I realized the date: today was October third. 

Not one oh three, but ten three.