Chapter One

The moment Gray stepped out of her car into the gravelly mud pile that was supposedly her destination, she considered getting right back in, driving another hour back north to New Orleans, and forgetting this whole endeavor. She could probably gain just as much insight and comfort from the bottom of a pint of Ben Jerry's as from this ridiculous plan. She was sure she'd put the right address into her GPS, but now, surrounded only by trees and mosquitoes, this didn't feel right. Not that she really knew what "right" felt like anymore after the past month. But then she remembered her best friend Cherry's words that convinced her to give it a try: If you really want to find your soulmate, if you really want your new life to begin, then you need wisdom beyond what traditional measures can provide. She did want to find her soulmate. She did want to live her perfect life and create the family of her dreams. So shouldn't she be willing to try something different, even if it was uncomfortable?

Determined, Gray pulled her boots from the muck with a loud squelch and navigated around a gnarled old oak tree, looking for something, anything, that could point her in the right direction. A row of citrus trees to her left wasn't much help, nor the Spanish moss shifting in the wind overhead. The echo of what sounded like women's chatter drew Gray's attention to her right. As she trudged through the swampy ground toward the noise, she discovered a weathered barn and small house with peeling yellow paint. The source of the noise soon revealed itself to be not a group of gossiping ladies but the residents of a wooden chicken coop. One of the birds marched straight up to Gray, made a curious clucking sound, and began pecking at her feet.

"Excuse me!" Gray stepped back from the speckled brown hen. "These boots are new!" And not so much meant for actual outdoor adventuring as a fashionable suggestion that Gray might be into such things. She had a tough, devil-may-care lesbian aesthetic to uphold, after all, although she hadn't expected to find herself navigating actual mud and chicken poop when she put them on.

"Petunia, get over here, you rascal." An older woman with a wild poof of blondish-white hair appeared around the corner of the coop, a smaller white hen tucked under her arm. "Ignore her. She thinks she's a guard dog," she said to Gray.

The chicken made a rumbling noise that did sound almost like a dog's growl, puffing up her feathers at Gray as if to make a point.

Gray took a step back from Petunia, still eyeing the chicken nervously. "Sorry to interrupt. I think I'm lost. Do you know if there's a Madame Nouvelle Lune nearby?"

The woman wiped a hand against her worn denim overalls. "You found her. Please, call me Dori."

Gray's head tilted to the side. "You're Madame…"

"In the flesh! You're Gray, yeah? Let me get the ladies tucked in for the night and I'll be right with you."

Dori herded the loose chickens into the coop, talking to them along the way like they were old friends. Even though she spoke slowly, it took Gray an extra few seconds to process her words. Her accent was thicker than the humid bayou air. That's why Gray almost missed it when Dori stopped talking to the birds and returned her attention to her appointment.

"I said, you coming this way or staying out here?" Dori yelled over her shoulder, already walking toward the yellow farmhouse. Gray followed her into a crowded kitchen that smelled strongly of onion, garlic, and Cajun spices. "Leave your shoes by the door and wash your hands over there," Dori commanded as she kicked off her own boots.

Gray followed the instructions, knocking as much dirt as possible off her formerly shiny boots, then turned back to the old woman. "Is now, um, still a good time?"

"Good a time as any. Neptune is in retrograde, but we can work with that. You know how to devein shrimp?"

"I don't think so." Gray ran a hand along the buzzed hair on the left side of her head, flipping the longer dirty-blond hair on top to the other side. "Is that like reading tea leaves or something?"

Dori threw her head back with a squeaking laugh. "Lord, no. I'm just trying to get dinner on the table. How about chopping okra? That's easy as it gets."

Within minutes, Dori and Gray were seated across from each other at the wooden kitchen table, Gray chopping okra on a faded old cutting board as Dori peeled and deveined a pile of shrimp.

"All right, let's get started. Birth date, please."

"Is this how you usually meet with clients?"

Dori looked up at Gray. "Expecting something else? Dark room, crystal balls, velvet curtains, incense?"

Gray looked sheepish.

The older woman returned to her shrimp. "Well, I used to have that right in the French Quarter. Then Katrina hit. That's when I moved out here, where I got plenty of room to commune with the stars, and started moving my astrology business online, since most of my regulars moved outta Louisiana anyway. I only meet in person with special cases, and based on what your friend told me, you're mighty special." Dori popped the head off a shrimp, sending it rolling across the table. "So now, if you don't mind us getting to business rather than talking about it, when's your birthday?"

Gray sat up straighter. "April fourth."

"I need down to the minute. Location too."

"Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As for time…" Gray pulled out her phone to find the photo of her birth certificate she'd asked her brother to send her after she'd moved out of her parents' home. Turned out having an image of that document was crucial after being disowned at the age of eighteen. She didn't, however, understand its relevance in this situation. Once she found the photo, Gray zoomed in on the exact time and turned the screen to show Dori.

Dori wiped her fingers on a dish towel before pulling a pair of reading glasses from her pocket and poking at a tablet on her lap. "Ah. Okay, okay. Hmm. Well, good that you came when you did."

"Sorry?"

"No need to apologize, dear. Saturn return affects us all, long as we're lucky enough to live to see it."

Gray froze, her phone halfway back to her pocket. "Saturn return?"

"That's right. No wonder you're all out of sorts." Dori shifted the reading glasses into her tangle of white hair and resumed peeling shrimp. "See, Saturn is the planet of big life lessons. Its place in your chart is gonna have a lot to do with your sense of purpose, where you're supposed to be, whatever the hell you're on this Earth to do. Every twenty-nine years, Saturn returns to the exact place in the sky where it was the day you were born. So round abouts the ages of twenty-nine, fifty-eight, and eighty-seven, stars willing, you're gonna experience some existential discomfort."

"Existential discomfort," Gray echoed. She'd been trying for months to put her finger on the pressure in her chest, the itchiness in her fingertips, the zings in her brain that all worked together to tell her something had to change. Dori's description fit just right.

"Saturn wants to make sure you're on the right track, and you're due for a big old checkup right about now, turning twenty-nine in a couple months and all. You've probably been feeling Saturn's gaze for the last year or so. That sound right?"

Gray gulped. Ever since she could remember, she'd felt like she should be running faster, pushing herself harder, showing off what she could do. But the last few months had felt different somehow. More urgent, maybe. It's why she'd left the only town she'd ever lived in, moved to Louisiana, and started a challenging new job as a PR manager all in the past three weeks. And most important, it's why she'd ended up at Madame Nouvelle Lune's kitchen table.

Dori placed the tablet aside and swept the cleaned shrimp into a bowl. "As an Aries sun, you're competitive and driven and optimistic. Saturn's probably got you worried about reaching all these life goals you set for yourself, making you feel like you're behind your peers. Feel like the clock's ticking."

The knife slipped in Gray's hand, narrowly missing where her thumb held a piece of okra. Hands shaking, she set the knife down. "Well, that's just a quarter-life crisis. Everybody feels like that, right?"

"Around age twenty-nine, sure enough. Quarter-life crisis, Saturn return, different names for the same celestial thing." Dori rose from the table, grabbing the bowl of shrimp and the cutting board of okra. She lifted the lid of a large pot, releasing a burst of fragrant steam, before tipping the additional ingredients in. "You're a Taurus rising, that's a good balance for the Aries sun. Keeps you grounded, helps make sure your expectations for yourself are reasonable. Also means you value family and a stable home atmosphere. I'm guessing Saturn's brought you some doubts in your love life lately. Maybe you're looking for something different in relationships. Maybe what worked for you in your first twenty-nine years ain't working anymore." Dori paused at the sound of a whimper from across the kitchen and looked up to see Gray's lip trembling and her eyes filling with tears. "Oh, cher. It's all right, let it out."

Gray's tough exterior cracked as a whimper turned into a sob and tears rushed down her cheeks. How did she go from distrustful to sobbing in a stranger's kitchen so quickly? "Cherry told you about the breakup, didn't she?" she choked out.

"She just told me you were at a crossroads, unsure which way to go next. I don't like to know too many details before a consultation." Dori returned to the table with a cloth napkin and handed it to Gray. "Lot of relationships end around age twenty-nine or thirty. You'll notice if you look for it. That's 'cause Saturn comes back around, asking folks to take a hard look at where they are and where they want to be. I know it hurts now, but lache pas la patate."

Gray racked her brain for lingering knowledge from her high school French classes. "Don't lick the potato?"

"Don't drop the potato," Dori said, graciously not mocking Gray's mistranslation. "It's an expression, meaning don't give up. Things will get better. Saturn may have you feeling a mess right now, but in a year or two you'll look back and realize this moment is putting you on track to just where you need to be. How are you with goats?"

"Is that an expression too?"

Dori chuckled as she strode toward the garage. "Sit tight, I'll be right back."

As much as Gray tried to slow the stream of tears and snot with the cloth napkin, she struggled to pull it together. After worrying she'd made a mistake leaving a chunk of her heart in McKenzie's house in Tulsa, hearing Dori's explanation of Saturn return was the first time Gray truly felt like she'd made the right call, that the end of her relationship was destined. That she hadn't made a massive error by leaving behind the life she'd been building for a decade for the dream of something different.

Dori emerged from the garage with a small fuzzy creature in each arm, one covered in fluffy white fur, the other mostly white with a dark-brown head and legs. "Here, take Disco." She shifted the baby goat into Gray's arms. Finally, Gray's tears dried up as she stared into the wiggling fluff ball's big eyes. Dori returned a moment later with a bottle full of milk, which she pushed into Gray's hand and angled into the goat's mouth. "Poor things. Found 'em crying behind my barn, couldn't have been more than a couple days old, no mother in sight."

The goat suckled happily as Gray looked on, idly wondering if Cherry would let her keep a baby goat in her garage apartment.

Dori sat down at the table with her own baby goat and examined the sappy look on Gray's face. "You're quite the oyster, aren't ya?"

Gray looked up, one eyebrow arched. Was that a regional slur for lesbians?

"Beautiful, smooth, and ice-cold on the outside," Dori said, nodding at Gray's carefully crafted outfit, trendy haircut, sparkling green eyes, and striking bone structure that often caught the glance of strangers of all genders. "But once someone gets past your shell, they'll see you're softer and more delicate than you appear."

So it wasn't a slur, but Gray wasn't sure if it was a compliment either. Still, it resonated with her. "I guess."

"Now let's talk about that Aquarius moon," the astrologer said, getting back to business. "Your moon sign represents your truest inner soul, deeply tied to your emotions and how you treat yourself. Only the people you're closest to get to know your moon sign. Yours is Aquarius, which means you value your individuality and freedom. Deep down, you'd rather stand out than fit in. So at your Saturn return, maybe you're feeling a bit misunderstood, trying to realize the passions and talents and instincts that make you you."

"So I measure myself against my peers and want to keep up because I'm an Aries, but I also want to be unique because of my Aquarius moon?"

Dori nodded sagely, stroking a finger across her goat's head. "Starting to make sense why Saturn has you feeling some kind of way?" Gray shrugged. "All right, then. Tell me about your relationship that ended. Sounds like that's a good place to dig in."

"I'm sorry I cried like that earlier. I haven't really done that." Gray wasn't usually much of a crier, even in the midst of an emotional life change, but something about Dori's strange euphemisms and the baby goat in her arms made her feel like she was in an otherworldly but safe place. "It feels weird to be so upset, since I initiated the breakup. Well, technically, we called it a ‘conscious uncoupling.'?" She gave the best summary of the breakup she could manage without leading herself right back into crying territory. How she'd spent ten years with McKenzie only to realize she wasn't interested in Gray's dreams of kids and family life, and she couldn't be convinced. How that left Gray feeling like she was running years behind in starting the family she so deeply desired.

Dori took in the story silently. When Gray was finished, she closed her eyes and nodded as if listening for guidance from the universe. "What's your ex's sign?"

"Also an Aries. March twenty-eighth."

Dori clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Two Aries in a relationship, that's a lot of fire sign right there. I'd bet y'all were always competing over something. One person always has to win, and the other one's left none too pleased about it."

How could Dori make Gray feel so exposed, knowing so little about her? Every fight with McKenzie felt like a life-or-death battle that ended with one person gloating and one seething with frustration. Their competitive spirits brought a lot of fun to the relationship—and often to the bedroom—but after ten years, Gray was exhausted.

"Not to mention two babies of the zodiac, neither with celestial maturity. Souls as young as Disco and Cha Cha here. Speaking of, it's getting past their bedtime. Hand her over." Dori collected the goat from Gray and disappeared momentarily to the garage. Gray felt strangely cold and empty without Disco in her arms.

When Dori returned, Gray straightened up. "What exactly do you mean by ‘babies of the zodiac'?" she asked.

"There are twelve signs, running in order of Aries through Pisces," Dori explained as she stirred the concoction on the stove. "They represent the life cycle of the zodiac, each at its own stage of maturity. Course, you have your own journey and lessons to learn. But the maturity and celestial understanding of your soul, that comes from your place in the karmic wheel. As an Aries, you're a newborn, all dewy-eyed and taking in the world with a fresh perspective. Signs get a little more wisdom as you follow the wheel, hitting teenage round abouts Leo, middle age around Capricorn, all the emotional wisdom of end of life in Pisces."

Was this why Gray always felt like a beginner? Like other people just got it more than she did, whatever "it" was? "So shouldn't everyone marry a Pisces, since they're the wisest?"

"Not necessarily." Dori tasted the stew in the crockpot with a spoon, then bustled about the kitchen adding various herbs and spices. "There's something to learn from each sign's stage in life. Curiosity from Geminis. Vulnerability from Cancers. Focus from Virgos. Courage from Sagittariuses. Determination from Capricorns. So on and so forth."

Gray's mouth watered as the scent of Dori's dinner wafted across the kitchen, but she couldn't let her hunger distract her from why she'd come in the first place. "But how do I know which sign I'm supposed to be with? What's most compatible with Aries?"

"Ain't no right or wrong answer to that," Dori said. "The only real way to learn and comprehend the full life cycle of the karmic wheel is to get to know each sign, learn how your souls harmonize together. Let's take another look at your birth chart."