The Astrology House: A Novel

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To Ian, Luke and Chyler: no house, not even The Astrology House, is a home without you. Thank you for every day and every adventure.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.

—C. G. JUNG

SUNDAY

THE FINAL DAY

The house is a wreck.

In the kitchen, a fly buzzes around a bowl of rotting fruit on the counter. Coffee grounds dust the espresso bar. The abandoned fridge beeps, its door ajar.

In the foyer, a size-seven Golden Goose sneaker rests on its side, laces outstretched and tangled in knots. It stands out from the orderly line of yesterday’s driving loafers and platform wedges near the door.

A thick chunk of books is missing from the meticulously kept library, yanked from the shelves. A trail of novels drips like tears from the library to the living room. On the couch, pages have been ripped from their spine and strewn about like confetti. Wind rattles the windows.

Beyond the walls of the Victorian house, the storm accelerates. Lightning slices through the sky to the ground, quick and sharp as an epiphany. The roar of thunder arrives, angry as the fight that churns outside.

Six remain. They move around the backyard as if in a poorly choreographed ballet, tiptoeing through their confused desires, shifting loyalties, and volatile emotions. The chaos of the storm cannot outpace the fury convening at this spot. Here, the people will do more damage than the weather.

All signs indicate that life will change in the next instant, but the astrologer would counter that viewpoint.

She would say everything that happened at 4:44 p.m. on Sunday, August 25, had been building, gathering momentum, and taking shape over time. Two days since they arrived. Six months since that fateful call. Ten years of pain.

Life did not change in that instant. The moment had simply arrived.

The moment that drove one of them to murder.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

FRIDAY

ARRIVAL DAY

WELCOME TO THE STARS HARBOR ASTROLOGICAL RETREAT

Your custom weekend itinerary is as follows:

DAY 1—FRIDAY

2–4 p.m.—Tour and suite assignments

4 p.m.—Welcome Circle: Fate Has Brought You Here

6 p.m.—Couple Compatibility: Aimee and Adam (Cancer & Scorpio: Charm and Mystery)

7 p.m.—Stars and Charts Astrology Dinner

8 p.m.—Individual readings: Adam, Eden, Ted

DAY 2—SATURDAY

9 a.m.—Astro-smoothies

10 a.m.—Individual reading: Farah

11 a.m.—Sun Worship: Bringing Out Your Buried Masculine Rage (women only)

12 p.m.—Couple Compatibility: Farah and Joe (Virgo & Taurus: American Royalty)

1 p.m.—Couple Compatibility: Margot and Ted (Pisces & Aquarius: Passionate Planners)

3–5 p.m.—Individual readings: Aimee, Margot

7 p.m.—Dinner under the Stars

9 p.m.—Moon Men: Bringing Out Your Feminine Receptive Nature (men only)

DAY 3—SUNDAY

12 p.m.—Winery tours

2 p.m.—Individual readings: Rick, Joe

3 p.m.—Couple Compatibility: Eden and Rick (Aries & Leo: Setting the World on Fire)

4 p.m.—Farewell meal

RINI

When I was in kindergarten—before I knew about birth charts and death dates, when I still had a mom, a dad, and a big sister—I learned a vital life lesson: you get what you get and you don’t get upset.

Anyone willing to pay my rates for a night at the Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat has probably never heard that pithy rhyme. This weekend’s group, in particular, were likely taught the opposite lesson.

In the study of the main house, I spread out manila legal folders for each of the guests across the desk and light my vanilla-ginger candle for integration, inviting my studies about these eight men and women to become part of my recall knowledge for the weekend.

Adam and his sister, Margot, attended Horace Mann, then Yale, then Columbia grad school—law for her, journalism for him. I imagine their teachers jauntily lecturing that you do not have to accept what the world gives you. That they can—nay, they must—keep strategizing and negotiating until they receive exactly what they want. Carpe diem.

They have no idea what a privilege it is to live like that.

Adam’s wife, Aimee, and Margot’s husband, Ted, have similar pedigrees. Aimee is Manhattan born and bred, while Ted abandoned his working-class roots twenty-one years ago when he enrolled at Yale and never looked back, marrying higher than he could climb alone.

Ted works at Goldman Sachs with another guest, Rick. Rick’s wife, Eden, is a wellness influencer to the rich and famous, blue-check verified and followed by every actress who has ever won an Oscar, as if green juice leads to gold statues.

The next guest is a woman named Farah, an obstetrician of some fame, which I had no idea was a thing. She has a lower profile than Eden, but research has revealed she’s delivered babies born with more net worth than 99 percent of the country’s working adults. The next generation of privilege starts inside the womb, and Farah is the first to get her hands on them. Her husband, Joe, is a local politician with his sights set on the White House. As charismatic as he is ruthless, according to the news.

This might be the single most influential group I’ve ever hosted, and yet none of that alters my plans for this weekend.

My phone pings with a message and I reach for it too quickly, knocking my pen to the floor. It rolls six inches to the east. If my older sister, Andi, were here, she would ask me why I still haven’t called Eric to take a look at the floor. A slope could indicate a rotted joist, I know that. Andi would point out that knowing the issue isn’t the same as fixing it. Eric’s status as my ex-boyfriend makes it complicated to call in favors from my contractor.

Flustered, I grab the pen and look at the preview of a text from Margot, the designated organizer for this weekend.

Confirming foam (or preferably latex) pillows, my brother is allergic to feathers.

If Margot and her crew had learned the correct lessons at those fancy schools, they’d have thought about their obligation to leave the world a better place than they’d found it. Instead they learned they sleep better with hypoallergenic pillows. I leave her text unread. We’ll deal with it when she arrives.

No matter who my guests are, I always maintain a pleasant smile and an even tone. That’s the unspoken code between guest and host. They demand things, I nod, and we call it vacation, not entitlement. Most guests are content to figure out their minor inconveniences themselves, but I can tell I’m going to have to enforce the rule with Margot: the limit is three requests a day.

I don’t think I’ve made three requests of anyone else in my entire life, never mind three in a single day. I started working odd jobs at the age of sixteen, using Andi’s ID, and it wasn’t long before I dropped out of school to help pay the bills. Two years later, on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, my mother handed me a deed for three acres of waterfront property on the North Fork of Long Island. The property had been placed in trust for Andi and me from our absentee father, set up in his grandest gesture of guilt.

That day, I called in sick at the diner, and Andi and I drove out to survey the property. It didn’t take a building inspector to see that the 7,500-square-foot house was uninhabitable. The windows were broken, the roof sloped, and most of the shingles and siding were missing.

You get what you get and you don’t get upset.

I never heard from my father again. His youngest daughter was legally an adult. His support obligations, as tenuous as they’d ever been, were over. Happy birthday to me.

I didn’t sell the house as land per the suggestion of my father’s hack lawyer who handled the transfer. I didn’t even consider it, because in the ruins I saw a ticket to a better life for Andi and me. I withdrew all the money I’d earned and hadn’t given to my mother, and spent it on moving to Greenport and the renovations needed to turn the crumbling beauty into a rental vacation home.

Quickly, I learned that my savings weren’t enough, so I relied on an old personality trait in a new town—I hustled. I got a job waitressing at Claudio’s Seafood Restaurant while Andi consumed YouTube tutorials on plumbing and drywall. We survived on twenty different shapes of pasta, and in our spare time, scrolled through Pinterest for painting and decorating ideas.

With grit and favors, many mistakes, and one contractor-turned-boyfriend, we restored the home to its original Victorian design. Over three years we added modern, practical touches, like central air and floor-to-ceiling windows to show off the water view. Once again, it wasn’t enough.

I put so much planning, hard work, and heart into the renovation that I was deflated when my bucolic pictures resulted in nothing more than weekend bookings. We never made it out of the red during that first summer we were operational, and by the Fourth of July I had to beg for my shifts back at Claudio’s. And it got worse.

That winter, a pipe burst in the house, gushing and threatening to flood the basement. It was a bigger job than we could handle, and money was tight. I called the kindest plumber and proposed an astrological reading—a discipline I’d been studying since I was fourteen—in exchange for the work. He scoffed and hung up, but called back an hour later. He said that if I could scrape up the money for parts, he’d kick in the labor if I impressed his wife. After a ninety-minute session, she declared me a witch (apparently a good one) and promptly sent all her friends to me.

For the rest of the winter, I was a part-time waitress, an astrologer to the locals, and a room renter to tourists. On a lark, I combined my roles into one. I included an astrological dinner party for any stay of three nights or longer, with an option to purchase chart readings for shorter stays at $250 a head. The house was booked every single day that summer. With one celebrity sighting a few years later, the Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat was an official success.

I have built a prosperous career using this once run-down house, along with my study of astrology and experience in the service industry. I have learned to persevere in a way none of my guests would when faced with my challenges. I’ve ignored messages from the Universe that I should curl up in a ball and surrender my dreams. But even with that fortitude, this weekend will test the limits of my belief in the cosmic interplay of fate and free will. What will happen, and what can I do about it?

The front gate chimes, alerting me that the first guests have arrived.

I cannot afford to be a coward.

STARS HARBOR ASTROLOGICAL RETREAT

ASTRO CHEAT SHEET

GUEST NAME: Margot

SUN SIGN: Pisces

MOON SIGN: Capricorn

RISING SIGN: Aquarius

AGE: 37

OCCUPATION: lawyer

RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER GUESTS: married to Ted, sister to Adam

SPECIAL NOTES: with her Pisces stellium, boundaries are not strong. What will push her to take a stand?

MARGOT

This is my picture of heaven: a cushioned Adirondack chair outside a gigantic Victorian home on the North Fork of Long Island where every room has sweeping ocean views by day and a wood-burning fireplace, expertly lit by the owner of the home without us having to risk a splinter, to keep us warm after we watch the sun set. Guaranteed cozy nights, as promised by the haven host, Rini.

Doesn’t it look amazing? I turn the phone to my husband.

Margot, we’re going to be there in five minutes, Ted says.

I hate waiting, I huff. I close Instagram and toss my phone in my purse, but not before the date flashes on my locked screen. I can’t believe this weekend is twenty-seven years since my parents died.

Ted glances away from the road to check on me. It’s a long time, but also not?

I nod. Twenty-seven years and I can still see my father laugh at my precocious monologues about life. Twenty-seven years and I still wonder if I’m making my mom proud.

It’s weird that this year feels like a hard one. Twenty-seven is so unremarkable.

Grief doesn’t follow a timeline.

My long-suffering husband smiles without taking his eyes off the road ahead of us. His tall, stocky frame and stable demeanor are the anchors in our rough seas, and we’ve had our share of those lately. This weekend, the tides will turn.

Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat popped up on my radar thanks to a fortuitous social media ad. After another month of failed pregnancy tests, I impulsively booked the last weekend of the summer at Stars Harbor, which was available due to an unexpected cancellation. Somehow, all of our schedules were open. It felt like fate.

Fate. In my twenties I would have said fate was for lazy people, people who don’t put in the work to get what they want. But as I get older, and coincidences no longer seem random, I’ve started to wonder if I’m missing an intangible ingredient required to make things happen. Maybe the answers are in the stars, as Rini promises.

I’m not sure I believe in astrology yet, but I am nearing desperation. I have questions I need answered. The Stars Harbor testimonials raving about Rini’s astrological accuracy were as important to me as sunset snaps over the water. Guests boasted that they’d come back year after year for equal parts relaxation and life insight. Ted thought the included astrological reading was nothing more than a parlor trick, but I took it seriously.

This weekend I will secure my future: to have a baby, and to get my brother back.

The car’s navigation alerts us that our destination is one thousand feet ahead. Ted makes a left into the driveway marked STARS HARBOR ASTROLOGICAL RETREAT. He squeezes my hand as we wait for the beechwood gate to open slowly.

It’s to keep the deer out, I say, repeating the owner’s words.

Well, good, because it doesn’t look like much of a match for anything else, he says, kissing the back of my hand. The gate is tall but flimsy, the mechanics no more sophisticated than a lever and a crank. It looks like it would splinter if Ted pressed the gas and barreled right through it. And we drive a very tame Audi.

The gate exposes a long and decadent gravel driveway, a river of small brown-speckled white pebbles, like my favorite Toasted Marshmallow jelly beans. The edges are lined with bricks of light gray stone.

Ted barely lifts his foot from the brake as the gate recedes and we take in the lush flora. Soon, the white clapboard Victorian home appears as if it’s rising out of the sparkling ocean in the distance. The structure is accented with black shutters, a black roof, and a circular turret. On the ride out east, I felt slightly disappointed that Stars Harbor was not painted Easter egg colors of turquoise and purple with sunshine yellow, like some of the other versions we’d passed. But the truth is, I prefer things in black and white.

My legs stick to the leather seats after three and a half hours of traffic, but I swing my door open and peel myself out of the car. I raise my arms overhead and stretch my spine tall. Behind us sits a tiny cottage where the owner must live.

Turn around and look at that view, Ted says.

The manicured lawn sprawls out hundreds of yards to the sparking blue water. Evergreen trees in the distance to the east and west obscure the neighbors. The distant shoreline of Connecticut is twenty-three nautical miles away. Ted wraps his arms around my waist and I lean into him. It’s like we’re the only people in the world.

Hello, a young woman calls. She waits for us at the grand front entrance of the house. The double doors are made of dark wood with raised glass panels etched in a vine motif. There’s a projecting pavilion above the entry door laced with greenery. It’s even more stunning than the photos.

Rini?

It’s Ree-knee, short for Serena, she says.

On the phone I imagined an uptight, snobbish woman who fancied herself refined. If I’d had to guess, I would have said she was older than my thirty-seven years. Much older. An empty nester. But in person, Rini barely looks like she could legally buy alcohol.

Welcome to Stars Harbor, Mr. and Mrs. Flynn, she says.

I was the one who made the reservations, so she thinks my last name is Ted’s last name too.

Please, call us Ted and Margot, I say, electing to keep it casual. Rini opens the front door and waits for us to step inside. My gaze lifts to the candelabra-style chandelier hanging from the twenty-foot ceiling. Below it is a spiral staircase like a strand of DNA. The flooring is a wide blond-wood herringbone. Very elegant.

This is lovely, I say.

I’ll give you a little tour, and then you can get settled, Rini says.

We pass the sweeping staircase on the left, and on the right, a unique round library I saw posted on BookTok. Outfitted with books in every color from floor to ceiling, it looks like a candy store.

This will be Adam’s favorite, I say to Ted, nodding at my brother’s titles on her shelf.

Rini shows us the classic white kitchen with its stocked fridge, and then the stately study that smells of leather and old textbooks.

This is where you’ll have the private astrological readings, Rini says.

Ted claims the game parlor as his spot because it has billiards and shuffleboard in addition to full-size Ms. Pac-Man and Frogger machines. I can’t choose a favorite. Each room on the first floor is swathed in jewel tones, emerald green, ruby red, sapphire blue, and citrine yellow, like a real life Clue house.

I notice that some of the windows are small and thick with imposing panes while others are expansive and frameless. I ask Rini about the stark difference.

These rooms were part of the original house, built in 1894, Rini says. This area of Long Island gets summer storms and violent winds during hurricane season. Now, we have better methods of protection, but then, they had little choice but to limit the windows.

Rini leads us past the formal dining room to another living room.

Wow, Ted and I say in unison.

The Stars Harbor showstopper is the floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s as if the high tide could bring the ocean inside.

Ironic, isn’t it? That modern touches allow for the centuries’ old natural beauty to shine, Rini says.

That’s the Atlantic? Ted asks.

The Long Island Sound, an estuary of the Atlantic, Rini says. Shall we get upstairs to the suites?

The back of the house also boasts twenty-foot ceilings, with a second staircase, this one built into the wall like a colonial, camouflaged.

Was that a servant staircase? I ask.

You know your old houses, Rini says. We kept it for subtlety. Is there anything more unsightly than a housekeeping cart blocking your room? You won’t see that here.

We follow Rini to the grand staircase in the front of the house. I run my hand along the smooth stained wood. At the top we land on plush cream carpet.

I’ve got you set up in the Gemini Suite, Rini says. I assure you it’s the best room in the house.

Ted and I both nod. He’ll take her word for it and collapse on our bed. I will satisfy my curiosity by looking in every room before the others arrive.

In case you are inclined to explore, a reminder that the suites in the second wing on the east side of the staircase are not open to your group, Rini adds.

Why not? I ask.

Because you have all you need in this wing, she says with a smile.

Rini opens the door marked GEMINI with a symbol beneath it. The walls are painted seafoam and the curtains are a bold yellow-and-green pattern. The bed is framed by a gold slat headboard and has an ivory duvet. It’s tasteful, an understated Versailles, but the kind of piece you’d be sick of after a few months at home.

I’ll leave you here, Mr. and Mrs. Flynn.

I clear my throat, preparing to speak up.

It’s actually Margot Flynn and Ted Williams, I say.

I notice Rini glance at my ring finger.

You’ll change it when you have children, she states.

I don’t think so, Ted says kindly but firmly.

It’s fine, I interject.

Normally I would have engaged in a prolonged debate, dismantling her antiquated ideas around surnames that treat women like property. Or I would have probed into how hurtful her comment could be to someone facing infertility. But neither lawyer Margot nor trying-to-conceive Margot has been invited on this trip.

Rini isn’t a stranger on the street offering unsolicited advice. Her comment might have been a hint. After all, she’s an astrologer who has read my future chart and was so bold as to reference my future children. That has to be a good sign.

After Rini leaves the room, I open the door to the Juliet balcony overlooking the Long Island Sound. A flock of honking geese takes flight into the cloudless blue sky.

I’ll grab the luggage, Ted says. You should go down there and relax. I see an Adirondack chair with your name on it.

I place my purse on the desk in our room and grab my library book. I turn left in the hallway past the other suites: Aries, Capricorn, and Cancer. The doors are all closed, but I peek inside. The Aries Suite intrigues with its pops of red for fire, while the earth-toned Capricorn Suite is dark and brooding. The Cancer Suite is painted a calming blue but has a tacky plastic shellfish mounted on the far wall. Rini was right, we got the best room.

I skip down the back staircase and am greeted by the view out the immaculate floor-to-ceiling windows. I step through the sliding glass door and position my Adirondack chair to face the still-as-glass water. I’m about to crack open my book when I spot Ted opening the back door with two fingers. He carries a beer for himself in one hand and a glass of iced tea for me in the other. I meet him halfway across the lawn.

Thanks, honey.

I lean in for a hug and press my head to Ted’s chest. He wraps me in his arms, the can of beer cool against my back. He touches my chin so I look up at him. He kisses me and I shiver, despite the warm sun beating down on us. I gesture for him to sit in the chair next to me.

Vacation is the perfect time to raise a certain difficult topic of conversation, and our host has served me the perfect opportunity. Ted reaches over and kisses the top of my head. I rest my ear on his shoulder.

I think I’d like our kids to have my last name, I say into his shirt without looking up.

Really? Over a decade together and you’ve never mentioned that. I love that you still surprise me.

Rini might dismiss me as a progressive Manhattan-raised brat, but she doesn’t understand. My brother and I are the last living Flynns in our lineage. Adam’s got three girls, and I’ll plant the seed of responsibility in them to keep their name, the way I have, but I’d like to help carry on our surname too.

Family is everything to me. Adam and I lost our parents tragically when we were in elementary school. Nana raised us and was lucky enough to see us graduate from high school, but she passed away when I was twenty. For so long, my brother was my whole world. Then Ted came to save me from myself. Now I have three wonderful nieces. The last, most perfect piece, will be children of my own.

Do we have to decide right now? he asks.

"Yes, right this