Read with Fern

Spoilers Beyond This Point

Characters:

• Rosie: the main character, at Yale on a scholarship but hiding it.
• Cressida: the Regina George of the group, extremely wealthy and a good rider.
• Annelise: a new transfer student, great at tarot readings and riding.
• Grayson Tate: Cressida’s father, former rider, and founder of the foundation Rosie was a part of.
• Anthea: Cressida’s mother, stay at home mom.
• Lila: another roommate, parents are lawyers, but she’s struggling with cash flow
• Andra: another roommate, actual trust fund kid like Cressida
• Shannon: the stable owner for the equestrian team
• Mary Anne: Grayson’s assistant
• Victoria: Annelise’s older sister

Ready for my full opinion?

“I was supposed to share my room, and no one had told me? I’d been gone for a year, but so had Lila and Andra. And just because I was poorer than they were, I’d been demoted to coach?”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Rosie spent a year in Argentina, while Lila and Andra were also studying abroad. Cressida had stayed in New Haven, and had been in charge of finding a place for them to live together their senior year. As the most privileged in their group, she’d used her connections to find a gorgeous house that a professor was renting. Unfortunately, Cressida is terrible at sharing information, so when Rosie gets into town, she has to find a way into the house, and then deduce which bedroom is hers.

And once she finds the bedroom, it’s clear there’s already another occupant. When Cressida gets back, Rosie gets the lowdown and finds out Cressida invited her new friend Annelise to also live with them. Cressida had assumed Rosie would be okay sharing a room for the discounted rent, and Rosie is forced to agree. But she’s apprehensive about Annelise.

“Making breakfast for everyone, being that perfect friend, the one who made everyone else’s lives just that little bit better.”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Rosie really fluctuates on her feelings about Annelise as the first few weeks progress. Rosie’s schtick has always been the helpful friend, doing whatever she can to seem useful to the other 3 girls. But Annelise starts naturally filling in a lot of that slot, leaving Rosie feeling vulnerable and unwanted. The only flaw Rosie’s been able to find is that Annelise is a better rider than Cressida, and it’s been irritating Cressida. As a longtime friend, Rosie knows it’s better to let Cressida be the best, especially since her father was a phenomenal rider back in his day.

Then the group goes to a party, and Annelise offers to do a reading for Rosie. In that moment, Rosie lets go and decides to fully befriend Annelise. Annelise begins doing readings for Rosie almost every day, and explains every card when it’s pulled. Over time, Rosie begins learning the basics of tarot, and they start going more in depth with their readings.

“‘Oh, the King,’ she said, smiling softly. ‘He’s always Grayson Tate when he comes up in my readings.’ ‘Wait, what? Why does Grayson Tate come up in your readings?’ She flinched, just slightly. ‘Because. Well, I guess because I want to ride as well as he did. You know. Olympics and all that.’”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

As the readings turn into lessons, Annelise starts doing her own readings and explaining them to Rosie. On one occasion, Rosie asks a question and Annelise brings up Grayson Tate, Cressida’s famous father. Annelise reveals that he’s always a part of her personal readings, which Rosie obviously finds odd. Rosie’s personal connection to Grayson Tate is the foundation he started to teach underprivileged children to ride horses. It’s how Rosie learned to ride, but the foundation was only active in the northeast, and Annelise was from California.

“I followed [Lila’s] stricken gaze to the piece of paper that had fallen between us. A check. To cash. For ten grand. From Cressida’s account.”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

While Rosie and Annelise have settled into a routine as roommates, the other housemates have started acting a little off. One day, Rosie runs into Lila coming out of Cressida’s room. And she has a check in her hand that’s from Cressida’s account. Rosie asks her about it, slightly stunned, and Lila immediately gets defensive. After some gentle pushing, Lila admits that she wrote the check without Cressida’s knowledge, but insists Cressida is so rich that she’ll never notice. Lila begs Rosie not to say anything, and Rosie agrees to keep the peace.

Then it’s Cressida’s birthday, and she brings the four other girls home with her for her birthday party. Rosie, Lila, and Andra have been to the Tate estate multiple times before, but Annelise is abnormally nervous about her first time. At Cressida’s party, her dad tells her that he put $500,000 in her account that morning so that she could start purchasing her own horses. Annelise is furious, whispering to Rosie about what she could do with 10% of that money. Rosie is shocked, because she’d assumed Annelise was just as rich as the other girls. 

On the way home from the birthday weekend, Cressida stops the car in the middle of nowhere and announces that one of the girls has been stealing from her. She’s convinced it’s Annelise, even though there’s no proof, and forces her out the car before the girls can say almost anything. Rosie tries to silently convince Lila to confess, and Cressida kicks Rosie out too. She speeds off with Lila and Andra, leaving Rosie and Annelise to walk several miles until they can get a signal and get a ride home. 

“‘Do you really want to know?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s the question before the question. Do you really want to know? Because if you’re looking for reassurance, if you’re looking for comfort—the cards can’t give you that.’”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

The three housemates have stopped talking to Annelise completely. Rosie refuses to follow suit, and the two start spending even more time together. Rosie learns even more about tarot reading, and Annelise starts sharing some of the tricks of the trade, like determining who wants a real reading versus a happy reading. Annelise also admits to Rosie that she’s been going to NYC several times a week to work at a spa in the Village and holds readings there. 

“My body suddenly wanted to convulse. To seize up into a little ball, to make itself small. To curl over gagging with the anxiety, the nausea, the fear. ‘Where’s Annelise?’ I said. Cress’s blue gaze cut into mine. ‘Annelise fell,’ she said.”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

After several weeks of no talking from the housemates, Rosie comes home one day to an empty house. And when the housemates return, there’s no Annelise. Rosie immediately asks what happened, and the girls tell her that Annelise was riding Cressida’s prized horse, fell, and was rushed to a hospital. Rosie literally runs to the hospital, tells a nurse she’s Annelise’s sister, and the nurse sadly breaks the news that Annelise is dead. 

The rest of the girls stay stoic about the situation, but Rosie spends the rest of her senior year in a depressive haze. The girls largely avoid her, but more in a “not sure what to do” way than a “we hate you” way. As the school year winds down, Cressida approaches Rosie with a job offer. She’d talked to her dad about the situation, and since Rosie’s goal was to work in finance like Grayson, he was willing to hire her for the summer while his second assistant was on maternity leave.

Grateful for the lifeline, Rosie accepts. Andra got an internship in NYC for the summer, and her dad is letting her live in the family apartment, so Andra invites Rosie to live with her to save on rent. Rosie dives headfirst into becoming the best assistant Grayson’s ever had. This includes knowing everything about his personal life, anticipating his every need, and going to Cressida’s birthday party even though Cressida hadn’t talked to her in months.

“‘Oh, Rosie, how wonderful!’ [Anthea] cried. ‘Cressy will be just delighted. And Gray’s been just raving about you. How do you do it, his assistants never stay longer—’ But she cut herself off, running an invisible zipper over her lips, then splitting into an enormous grin.”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

At Cressida’s party, Rosie spends time socializing with Anthea and Cressida, but is quickly asked to help with something in the back. Which turns out to be helping the hired bartender for the entirety of the party. Disillusioned about how she fits into the Tate’s lives at her current stage, Rosie leaves early and seethes in the apartment. 

After her bubble has been burst, she starts keeping a sharper eye on the happenings around her at work. On lunch breaks and rare moments she’s in the office alone, she starts peeking through Grayson’s business and charity books. She realizes that only assistants ever cut checks out of the charity checking account. One day, Grayson’s best friend visits the office, and Grayson asks Rosie to write a check from the foundation to his friend for $100,000. And that’s when Rosie knows something isn’t right.

“‘Rosie!’ she interrupted sharply. ‘There are all sorts of laws governing how a charity can spend its money. And cutting six-figure checks to your already rich friends isn’t one of them. Don’t you know that?’ she said, and her voice was incredulous. ‘Didn’t you go to Yale?’”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Rosie asks her mom about the check, and she confirms what Rosie already knew. What she’d been instructed to do was illegal, and Rosie’s name was the one on the check. This makes Rosie even more determined to uncover some hard evidence about how Grayson runs his company and the foundation.

“So that’s the truth. I didn’t meet Annelise’s sister because of justice or vengeance or because of some noble quest to bring truth to light. I met her because I was mad at the Tates, and I had nowhere to put that anger.”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Rosie gets a text from Annelise’s older sister, Victoria, accusing her of being part of Annelise’s death. When Rosie responds, insisting she had nothing to do with her death, Victoria asks to meet face-to-face. They meet, and Rosie tells Victoria everything she knows about the day Annelise died. Then Victoria starts revealing all the secrets Annelise had been keeping from Rosie. 

1. Her name was Annie, not Annelise.
2. She hadn’t gone to a fancy school with equestrian studies before transferring to Yale. She’d been at community college.
3. She was at Yale solely for the equestrian program, and was determined to beat the best rider there.
4. She was determined to beat the best rider, Cressida, to get Grayson’s attention.
5. She wanted to get Grayson’s attention so she could convince him she deserved him as a mentor.
6. Once Grayson started mentoring her, she’d reveal she was actually his biological daughter.

Needless to say, it’s a lot of information for Rosie to retain in one conversation. She asks some follow-up questions and then goes home, with everything swirling in her brain.

“‘But she’s never going to be twenty-three, because your little princess, your other daughter, killed her.’ ‘What does that mean?’ he cried. ‘Why don’t you ask Cressida? Let’s just put it this way,’ I said, glancing down at the pile of shattered glass at my feet. ‘I think she may have inherited your temper.’”

The Fortune Seller, Rachel Kapelke-Dale

After some pointed barbs from Grayson and Mary Anne at work, Rosie can’t keep it in anymore. She confronts Grayson about the foundation and his misuse of funds. They get into a screaming fight, and she tells him that she knows Annelise, and that Cressida is the reason she’s dead. She storms out of the building in a fury, realizing almost immediately that she left her phone. She purposefully waits until the next day to go get it, and is told to go to HR. There, she meets with Mary Anne, who tells her Grayson was found dead the night before. She gives Rosie her phone back and sends her on her way.

It’s hinted that Victoria might’ve had a hand in killing Grayson, but there’s nothing concrete. When Grayson died, his will stated that all his children would split his assets equally. Since Annelise was included, her family received her assets. Rosie didn’t think anything of that until she checks her bank account one day and finds an extra $275,000. She’s not sure if the money came as a “thank you” from Victoria or an “I’m sorry” from Cressida. Either way, she takes the money and starts the next chapter of her life with a clean slate.