Lines Across the Skin

The cable snaked across the hotel room floor like a black accusation. Elena stared at it, then at her own palm—its lines creased deeper than they'd been three days ago, when David had walked out.

"You're full of bull," he'd said, his voice flat. Not angry. Just done.

She'd laughed, because that was her reflex. Deflection through humor. But the joke had landed wrong, as her jokes often did lately. "Bullshit? Or bullish? I thought you liked ambitious women."

"I like women who don't sell their own brother out for a promotion."

Elena's palm still carried the impression of her brother's phone number, written there an hour ago in the hotel bar. He'd called to tell her their mother was dying. She'd spent two years climbing over him at the firm, step by calculated step, and now their mother had three weeks.

She pressed her hand against the hotel window, feeling the warmth of the Miami afternoon against her skin. Palm trees swayed in the courtyard, their fronds like abandoned umbrellas. She remembered being seven, reading a book about palmistry, tracing her father's work-worn hands and pretending she could see his future.

She couldn't see anything now.

The cable that connected her laptop to the hotel's ethernet port was her only lifeline. The presentation she needed to finish by midnight could wait. Everything could wait. Her brother had said, "You don't have to come, El. You have your career."

What was the word for someone who chose wrong and then couldn't unchoose it?

The bull-headed stubbornness that had made her a vice president by 34—that same quality now kept her frozen in this room, afraid to call her brother back. What if he said it was too late? What if he didn't?

She looked at her palm again. The lines were still there. The story hadn't been written yet.

Elena picked up her phone and dialed.

"I'm coming home," she said. "For however long she has. And after, we'll figure out the rest."

The silence on the other end stretched. Then her brother's voice cracked. "Yeah. Okay."

She packed her bag, leaving the cable coiled on the desk. The presentation could wait. Her mother couldn't.