Palm-Faced Disconnect

Mara lay beneath the swaying **palm** fronds, the shade doing nothing to cool the heat spreading through her chest. Beside her, David's face glowed with the blue light of his **iPhone**, his thumb scrolling through emails that couldn't possibly be more important than their tenth anniversary dinner.

"You're missing it," she said, gesturing toward the sunset bleeding across the horizon like a wounded sky. "The colors change every minute."

"Just one more thing," he muttered, not looking up. "This merger—"

"The merger you've been working on for six months. The one that's more important than us."

The silence stretched between them, filled only by the distant crash of waves and the relentless ping of notifications. Mara reached into her beach bag and fingered the amber **vitamin** bottle—her latest attempt to fix something that couldn't be fixed with supplements. B12 for energy, Vitamin D for mood, DHA for focus. She'd been taking them religiously for three months, yet still woke up exhausted, still felt the gnawing emptiness that no pill could fill.

"I read somewhere," she said, her voice tight, "that palm readers can tell how long you have left by the lines in your hand."

David finally looked up, his expression annoyed. "What?"

"Life line, heart line, head line. They say everything's written there. Like maybe we don't have any choices at all."

"You're being dramatic." He returned to his phone, the light casting harsh shadows across his handsome, tired face.

"I'm being realistic." She poured the vitamins into her palm, studying the small capsules like they might hold answers. "What if I stopped taking these? What if I just... let things run their course?"

"Don't start with your health anxiety again. You're fine. We're fine."

"We're not." She stood up, the vitamins clutched in her hand. "I need you to see me. I need you to see us before there's nothing left to see."

The notification pinged again. David glanced at his screen, then back at her. For a moment, something flickered in his eyes—fear, maybe. Or perhaps just the realization that even the best supplements couldn't cure what was already dead.

"Mara—"

"Come find me when you can put it down." She walked toward the water, the vitamins scattered in her wake like forgotten prayers.