Palm Springs, February

The fedora sat on the motel nightstand, its brim curled like a dying leaf. It had belonged to David's father, and David had stolen it from the hospice room two hours before the old man finally let go. He wasn't sure why. Hat theft wasn't exactly in the bereavement handbook.

"You're just like him," his sister had said at the service. "Bull-headed. Never knew when to quit."

She was right. Their father had been a force of nature—charming, stubborn, destructive. A man who'd left three marriages and two bankruptcies in his wake, but somehow people still lined up to buy him drinks at the VFW. The bastard had charisma. The bastard had secrets.

David checked his phone. Four missed calls from Sarah.

He'd come to Palm Springs for the funeral, but he'd stayed because he wasn't ready to go back to his own life. Back to the marriage that had been unraveling for months, the job that paid the bills but crushed his soul, the future that looked like a highway stretching into gray fog.

The woman at the front desk had told him about the palm reader behind the gas station. "She's the real deal," she'd said. "Not that crystal ball bullshit."

David found her in a converted garage, walls covered in velvet tapestries that smelled of incense and cat piss. Her name was Maria, and her hands were rough—gardener's hands.

"Your father," she said, before he could sit down. "You're wearing his energy."

She took his palm in hers, tracing the lines with calloused fingers. "You think you're running from something. But really, you're running toward it."

"What?"

"The choice you've been avoiding. The thing that scares you most." She pressed her thumb into the center of his palm. "Your father made his choices. Most of them wrong. But at least he made them."

David thought of Sarah. The silence at dinner. The sex that felt like performance. The way she looked right through him sometimes.

"You think you're nothing like him," Maria said softly. "But you inherited his worst trait—you think being stubborn is the same thing as being strong."

She released his hand. "The hat. It's not yours to carry."

David drove back to the motel with the windows down, desert air filling the car. He placed the fedora on the nightstand one last time, then called Sarah.

"I'm coming home," he said. "We need to talk."

"I was hoping you'd say that," she replied. "I was hoping you'd finally say that."

He left the hat in the room when he checked out. Let someone else inherit the weight.