The Fortune Teller's Hand

Elaine's palms were sweating against the steering wheel, though the October evening was cool. She'd become a spy in her own marriage, checking his phone while he showered, memorizing the patterns of his absences. The latest vitamin bottle she'd found in his gym bag—something exotic and expensive, nothing from their pharmacy—had sent her over the edge.

The fortune teller operated out of a cramped storefront between a laundromat and a bodega. The woman didn't ask Elaine's name. She simply took her hand, traced the lines with a nicotine-stained finger.

"You already know," the woman said. "You're looking for someone to tell you what you've already decided."

Elaine pulled her hand back. "Just tell me what you see."

"You'll leave him," the woman said, closing her eyes. "But not for the reason you think."

Outside, a fox darted across the empty street, something dangling from its jaws. Elaine watched it disappear into the darkness between buildings.

"That'll be forty dollars."

She drove home with the windows down, October air rushing through the car. Daniel was in the kitchen when she walked in, stirring something at the stove. He looked tired. He looked like the man she'd married twelve years ago, before the promotions and the mortgage and the slow accumulation of disappointments.

"I bought vitamins," he said, not turning around. "The doctor said my levels were low. I've been meaning to tell you."

Elaine felt something crack open in her chest. All the surveillance, all the suspicion—she'd been hunting for betrayals when the real problem was that they'd stopped telling each other the small things.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

She would tell him tomorrow about the job offer in another city, about the interviews she'd been secretly going on for weeks. About how she was planning to leave him, or maybe just leave everything.

"You know what's funny?" she said, taking a wine glass from the cabinet. "I almost accused you of something terrible today."

Daniel turned. "Bullshit," he said, but his eyes were kind. "You're not capable of terrible things, El."

She almost laughed. He had no idea.