The Last Palm Reader

Margaret hadn't expected to spend her forty-fifth birthday at a funeral. The humidity in Charleston clung to everything — her dress, her lungs, the wilted **spinach** and cucumber sandwiches arranged meticulously on catering trays. Her mother had always insisted on funeral food being "light," as if grief could be measured in calories.

"You're sweating," David whispered, his thumb grazing her **palm**. The contact was familiar, devastatingly so. They hadn't touched since the night she'd found his hotel receipt. Six months of radio silence, broken now because death, like infidelity, demanded witnesses.

"It's ninety degrees," she replied, pulling away. "And I haven't had time to color my roots. Can see every gray **hair** from here."

David studied her face. "They suit you. Makes you look... experienced."

She laughed, a sound that belonged more to the woman she'd been before him. "Is that what we call it now?"

The minister spoke of her mother's generosity, her community service, the **palm** trees she'd planted along the church driveway. Margaret thought about how her mother had never approved of David — had read his **palm** at a Christmas party and declared his lifeline "tragically short," though she'd meant it metaphorically. Or maybe not. Her mother had always loved a good prophecy.

"I'm moving to Portland," David said suddenly.

The spinach leaves were wilting visibly now. "Why Oregon?"

"Because you said once you wanted to live somewhere it rained." He looked at her hands. "Because I measured my **palm** against yours last night, and my lifeline is still longer."

Margaret touched her hair, the gray strands catching light through the church windows. Experience, he'd called it. Maybe she'd earned it.

"I don't forgive you," she said.

"I know."

"But I miss you."

"I know."

Outside, after the service, David pressed something into her hand — a small packet of **spinach** seeds, her mother's favorite variety for the garden.

"She gave them to me," he said. "Said I should plant them somewhere with you."

Margaret examined the packet. The expiration date was three years past. "You can't plant expired seeds."

"Sometimes," David said, "things grow anyway."

She tucked the seeds into her purse, beside her father's old **p**alm reading guide. Maybe experience meant knowing when to plant, and when to let dead things lie.