The Last Palm Reader

Elaine sat in her car outside the apartment complex she'd shared with Marcus for seven years, until last Tuesday when he'd said the words that still echoed in her head: *I feel like I'm married to a zombie.*

She'd spent the first week walking through life on autopilot—exactly the way he'd accused her of being. Sleepwalking through her marketing job, forcing down **spinach** salads for lunch because they were healthy, because they were what a person who had her life together would eat. She'd started taking **vitamin** D supplements after reading an article about seasonal depression, swallowing them with her morning coffee like secular communion wafers.

That morning, something had shifted. She'd driven past the same strip mall a hundred times, but today she noticed it: *Madame Zora's Palm Readings* tucked between a laundromat and a check-cashing place. The absurdity called to her.

Now she sat in the dim room, watching the woman trace lines on her open **palm** with a manicured finger. Madame Zora didn't look like she'd predict the future—she looked like she worked at a DMV.

"You're waiting for someone to come back," Zora said, not a question. "But you're not sure you want them to."

Elaine's throat tightened. "Is that in my hand?"

"It's in your eyes." Zora tapped her palm. "This line here—it forks. Two paths. One where he returns, one where he doesn't. Either way, you're the one who has to live in your skin."

Walking to her car afterward, Elaine saw a **fox** dart between parked SUVs—lean and orange and impossibly alive, moving through the suburban wasteland like it belonged there. It paused, watching her with eyes that held zero irony before slipping away.

She sat in her car for a long time, Marcus's words still with her but quieter now. *Zombie.* The truth of it stung. She'd been dead before he left—had been for years, performing the motions of a life she'd stopped feeling.

The fox had known something she didn't. How to move through hostile territory without apology. How to be exactly what it was.

Elaine started the engine. Not to go back to their apartment. Not to go to work. She drove toward the highway, palm still tingling where Zora had touched it, already beginning to feel like something new was growing there—something that might, someday, look like a life she actually wanted to live.