The Last Reading

Maya pressed her palm against the cool glass of the fish tank, watching the single goldfish glide through murky water. It had been Elias's favorite—stupid, really, that she'd kept it alive this long. Three years since the accident, and still she performed these rituals. Feed the fish. Water the peace lily. Wake up. Go to work. Come home. Exist.

She'd become something else in the aftermath. Not quite herself, not quite gone. A zombie of sorts, moving through days that blurred together, eating because she had to, sleeping because her body demanded it. Her friends stopped calling. They meant well, she knew, but their concern felt like radiation—too much exposure and she'd wither.

The carnival had set up in the vacant lot behind her apartment building. Neon lights blinked against the night sky, tinny music drifted through her windows. Maya hadn't intended to go. But the goldfish had stopped eating that morning, floating near the surface, and something in her had snapped.

"You're carrying something heavy," the fortune teller said, taking Maya's hand without asking. The woman's trailer smelled of incense and cat hair. "I see—"

"I don't want a reading," Maya pulled her hand back. "I don't know why I came here."

The woman's eyes softened. "Then why are you here?"

Maya thought of the fish. Thought of Elias's laugh, the way he'd made coffee, the thousands of moments that made up a life and now seemed to have evaporated like water on hot pavement. "I think I forgot how to live."

The fortune teller nodded slowly. "That happens, love. Grief is its own kind of country. You learn the language, you learn the customs, and suddenly you realize you've been there so long that you've forgotten how to be anywhere else."

She reached across the small table, palm up. An invitation.

"Your line," she said, tracing Maya's lifeline, "it's fragmented here. But see? It continues. The break doesn't end the story." She pressed Maya's palm between both of hers. "You're not dead, Maya. You're in the middle. And the middle is always the hardest part."

Maya walked home in the cool October air, the carnival lights flickering behind her. The goldfish was still floating when she returned, barely moving. She tapped the glass gently, and it stirred—a flash of orange in the dark room.

"Me too," she whispered. "Me too."