The Last Reading

The fortune teller's shop smelled of sandalwood and desperation. Elena sat across from the woman with the lined palms, watching dust motes dance in the slanted afternoon light.

"You've been taking care of everyone else," the woman said, tracing the lines on Elena's palm. "But who's taking care of you?"

Elena pulled her hand back. The question hit like lightning—sudden, illuminating, terrible. Three weeks after David left, she'd adopted a rescue dog named Basil, as if filling the silence with another creature's needs might somehow fill the void he'd left. Basil whimpered in the apartment alone for hours while she worked late at the firm, billing time she didn't have for clients she didn't care about.

"Your health line is fragmented," the woman continued. "Stress. Anxiety. You're not sleeping."

Elena thought of the vitamin supplements cluttering her bathroom counter—D, B12, magnesium, iron—each promising some version of herself she couldn't quite access. She swallowed them every morning with cold coffee, a ritual of hope that felt increasingly like prayer.

"There's something you're not seeing," the woman said, her dark eyes sharp. "Someone close to you. Cunning as a fox."

Elena's chest tightened. Sarah, her best friend since college, had been spending too much time with David lately. "Just checking on him," she'd said. "Making sure he's okay." But Elena had seen them together at the coffee shop last week—Sarah's hand on his arm, her head thrown back in laughter.

She stood up, leaving money on the table. The reading was over.

Outside, the autumn wind cut through her coat as she walked home. Basil greeted her at the door with desperate joy, his tail thumping against the doorframe. She knelt on the hardwood floor and buried her face in his fur, letting herself finally feel it all—the betrayal, the loneliness, the crushing weight of expectations she'd been carrying for years.

The fortune teller was wrong about one thing. Elena didn't need anyone to take care of her. She needed to stop taking care of everyone else.

She reached for her phone and sent Sarah a message: "I know."

Then she poured the vitamins into the trash. Tomorrow, she'd start figuring out what she actually needed.