The Lightning Season

The hat sat on the mantle for three years—Eddie's lucky baseball cap, sweat-stained at the brim, still carrying the scent of that final July evening. Cara wouldn't let me throw it out. She said it was sacred, but we both knew it was just fabric holding onto nothing.

We were at the palm reader's shack when the call came. The old woman had traced my lifeline, shaking her head.

"You're carrying someone else's burden," she'd said, her finger pressing into my hand until it left a red mark. "Someone who left too soon."

Lightning cracked the sky outside, so bright it turned the dusty crystals on her table to momentary stars. My phone buzzed. Eddie. Always Eddie.

He'd been hit by a pitch—a baseball, of all things—two hours south. A freak accident. Brain bleed. Gone before anyone could say don't go, stay with me.

That was three years ago. Now Cara stirred spinach in a pot, her back to me.

"You still miss him," she said softly. "More than me."

I didn't answer. What could I say? That Eddie was the lightning that struck my life—brilliant, destructive, illuminating everything after? That my brother had been the first person to really see me, even in a stolen baseball cap and dirty uniform?

Cara turned, wooden spoon in hand. The spinach smell filled the kitchen—earthy, bitter, like truth.

"Your palm," she said. "The lifeline she read. What did it actually say?"

I looked at my hand. The red mark from the palm reader had faded long ago.

"She said I was living someone else's life," I said.

Cara nodded, dropping the spoon into the sink with a clatter.

"And are you?" she asked.

Outside, lightning split the sky again. And I couldn't answer that either.