The Palm Reader on the 6:05

Elena checked her watch—6:05 PM, Friday. The train arrived, and she wasn't running toward home. She was running from the promotion she'd just accepted, from the sterile corner office with its view of other sterile buildings. Her palm rested against the cold subway pole, clammy with sweat she hadn't noticed until now.

Three stops ago, she'd bought an orange from a street vendor. A reflex. Something to do with her hands besides check her phone, besides texting her husband "I got it" when what she meant was "I don't know if I want it."

The train lurched. Elena's hat—that sensible beige thing she'd bought at 32, when she decided to become someone who wore sensible hats—slipped forward. She righted it, catching her reflection in the dark window. A stranger stared back. Someone who'd spent twenty years climbing toward a view that now looked suspiciously like the ground floor.

"You have good hands," a voice said.

Elena turned. An old woman sat beside her, though she could have sworn the seat was empty. The woman's face was a roadmap of lines deep enough to hide entire lifetimes.

"Your palm," the woman continued. "You have good hands. Strong. But tired."

"I'm not—" Elena began, then stopped. The train conductor announced her stop.

"The orange," the woman said, nodding toward Elena's bag. "You're not going to eat it. You never were."

Elena looked at the fruit, then back at the woman. Something shifted in her chest, like ground settling after an earthquake.

"No," Elena said. "I suppose I'm not."

She left the orange on the empty seat when she exited. The hat—she pulled it off and dropped it in the trash bin outside the station. She wasn't that woman anymore. The one who settled. The one who ran toward things she didn't want just because she was supposed to want them.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Her husband. She'd call him from a real phone, somewhere with noise and life and people who didn't know who she was supposed to be. She wasn't running anymore. She was finally, finally, walking toward herself.