The Palm Reader's Last Prescription

The bottle of vitamins sat on Mara's nightstand, orange plastic catching the morning light. Placebo, the doctor had called them, but Mara took two anyway. Some mornings, belief was the only medication that worked.

She found Liam on the balcony, palm extended toward the ocean as if trying to read the future in the lines of his own hand. The water below was restless today, gray-green and churning, same as it had been for the three weeks since they'd fled to this rental house—Mara's desperate attempt to outrun the diagnosis that had followed them across state lines.

"What do you see?" she asked, setting a mug of coffee beside him.

Liam didn't turn. "A lifeline that stops too soon. A heart line that's all tangled up." He lowered his hand, fingers trembling slightly. "The usual bullshit."

He'd started reading palms during chemo, a party trick that became something darker—strangers paying twenty dollars for someone dying to tell them they'd live forever. The irony had seemed funny then, in that hospital room smelling of antiseptic and false hope.

Now it just seemed cruel.

"I bought more vitamins," Mara said, her voice catching. "The ones from that wellness store downtown. The clerk said they'd worked for her mother's—"

"Mara." Liam turned finally, eyes tired but kind. "Stop."

She couldn't stop. The vitamins, the palm readings, the ocean air—they'd all become prayers she didn't know how to make. She'd sold her car last week to pay for an experimental treatment that turned out to be another dead end. Her mother had called, sounding alarmed, asking if Mara needed to come home. She couldn't explain that she already was home, wherever Liam was.

Liam reached across the small table, palm up. An invitation, not a reading.

Mara placed her hand in his. The contact was electric, terrifying—touching him still felt like touching something that might dissolve.

"The vitamins won't work," he said softly. "Neither will the palm readings. And this house won't be far enough."

"I know."

"But you're still here."

The water crashed against the rocks below, relentless and indifferent. Some prayers got answered, she thought. Just never the ones you asked for.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, and it was the truest thing she'd spoken in months.

Liam's thumb traced the lines of her palm. "Then we'll call that enough."

Mara looked at the vitamin bottle, then at the ocean, then at the man who was teaching her how to watch someone leave without ever really letting them go. Some days, she thought, belief was the only medication that worked—and love was the only vitamin worth taking.