The Palm Reader's Last Shift

The air conditioning in Office 417 had been dead for three weeks. Elena sat at her desk, feeling like a **zombie** in an open-collar shirt, clicking through spreadsheets that meant nothing to anyone. Her divorce papers sat in the top drawer, next to her emergency almonds. She was forty-one, exhausted, and going through the motions of a life she no longer recognized.

Her phone buzzed. Her mother again.

"I had my **palm** read," her mother said. "The woman said you're at a crossroads."

Elena almost laughed. She wasn't at a crossroads. She was stuck in traffic.

"Mom, please."

"She said there's a man. Someone unexpected."

The only unexpected man in Elena's life was Greg from Accounting, who stole her lunch from the breakroom fridge every Tuesday.

That evening, Elena found herself at a strip mall palm reader's shop, because sometimes you just need someone to tell you something you already know. The shop smelled like sandalwood and desperation. An elderly woman with silver hair took Elena's hand, tracing the lines on her **palm** with a manicured finger.

"You're lonely," the woman said. "But not alone."

Outside the shop, a **cat** wound itself around Elena's ankles—a ragged orange tom with one ear. He followed her to her car, then to her apartment building. Elena, who had never owned a pet in her life, found herself buying cat food at 11 PM.

She named him Greg.

The next morning, Greg-from-Accounting reached for her yogurt in the breakroom. Elena caught his wrist. "No," she said. "That's mine."

He looked genuinely surprised. "Oh. Sorry."

The orange **cat** waited on her windowsill when she got home. He purred like a small engine, loudly and without shame. Elena realized she hadn't been touched in eight months—not really touched, not without conditions or apologies.

The **zombie** feeling began to lift, just slightly. Her mother called. "The palm reader—"

"I know," Elena said. The orange **cat** butted his head against her hand. She wasn't fixed. She wasn't healed. But she had a yogurt nobody would steal, and a creature who needed her, and a **palm** that still held lines she hadn't written yet.

"Tell the fortune teller she was right," Elena said. "Just not in the way she thought."