The Palm Reader's Paradox

Margot hadn't taken her **vitamin** D supplements in three weeks—not since the day she found his wedding ring on the kitchen counter beside a note that said simply, "I'm sorry." Now she sat in a folding chair outside a shuttered CVS, watching a stray **cat** weave through her legs like it owned the sidewalk.

The **hat**—his fedora, the one he'd worn to their wedding—rested on her lap. She'd meant to donate it months ago, along with everything else that smelled like his sandalwood cologne. But she couldn't. Some days she wore it around the apartment, pretending she was hosting the literary salon they'd always talked about opening, back when they still believed in the same future.

Her **iPhone** buzzed in her pocket. Another LinkedIn notification: her ex-husband had just been promoted to Regional Director. The universe had a terrible sense of timing.

"Let me see your hand." The voice came from nowhere. An elderly woman had appeared beside her folding chair, wearing a purple turban and gold hoops that brushed her shoulders. "You have grief in your **palm**."

Margot almost laughed. Instead, she extended her hand. The woman traced lines with a nicotine-stained finger.

"You're waiting," the woman said. "For someone who's already gone. But see this line? It branches. That means you're not done growing."

Margot thought about the hat, the vitamins she kept forgetting to take, the way the cat kept returning to her folding chair every afternoon. She thought about the novel she'd abandoned halfway through chapter three when the divorce papers arrived.

"What if I don't want to grow alone?" Margot asked.

The woman smiled, revealing a gold tooth. "Darling, you're already growing. The alone part is just a condition, not a prophecy."

Margot walked home with the cat trailing her. She took her vitamin. She opened her laptop to chapter three. And she left the hat on the hook by the door, where it belonged—part of her story, but not the whole story.