The Palm Reader's Prescription

The storm outside matched the chaos in Elena's chest. She sat on her lanai, rain drumming against the palm fronds that swayed like drunk dancers in the wind. In her hand, she held the amber bottle—vitamin D supplements that Marcus had bought her last month, back when he still believed pills could fix anything.

"You're deficient," he'd said, pressing the bottle into her palm like it was a lifeline. "That's why you're tired all the time. That's why we're... like this."

Now Marcus was gone, moved into his brother's guest room "to think." Elena traced the lines on her left palm, something she'd started doing after her aunt taught her palmistry at fifteen. Life line, heart line, head line—all intersecting, crisscrossing, promising a clarity that never materialized.

A crack of lightning split the sky, sudden and violent, flooding the lanai with white light. In that instant, she saw it: the truth she'd been dodging for six years. Their marriage hadn't failed because of her vitamin deficiency or her iron levels or whatever Marcus blamed next. It failed because they'd both been waiting for the other person to change first.

She dumped the vitamins into the rain. They spiraled down, tiny pills dissolving in the storm drain.

Her phone lit up on the table. Marcus.

Elena pressed her palm against the screen, feeling its warmth, and let it ring until the silence returned.