The Palm Reader's Prescription

Margot hadn't wanted to come to this godforspecting island wedding, but here she was, three margaritas deep, staring at a **lightning** crack in the ceiling of the open-air tiki bar that the bride's cousin swore added "character."

"You have a strong life line," said the woman next to her, apparently a professional palm reader who'd been hired as wedding entertainment. Margot almost pulled her hand away—she was a corporate lawyer, she didn't believe in this **bull**. But the alcohol and the humidity and the fact that she'd just been passed over for partner made her pliable.

"You're tired," the woman continued, tracing the lines on Margot's **palm**. "You're running on fumes. Taking **vitamin** supplements but still depleted."

Margot stiffened. How could she know about the cabinet full of bottles at home? The D3, the B-complex, the iron supplements her doctor insisted she take after she'd fainted in court last month.

"Eat more greens," the woman said suddenly, almost bored. "Raw **spinach**, specifically. Your body's screaming for iron."

And then the wedding planner was dragging Margot away for the bouquet toss, and the moment passed, but something had cracked open in her chest—like that lightning fissure above, letting in something she'd been avoiding.

Two months later, Margot sat on her balcony in Chicago, eating spinach from the container, cold and straight from the bag, watching a storm roll across the lake. She'd quit the firm. She'd stopped taking the vitamins and started eating food. Her palm—the one the woman had read—rested on her knee, life line unchanged, but something else had shifted.

Some **bull** after all, she thought, and chewed, and watched the lightning strike.