The Palm Reader's Silence

Margot sat alone by the hotel pool in Palm Springs, the midday sun bleaching everything white. She'd come here to escape—the divorce papers sat unsigned on her kitchen counter back in San Francisco. The pool shimmered with an artificial blue that felt almost aggressive in its cheerfulness.

A shadow fell across her lounge chair. She didn't need to look up to know who it was.

"I heard about Richard," Daniel said, settling into the chair beside hers. "I'm sorry, Margot."

She stared at her hands, palms up. Lines crossed and recrossed like topographic maps of places she'd never wanted to visit. "You're a terrible liar, Danny."

"We're still friends, Margot. That hasn't changed."

Had it? They'd slept together three weeks before her wedding to Richard. Daniel had walked her down the aisle instead. Some kind of friend.

A stray cat wound around the legs of her chair, mewling. Margot fed it a corner of her lunch sandwich—turkey and spinach, now warm and limp. The cat ate greedily, indifferent to the transactional nature of their exchange.

"You know what the irony is?" she said, watching the animal. "Richard left me for his nutritionist. Said she made him want to be a better man. Said I made him want to order takeout and forget his ambitions."

Daniel laughed, but his eyes remained watchful. "You always made excellent spinach quesadillas."

"That's what I get for being a good cook instead of a life coach."

She tipped her head back, letting the sun press against her eyelids. The pool's surface fractured into dancing coins of light. Somewhere in the distance, children screamed with joy or pain—it was hard to tell the difference anymore.

"What did the palm reader tell you?" Daniel asked quietly. "When we were nineteen, that summer in Mexico?"

Margot opened her eyes. The cat had curled into a black comma at her feet, asleep.

"She said my life line was fragmented. Said I'd have to choose between being loved and being known." She turned to look at him for the first time. "She never told me those would be mutually exclusive."

Daniel reached across the space between their chairs, his palm brushing against hers. The touch was electric with memory and consequence.

"Maybe," he said, "she meant you'd have to stop waiting for someone to give you permission to choose yourself."

The cat stirred, stretching against the heat. Margot looked at the pool's artificial blue, at Daniel's familiar face, at her own open hands. Somewhere between the spinach sandwich and the palm reader's prophecy, she'd forgotten that some choices aren't made—they're simply recognized.

"I'm not signing the papers," she heard herself say. "Not yet."

"No?"

"No. I'm going to eat whatever I want. And I'm going to learn to read my own damn palms."