The Palm Reader's Tuesday

Sarah's palm trembled against the cool ceramic of her morning coffee mug. At 47, she'd stopped believing that the lines on her hand mapped to any particular destiny, though the customer waiting in her shop probably still did.

The orange light of dawn spilled through the storefront window, catching the dust motes dancing in the air. She was running late—again. Michael's dental procedure was yesterday, and she'd spent the night listening to him mumble through gauze and painkillers about how he should've quit his job three years ago.

"A man knows when it's time," he'd said, squeezing her hand. "Like spinach past its prime. Just turns to mush in your mouth."

She'd laughed, the kind of laugh that catches in your throat.

Now her first appointment of the day was waiting: a corporate lawyer who'd been coming weekly for six months, desperate for someone to tell him his life had meaning beyond billable hours and bitter divorces. Sarah touched the velvet cloth draped over the small table between her chair and the client's. She wondered what he'd do if she told him the truth—that she didn't see anything in palms except the story people needed to hear.

The bell above the door chimed.

Sarah smoothed her shirt, checked her reflection in the compact mirror she kept beside the tarot deck. Her mother had done this work, and her grandmother before her. Three generations of women who'd looked at hands and told strangers what they desperately wanted to believe.

She thought about Michael again, mouth swollen and eyes soft with vulnerability. He'd asked her to read his palm yesterday, something he hadn't done since they'd met twenty years ago.

"What do you see?" he'd whispered.

She'd traced his life line, heart line, the small crosses at the base of his fingers. She'd seen everything and nothing at all.

"I see a man," she'd said, "who's about to make himself happy."

Sarah straightened her spine, put on the smile that had paid the mortgage for two decades, and gestured for the lawyer to sit down. Outside, the day was already running away from them both.