The Palm Reader's Warning

The vitamin D supplement sat on her nightstand, a daily reminder of how much time she spent indoors. Elena swallowed it dry, like she did everything else these days — without water, without ceremony, without really tasting it.

Three years of marriage to Marcus had taught her that some nutrients only came from exposure. Real light. Real heat. Things their climate-controlled pent apartment conspicuously lacked.

"You're brooding again," he said from the bathroom, his voice muffled as he styled his hair. The gel made it sharp, architectural — like everything else he built. His architecture firm, their portfolio, the life they were curating together.

"I'm thinking," she corrected, though brooding was probably more accurate. Her palm still stung from where the woman at the party had grabbed it the night before.

"Let me see," the woman had said, drunk and insistent. "Oh. Interesting. You have a break here." She'd traced a line across Elena's palm. "Around the time you made your big choice. See how it splits? One path goes one way, one goes the other."

Elena had pulled her hand back. "I don't believe in that stuff."

"Doesn't matter what you believe," the woman had laughed, dark and knowing. "The split is there anyway."

Marcus emerged from the bathroom already wearing his hat — a wool beanie despite the summer weather, another affectation, another layer between him and the world. He kissed her forehead, a perfunctory gesture. "Meeting with the investors. Wish me luck."

She wished him luck. She always wished him luck.

The door clicked shut, and Elena stood at the window, looking out at the city. She thought about the woman's words, about the split in her palm, about the other path she hadn't taken. The one where she'd said no to the promotion that required moving to Chicago. The one where she'd kept painting instead of "being realistic." The one where she hadn't let Marcus's certainty substitute for her own.

Her phone buzzed. A message from her sister: "Mom's asking about Christmas. Are you coming?"

Elena looked at the vitamin bottle again. Something you took because you were supposed to, because someone told you it was good for you, because you'd stopped remembering how to get it the old way — by standing in the sun.

She grabbed her hat from the hook and walked out the door.

Marcus found her hours later at a museum, standing in front of a painting she'd seen a dozen times before but never really looked at. She was crying, quietly, and when he touched her shoulder, she turned.

"I think," she said, "I need to start taking my vitamins differently."