The Palm Reader's Warning

Elena sat across from Marcus at their favorite bistro, watching him swirl the ice in his water glass. They hadn't spoken since his wife's funeral eight months ago, since she'd found him in the garden at 3 AM, digging holes for vegetables he'd never plant.

"You look like a zombie," she said, and his friend's eyes finally focused on her.

Marcus laughed, dry and cracking. "That's what the palm reader told me last week. Said my life line was fragmented, like I was living in installments."

He held out his hand, palm up. Elena saw the dirt still etched into his skin, the greenish stain beneath his fingernails. Spinach, she realized. He'd been planting again.

"You're not dead, Marcus. You're just... paused."

"I keep trying to restart," he said, "but I don't remember the password."

The waiter brought their salads. Marcus picked at his spinach like it was evidence of something he couldn't quite solve. Elena remembered how he used to cook—elaborate, joyful messes, flour everywhere, singing badly. Now he moved like someone underwater, everything slowed and distorted.

"Sarah wouldn't want this," she said, and immediately regretted it. The worst cliché, delivered with the best intentions.

Marcus looked up, water pooling in his eyes. "You think she'd want me to what? Be happy? Plant actual spinach instead of staring at dirt until dawn?"

"She'd want you to feel something. Even if it's not happiness yet."

He reached across the table, his palm warm against hers. "I feel this," he whispered. "I feel you sitting here, pretending you know how to help me."

"I don't," she said. "But I'm not leaving."

They sat like that for a long moment, hands joined across the spinach and water, two survivors in a world that kept demanding they perform aliveness when they barely remembered how to feel it at all.