The Palm Reading

Eleanor sat on her porch in the fading afternoon light, her arthritic hands resting on the familiar fabric of the cable-knit sweater her daughter had sent last winter. At seventy-eight, she had learned that the smallest things carried the weight of years.

On the cushion beside her, Barnaby—the ancient golden retriever who had belonged to her late husband—sighed heavily, his chin resting on her slippered foot. He was seventeen now, his muzzle frosted with white, but still he waited each evening by the door, just as he had when Arthur was alive.

"You're a good boy," Eleanor murmured, scratching behind his ears. Barnaby's tail thumped weakly against the floorboards.

A flash of calico fur caught her eye. Cleopatra—the cat named by her grandson when he was six and obsessed with ancient Egypt—leaped gracefully onto the railing. The name had stuck, though the cat was hardly regal. Eleanor smiled, remembering the day Timothy had built a pyramid from empty soup cans in her kitchen, insisting it was a tomb for the pharaoh's favorite feline. He was twenty-four now, living in Chicago, working some job that required too many suits and too little laughter.

She missed those days. The house had been full then—sticky fingerprints, crayon drawings on the refrigerator, the constant chaos of raising three children. Now it was just her and the animals, though the neighbors' grandchildren sometimes wandered over to feed Barnaby treats through the fence.

Eleanor's palm itched, and she looked down at the weathered map of lines etched across her skin. Her mother had once told her that palm readers found their destinies there, but Eleanor had never needed anyone to tell her what her life would hold. She had lived it—through marriage and widowhood, through babies grown and gone, through enough heartache and joy to fill a thousand books.

And still, there was this: the perfect gold of autumn light, the faithful warmth of a dog's head on her foot, the distant laughter of children playing down the street. Her legacy wasn't monuments or monuments to her name. It was Timothy's phone calls on Sundays. It was Martha's handmade quilts. It was the way David still blushed when his wife teased him.

Barnaby shifted and whined softly, sensing her melancholy. Eleanor smoothed his fur, her heart suddenly full. The cable-knit sweater was warm against the evening chill. Cleopatra abandoned the railing to curl into a patch of sunlight on the floor.

"All right, old friends," Eleanor said, pushing herself up slowly. "Time for tea."