What the Palm Couldn't Say

The lines in Elena's palm had always been clear — the life line unbroken, the heart line deep and sure. She'd read thousands of hands in twenty years, but never her own.

Tonight, the sphinx cat Bast watched from the velvet armchair as Elena packed up her crystal ball. The engagement party had ended hours ago. Sarah's engagement party. Sarah, who had been her friend since sophomore year, who had sat in Elena's dorm room while she practiced palmistry on anyone who'd hold still enough.

Sarah, whose hand Elena had read a hundred times.

"You'll meet someone," Elena had told her last month, tracing the marriage line on Sarah's palm. "Soon. It's written right here."

Sarah had smiled, sad and strange. "You really believe that stuff, don't you, El?"

Now Sarah was engaged to Mark — the man Elena had been sleeping with for six months. The irony tasted like bile in her throat. All those readings, all those intimate moments with Sarah's hand in hers, and she'd never seen it coming. Maybe she'd never wanted to.

Bast hopped onto the table, nudging Elena's wrist with her hairless head. The cat's warmth against her skin was almost too much.

"I missed the biggest sign," Elena told the sphinx. "Right there in her palm. But I only saw what I wanted to see."

She picked up a business card from the pile — someone who'd wanted a reading, someone whose palm she'd skimmed while mentally calculating the rent. What had she missed in theirs? What lies had she told strangers with absolute conviction?

Elena ran her thumb over her own palm, searching for answers in the map of her own skin. But the lines told her nothing she didn't already know: some betrayals leave marks that even the best readers miss.

She packed away the silk cloth. Tomorrow she'd find another job. Maybe this time, one that didn't require pretending to know the future.

Bast purred, and for the first time in years, Elena couldn't tell if it was comfort or warning.