What the Palm Hides

The lines on Sarah's palm were supposed to mean something. That's what Elena believed, anyway, as she traced the lifeline with weathered fingers, the two of them sitting on rusted beach chairs as the sun bruised the horizon purple.

"You're going to live forever," Elena said, forcing a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Look at this. It goes all the way down to your wrist."

Sarah laughed, bitter as old coffee. "That's not how any of this works, and you know it."

They'd been friends for seventeen years, since college, since the nights when they'd shared cigarettes and secrets on dormitory fire escapes. Now Sarah was dying — actually, properly dying — and Elena had spent the last three months avoiding her phone calls.

"I'm sorry," Sarah said, like she'd been saying it for weeks. "About what I told you. About David."

Elena's hand stilled on Sarah's palm. David. Elena's husband. The man Sarah had slept with three years ago, confessed in a haze of wine and morphine last month, as if her own mortality gave her the right to detonate Elena's marriage retrospectively.

"Bullshit," Elena said softly.

"What?"

"That you're sorry. Bullshit that you think this was about forgiveness. You wanted to hurt me one last time before you died. That's what this was."

Sarah pulled her hand away. A palm frond rustled overhead in the salt wind, casting shadows across her face.

"I thought you deserved to know."

"Know what? That my husband fucked my best friend at some conference in Chicago? That you both kept it from me for three years? That the only reason you're telling me now is because you think death makes you honest?" Elena stood up, knocking over her empty wine glass. "That's not courage, Sarah. That's just bullshit with a halo."

The bull — Elena's father had called her that since she was twelve, stubborn and immovable — wanted to forgive. The friend in her wanted to scream. The wife in her wanted to go home and set fire to her marriage.

Instead she sat back down, took Sarah's hand again, traced the lifeline she'd been reading moments earlier.

"You're right," Elena said. "This line does go all the way down."

Sarah started to cry.

"But mine," Elena showed her own palm, "stops right here."

And for the first time in three months, they both told the truth.