What the Palm Knew

The bear on her forearm had faded to a smudge of blue-black ink, a mistake from twenty years ago that she'd never quite managed to bear the cost of removing. Elena traced it with her thumb while waiting for him—the friend who'd once known her before the marriage, before the promotions, before she'd become someone who made appointments with palm readers on Tuesday afternoons.

Marcus arrived ten minutes late, smelling of expensive cologne and the kind of confidence that comes from never having to apologize for anything. He ordered whiskey, neat, and didn't ask how she'd been. That was the thing about Marcus—he assumed your life had continued in the direction he'd last seen it heading, like a sentence he'd left unfinished.

"Your palm," he said, gesturing at her hand where she'd splayed her fingers on the table. "Still let people read it?"

"Only the ones who think they can tell me something I don't already know."

He laughed, but his eyes were measuring her—really seeing her for the first time that afternoon. The palm reader earlier had told her she was at a crossroads, which was exactly the kind of useless bullshit people paid eighty dollars to hear. But the old woman had hesitated over her heart line, paused just long enough to make Elena wonder what she'd seen there.

"I'm leaving David," she said, and Marcus went still. The bear on her arm seemed to burn. "No, not leaving. Already left. Last week."

He reached across the table, took her hand, turned her palm upward. His thumb pressed into the center of it, like he was trying to read the future himself, or maybe just find the pulse that had been racing beneath her skin all along.

"Good," he said. "You were never his anyway."

Outside, the palm trees bent in the wind, and Elena thought about how some things you bear, and some things you finally learn to put down.