What the Palm Reader Didn't Say

Elena stood in the vitamin aisle, staring at the supplements as if they might whisper the answers she needed. At forty-three, she'd expected to have things figured out. Instead, she was getting divorced, her mother was showing early signs of dementia, and her doctor had just prescribed vitamin D supplements for "deficiency concerns related to stress and inadequate sun exposure."

The fluorescent lights hummed, creating that familiar retail buzz that always made her slightly nauseous. She reached for a bottle, her hand trembling. A month ago, she'd visited a palm reader on a whim—something she'd never done before. The woman had traced the lines on Elena's palm and promised change, transformation, new beginnings. She hadn't mentioned that change would feel like lightning striking the same wound twice.

Her cat, Basil, waited at home. The only male currently reliable in her life, though he'd started pissing on the laundry basket since Mark moved out. Elena couldn't blame him. Disruption manifested differently in different species.

She added spinach to her basket—organic, because at five dollars a bundle, it might as well promise something the conventional stuff couldn't. Health had become her new religion. She drank green juice, took yoga classes she hated, and now, vitamins. Anything to forestall the inevitable decline.

The cashier, a teenager with multiple piercings and exhausted eyes, scanned her items without looking up. "That'll be forty-two even."

Elena paid and walked to her car. Outside, the summer sky had darkened. Lightning fractured the horizon—a beautiful, terrible crack across the velvet evening. She sat in her driver's seat, watching through the windshield, and finally let herself cry. Not for Mark, not really. Not for her mother, though that was coming. She cried for all the palms she'd held, all the hands she'd touched, all the lives she could have lived.

Her phone buzzed. Mark: "Left my keys. Can I come by?"

Elena wiped her eyes, started the engine, and drove home. She would make herself dinner. Sauté the spinach with garlic. Take her vitamins. Pet Basil. And tomorrow, she'd wake up and do it again. The palm reader had promised transformation. She just hadn't realized it would be so slow, so quiet—so utterly unlike lightning at all.