What the Palm Reader Didn't Say
Margaret's hair had been silvering at the temples for three years before she finally stopped coloring it. The decision came the night Elias told her, over takeout Thai, that he preferred it natural anyway—as if his preference mattered.
"You're running yourself into the ground," the palm reader had told her that morning, looking at the lines on her sweating hand. Margaret had only gone because Sarah from accounting swore by her. But the woman's dark eyes held something like pity. "You'll burn out before you're fifty."
Now, Margaret sat across from the bull himself—Arthur, her boss of seventeen years—picking at her spinach salad, trying not to think about how she'd arrived at this restaurant precisely ten minutes late to assert control she didn't feel.
"You're too valuable to lose, Margaret," Arthur was saying, his meaty hand covering the tabletop. "But we need to discuss your... trajectory."
She felt something sharp between her teeth. Spinach, probably. She should excuse herself to the restroom, check the mirror, compose her face into something professional. Instead, she swallowed.
"My trajectory," she repeated.
"The merger. Restructuring." Arthur leaned forward, his blazer straining at the buttons. "We're bringing in fresh talent. Someone who can carry the torch while you... transition."
Margaret thought of the client files on her home computer, the emails she'd answered at midnight, the ultrasound she'd missed two weeks ago because a deadline had shifted. She thought of Elias, sleeping in the guest room for six months now, neither of them willing to name the quiet thing killing them.
She set down her fork.
"Arthur," she said, her voice steady for the first time all evening, "I'm not transitioning anywhere. I'm running the division. Or you find someone else to do it before Friday."
His jaw dropped. She could see the spinach now, finally—small and green and utterly insignificant.
Margaret smiled. She'd call Elias from the car. Whatever happened next, at least it would be honest.