What the Palm Reader Didn't Say

The hat sat on the dashboard like a dead thing, a felt reminder of the funeral I'd just left. My father's hat. I was running late, as usual, when the dog darted into the road—a mangy, desperate thing with one ear that refused to stand up. I swerved, missed him, but the hat slid off the dashboard and onto the floorboard, where it rested against my guilt like a conspirator.

I pulled over, shaking. The dog trotted up to my window, tail wagging like he'd just made a friend rather than almost died. I rolled down the window and he licked my hand, his tongue rough and impossibly warm. Something in my chest cracked open.

"You're an idiot," I told him, but I was crying, ugly gulping sobs that had been waiting since the diagnosis, since the hospice, since the silence that filled my apartment now.

The dog sat. He waited.

I opened the door and he jumped in, like this was the plan all along. Like I'd been looking for him.

We ended up at a beach bar three towns away, where I drank whiskey I couldn't afford while he slept under my table. The palm reader in the corner caught my eye—old woman with eyes like flint, waving me over.

"You came for him," she said, not looking at my palm but at the dog. "He came for you."

"He's just a stray."

"Nothing is just anything." She traced the lines on my palm with a finger that smelled of clove cigarettes. "You've been running from love since it broke you first." She pressed into a line I'd never noticed. "Here. This is where you learn to stop."

I woke up at dawn on the beach, dog curled against my side, waves inching toward my shoes. The bar had closed hours ago. The door was unlocked. Someone had covered us with a blanket.

Back at my apartment, the cat my ex left behind watched us from the top of the refrigerator—judgmental, patient, infinitely superior. She'd been waiting for me to come back to myself. Now that I had, finally, she deigned to descend, tail held high, and inspect the intruder.

The dog and the cat circled each other, cautious diplomacy. They came to some arrangement I'd never understand.

I set my father's hat on the hook by the door. It looked different there—less like a ghost, more like an artifact. Something that belonged to a story, not the story itself.

"Okay," I said aloud. Both animals turned to look at me. "Okay then."

Outside, the world kept running. But inside, something finally stopped.