What the Palm Reader Saw

Elena placed her hand on the small table, the lines in her palm crisscrossing like a map she no longer recognized how to read. The older woman across from her traced the life line with a manicured fingernail, then frowned.

"You're carrying a heavy burden," the woman said, not looking up. "Something that's been with you for years."

Elena thought of the vitamin supplements lined up on her bathroom counter — the B12 for energy, the D3 for mood, the magnesium for sleep — all the little capsules and tablets that were supposed to fix what was broken inside her. She thought of Marcus, asleep in their bed upstairs, his breathing raspy and uneven. Three years of cancer treatments, of hope and disappointment, of watching the man she loved slowly dissolve into someone she still loved but sometimes hardly recognized.

She was bearing it — there was no other word. She carried it like a stone in her chest, heavy and immutable.

"Your hair is falling out," the palm reader said suddenly, gesturing to Elena's temple.

Elena self-consciously touched the thinning patch she'd been trying to hide with strategic parting. Stress, the doctor had said.

The woman's eyes drifted to the window, where Elena's orange tabby, Pumpkin, was sleeping on the sill.

"Animals sense these things," she said mysteriously. "Your cat knows."

Elena paid the woman and walked home through the gathering dusk, Pumpkin greeting her at the door with demanding meows. She climbed the stairs to their bedroom, where Marcus was awake, reading by lamplight.

"Where were you?" he asked, his voice raspy.

"Just walking," she said, sitting beside him on the bed and taking his thin hand in hers.

His fingers traced the lines in her palm, something he'd done for thirty years of marriage.

"You're tired, El," he said softly.

She leaned into his touch, tears finally coming. "I'm just tired."

He pulled her close, and she let herself be held, feeling the warmth of him, the life still in him, the love that had become something different now — harder, sharper, but no less real.

The cat jumped on the bed, settling between them. Outside, the neighborhood hummed with other lives, other stories, other people bearing their own burdens in their own ways.

Elena closed her eyes. Tomorrow she'd organize the vitamins, call the doctor, make the appointments, do all the things that kept their lives running.

But tonight, she would just breathe.