Page 52 of This Beautiful Lie
But I found her gaze locked on my left hand, her expression soft, so much so that I wondered what she was thinking.
At first, I hesitated, unsure if Helen was the type to know a knockoff diamond when she saw one, but I had to risk it. I walked toward her with my hand outstretched, ring poised in her direction, almost wishing for her to discover the truth.
But she didn’t look at the ring. Instead, she flipped my hand over, her grip steady and strong, and glanced down at my palm.
“You can tell a lot about a person in their hands,” she said calmly. “You don’t mind if I look, do you?”
Mind? I wanted to yank my hand back as though she’d just burned me…
But I didn’t…because there was something so hopeful in her expression that I almost became hopeful, too.
I nodded, ignoring the bells that rang like a firetruck in my head, telling me to run, and watched the little old woman lower her glasses to the tip of her nose.
“This,” she said, tracing a line in the middle of my palm, “is your heart line. It starts below the pinky finger, stretching horizontally to the opposite side of the palm.”
I leaned closer, watching the path under her slightly crooked finger. Her touch was warm, a little papery, and I became very aware of my own pulse tapping against her fingertip.
“People always think the life line tells you how long you’ll live,” she went on, voice low and matter-of-fact. “It doesn’t. It tells you how you hold your life. The head line is how you make sense of things. But the heart line…” She tipped my hand toward the light. “The heart line is how you give and receive—where you open, where you guard. Breaks, forks, little chains—those are places the story changes.”
I didn’t believe in this stuff. Not really. But the way she said it made me hold still, listening to each word as though they were a roadmap set in stone.
“That’s so odd.” She frowned and lifted my hand a little higher. “It’s broken right there. In almost the exact same spot as my Grandson’s.”
I swallowed hard, so curious about what it meant, that I leaned closer still, resting my hip on the counter right next to her.
She was right. There was a district and sudden break in the line at the edge of my palm. If she hadn’t pointed it out as odd, I would have never noticed, but now I couldn’t look away, even if I tried. “What does that mean?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, releasing my hand to lean against the wall. “For Dean, I’ve always believed it was due to the tragic loss of his parents when he was young.”
A shiver ran up my spine, not only because of what she’d just said, but because she’d referred to him as her grandson. Then I saw it. The similarities between them. The cleft in her chin that was much softer than Dean’s, but still just as prominent. The eyes that were the exact shade of brown.
I stepped backward, unable to wrap my mind around what was happening.
My hand instinctively closed, as if trying to protect the parts of myself that felt too vulnerable to share.
She must have noticed the shift in me, because her mouth softened. “He hasn’t told you, has he?” she asked. “Don’t take offense. He doesn't like to talk about it with anyone, never has,” she said quietly.
Then she reached out and took my hand again, uncurling my fingers until they were flat. “But some truths sit in the body whether we name them or not, now, don’t they?”
I remained quiet, but her fingertips hovered over my palm again, not quite touching. “He was almost eleven when it happened,” she said, as though caught in a memory she couldn’t get away from. “They were driving home from my house. It was dark, and the roads were wet. His sister, a baby then, was strapped in the backseat. She slept through the worst of it. He didn’t.”
The words landed with a dull, aching weight. I could almost see it: Dean, a boy then, navigating through the tragedy with no one there to guide him.
“He changed overnight. He’d been just a boy, but after that night… he became a man. I don’t know if I ever truly saw him play again after that day.”
In that moment, the title of “man” took on a whole new meaning.
“He began checking locks, memorizing everyone’s phone number, and worrying about everything. I remember him sitting at the kitchen table, refusing to eat a single bite until he was sure there was enough for everyone.” She glanced down at my hand again. “It was after that night that I noticed the break,” she whispered. “I can’t be sure of it, because I don’t have any proof, but I swear it hadn’t been there before.”
My throat tightened, and I traced the line on my palm with my own finger. “What about his sister? Does she have a mark like this?”
She looked at me for a long time, then shook her head. “She grew up with the story; he grew up with the night.” The woman folded my fingers over my palm and squeezed. “For her, the pain was an absence. For him it was a crack that never quite sealed. That’s why they had their falling out.” Her eyes lifted to mine, as though wondering what I knew.
I held her gaze, then curiosity bulldozed caution, and the words tumbled right out of my mouth. “What happened?”
She smirked, though the light in her eyes dimmed a little. “Blair became a little wild in college.” A small, rueful smile played at the corner of her mouth, “And Dean...” She dragged out the words, as though trying to choose the right way to explain what happened next. “He was only trying to protect her—though I guess he did so in the way one might yank a child back from a busy street.” She let out a wry laugh, then looked up at me and sighed. “As I’m sure you can predict, it didn’t go very well.”
My mind traveled back to the words Dean had used in the car earlier. About worrying being a way of loving a person.
