Free Bodies and Souls by Nancy Thayer Page A

avenue and her thumb a smaller and more intricate network of lines lay; it all made her think of the map of a very small suburb.
    “Ah, yes,” Carlos said. “I see. You have a strong, good life line, and you are excellent at handling money. But—this is very interesting. You have an astonishing private life. You have secrets, hidden deep within you. There are obvious things here, too—you are generous, kind, loving, immensely capable—”
    “Is Carlos reading your hand?” It was Nina Sloan, calling to Judy from the other side of the fireplace. Without waiting for Judy’s reply she turned to the couple sitting near her and said, laughing, “That Carlos. He can find more ways to compliment a woman than there are stars in the sky!”
    Nina’s comment distracted Judy, and for the next few minutes she listened with impatience as Carlos peered into what she suddenly felt to be an embarrassingly ordinary hand. He was saying pleasant enough things—but then he had known her for years now, and there was nothing he was telling her that he hadn’t already discovered by simply living in the same town with her. She almost snatched her hand back, but then he spoke with sudden authority, almost sharply.
    “Judy. Listen to me. You think I am a charlatan, I know. But I see something here I want to tell you. Something you should know.”
    Judy glanced around quickly to be certain that no one else was listening. “Well, what?” she asked, hoping by her smile to let Carlos know just what a joke she thought all this was.
    “I am only an amateur at this, and yet the lines are so clear. They show that something happened to you when you were a child. I can’t see what. Perhaps a death, an accident, a siege of misery. But something happened to you before you were eighteen, and nothing that bad will ever happen to you again in your life.”
    “Carlos, are you sure?” Judy cried. She was completely entranced. She stared in surprise at her hand, feeling gratitude. “Please tell me all that again.”
    Carlos repeated it: something terrible had happened to her when she was young; nothing that bad would ever happen to her again.
    “God, how I wish you had told me this years ago!” she whispered, then sat back quietly for a moment, stunned. All the nights she had spent worrying about her children—their illnesses when they were small, their lateness when they were teenagers riding in other teenagers’ cars—and yet, here they both were, safe and sound. If only she had known! When she thought about it, she supposed it was not too much to expect from Fate, because something terrible had happened to her as a child.
    “You look rattled, Judy,” said another guest, a woman. “Has Carlos struck a nerve?”
    “No, no,” Judy said, moving from the internal to the social with only a slight shiver at the change. “It’s just that Carlos really seems to know what he’s doing.”
    “Oh, how exciting! Carlos, come share your talents—come read my palm.”
    And Carlos left Judy’s side. But Judy didn’t mind, she had suddenly become very tired. She made the effort to talk politely with the other guests, but over and over in her mind she was thinking: Oh, dear Lord, what if Carlos is right? What a relief it would be to live out her life, knowing that the worst had already happened!
    After that night, Judy had seen Carlos read other people’s hands at parties, but she had avoided him. She was aware that he was more entertainer than seer, and she did not want to be disillusioned by having him read her hand again only to give her a completely different interpretation of what he had seen, or claimed to have seen.
    Judy knew that very few people have perfectly happy childhoods, but there are degrees of happiness and misery, so that looking back, a person can say: Well, after all, I was fortunate.
    When Judy summed up her childhood, she thought: Well, after all, I did not die of misery, and it did test my mettle and strengthen my character