“Can I have your money when you die?” Andre laughed.

“You’ll live a full life, Paul,” Elena said. “Just not as long as Andre.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Paul glared at Andre.

“Okay, your turn,” Elena reached for Fortin’s hands.

“Wait,” he said. “Is this fortune-telling stuff for real?”

“It’s as real as the sun, the moon, and the stars.”

“Come on, it can’t be,” he said. “Where’d you learn it?”

“From my great-grandmother. She taught me how to read the lines in people’s hands just before she died in Bucharest.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Romania. We lived there for a few years on a small farm in the mountain country. Then we moved to Hungary and then Poland. Look, quit stalling. It won’t hurt. Give me your hands because you’re not getting your money back.”

Elena’s hands were warm, soft, and felt good as she worked on his. He liked how her fingers traced the lines in his palms as she examined them. But he soon grew uneasy at the way her face creased with seriousness, as if she’d discovered something troubling.

“Is it bad?” Fortin asked.

“I can’t tell, it’s sort of confusing.”

“Will I live as long as Andre, or Paul?”

Elena drew her face closer to his palm. He could feel her soft breath on his skin, and he liked it.

“It’s difficult to say.”

“Will I be rich?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you see anything?”

“You’re going to do something great, very great.”

“What?” Fortin smiled. “Like play in the NHL?”

“No, nothing like that. You like helping people, right?”

“I guess so.”

Elena bit her lip and blinked.

“It’s strange, your lines are strong. I see mountains and a vast sky, all very beautiful. But there’s more,” she said, staring hard at the lines in his palms, trying to make sense of what she saw.

“I see darkness for you.”

She lifted her face, looked directly at him, the candle flame trembling in her eyes.

“I see darkness for you, and then you’re going to do something great, something wonderful and glorious.”

That night Fortin couldn’t sleep. He lay in his bed, staring out of his window at the crescent moon, trying to imagine the life that Elena Grabowski had envisioned for him.

Darkness then something wonderful and glorious.

By spring, Elena and her family had moved to the U.S. Fortin had overheard his mother tell a neighbor that they went to Chicago. He never saw or heard from Elena again. But the one thing he’d held on to was her prediction from that night in the kitchen of her family’s basement apartment.

He’d never forgotten it.