He continued tracing patterns across the Mount of the Moon and the Mount of Mars, both at the heel of the hand. “These symbolize violence and lightheartedness, respectively.” He pointed this out to Jackson, in particular. “They’re both equally as strong in me. You think maybe that’s something we need to worry about?”

Jackson made no reply, only exchanged a quick, worried glance with Grant.

“If you look at the line on the heel of my hand,” the guy continued, “you’ll see it joins the line of life and runs parallel to the line of the heart. The Line of Fate runs up the center of the palm, and parallel to that on the heel side of the hand is the Line of Fortune. Mine don’t intersect very well, do they? That’s the odd thing about the lines in the hand; sometimes lines that should intersect come nowhere near one another, while other lines that shouldn’t intersect run straight into each other. See—if you look closer, you can see that Fortune crosses over into Violence, and Fate meets with Lightheartedness. Those lines don’t usually intersect.”

“And this means what?” asked the Reverend. “That your destiny is to become a rich middleweight boxer who can tell a good joke and play a mean Moonlight Sonata? How fickle is the universe.”

For the first time, the guy genuinely laughed, and then moved his fingertip along the curved line that ran from below his little finger to the base of the first. “This one’s called the ‘Girdle of Venus.’”

“In my case,” said Jackson, “it’d probably be more of a truss—but why get picky this late in life?”

“Where did you learn all of this?” asked Grant. “I mean, I don’t know that I’ve ever had someone come in here who knows this much about palmistry.”

“A woman I once knew. She had the most exquisite hands. Long, delicate fingers, smooth fingertips, and her skin, especially on her palms, was so thin and soft it felt like tissue paper. She used to tell me that a person’s hands were the sexiest part of their body. And she was right.” He leaned in, lowering the volume of his voice. “I know it sounds weird, like maybe there was some kind of fetish thing going on, but her fascination with hands, with their power and their complexity, their dexterity and grace, it gave me a...a mystery, I’d guess you’d call it, to carry with me for the rest of my life. A person needs one unsolvable mystery to carry with them to keep life interesting, don’t you think? Consider the hand. It can touch, it can grasp, it can add dimension, it can kill with tenderness, it can save or end a life, and it’s usually the first thing that comes into direct physical contact with another human being. I’m sorry, it’s just that I—and please don’t laugh at this or—”

“I won’t laugh,” said Grant. “I promise.”

“None of us will,” added the Reverend, whose presence—as Grant had been hoping—seemed to be having a calming effect on the guy.