Lydia turned her head to gaze at Kate’s face, her cheekbone bumping against the bottom of Kate’s rib cage, sending a pleasant vibration through her body. “So let’s get you some practice,” she said.

They dashed across the street to Café d’Esprit. The baker, Jules, had been very kind to them over the weeks, giving them day-old croissants and letting them occupy a table by the window for hours for the price of only one espresso. “Jules,” Kate said breathlessly as they swept in from the street, closing the door on the rainstorm behind them. “Did you know that before I came here, I had never even tried espresso or croissants? And now I’m pretty sure I can’t live without them.”

“Oui, Katherine,” said Jules wearily. “You tell me every time you come in.”

“You saved my life with coffee and pastries, Jules,” Kate said solemnly, taking his coarse, flour-dusted hand in her own. Behind her, she could hear Lydia snickering. “Please, let me repay you by reading your palm for you.”

Kate sat Jules down at a table, and in her most authoritative fortune-teller voice, she tried to read him. She spoke of a long life line, broken by an illness later in life that would be fought and conquered. She told him his marriage line revealed a wife and two children, and his success line revealed financial hardship and then finally stability. She showed him the Ring of Solomon, and how its depth indicated that he was, at that very moment, hesitating at a very significant fork in the road, and that deep down he knew which path he should choose. She told him that the proximity of the ring to his heart line meant that if he followed his heart, the choice would be the right one. She said all this without looking once at Lydia, for she knew if she did she would burst out laughing.

When she finished, she was startled to discover that Jules was crying. With shaking hands, he lit a cigarette, and minutes went by before he was able to speak. When he did, it was in French, which he never spoke with Kate or Lydia – as though his emotions were too complex for him to express in such a prosaic language as English. Then he got up from the table, went to the kitchen, and brought out a whole cake – round and tall and covered with a cloud of pristine white frosting. That was when Kate realized that the future was something everyone was afraid of, even if they didn’t feel, as she had ever since that day at Chippewa, as though they were living on borrowed time.