6.

I trace the lines on my palms with my pointer fingers.

When I was little, my father told me that I had hands like his and my mother’s.

So unusual, he said at the time, showing me the lines on my hand as though he could read my future. You’re part Daddy and you’re part Mommy, he said as though this was something he and my mother had worked very hard to make happen.

One of my palms has two lines that meet in a hooked flag between my thumb and pointer finger. The other has three lines that do not run into one another.

I can’t recall which is like my father’s, and which is like my mother’s. My sieve brain leaks all of the important details. I have to check and double-check facts I should easily remember, and still, I am afraid of getting it all wrong.

I tilt each hand to the right, then to the left, trying to discern more of what these creases might symbolize. The gold from the ring that C.J. and I had made glints. Do my sisters have palm lines like this? What about Jonathan’s little hands?

I take a photo of my right palm, the one with a flag that stretches toward the crease between my thumb and pointer finger. I tap out a text to my father.

ME: I always forget—I have two different lines in my palms. One hand is like yours, the other like Mommy’s

ME: What do your palms look like? Do they make a flag?

I include the photo. My father responds the next day, after I’ve forgotten I’ve sent the message.

DADDY: The other one. All my three lines are not connected. Your left hand is like mine

Your left hand is like mine. The one with the lines that do not touch. Did he know that from the image? Or did he always remember?

I take a screenshot of the exchange. When I can’t remember again—in just a few weeks, and then again in a few months, and then in a year—which hand is like my mother’s, and which is like his, I pull up the screenshot and stare at my palms.