When I arrived I heard a beautiful female voice singing accompanied by a guitar.  It was Emita, his cousin.  She finished singing, I got introduced, took her hand to "read" her palms -- I don't know hoot about it -- and told her: "You'll marry me and have 3 and a half boys."  "You´re crazy and too ugly....laughingly..."

We were married eight months later and we had four boys -- one died after birth.  That was the end of my palm reading.

Emita died two years ago to brain cancer after 39 years of marriage and beautiful family life.

(A few years later I wrote Her Peaceful Sleep, a short story about her last months among us.)