REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK:

As a journalist, I must begin with a disclaimer: More than half the facts in the following story can’t be verified, and some might even be completely false.

But that’s the risk you take when you write about your own future.

Thursday morning, after years of nagging curiosity, I sat for a palm reading with Ruby Adams, a professional psychic in Costa Mesa. I’d had my palm read once before — by a girl in my 10th-grade English class who had no business license — and I wanted to give the official treatment a try.

In less than an hour, I learned that I’m destined for a long and happy marriage, that I’ll have a new home in the next few months, and that I may have been a war correspondent in one life. But more on that in a moment.

Adams, the owner of the Psychic Palm and Card Reader service, has been in the business of foretelling destiny for more than two decades. Her tiny stucco house on Harbor Boulevard gets a number of walk-ins and appointments every week, with customers choosing among Tarot cards, a single-palm reading, a double-palm reading or a regular psychic evaluation.

The office is open six days a week and charges $40 for a Tarot or psychic reading; palm readings are $20 for both hands and $10 for one.

I was eager to know what Adams would find in my palms, but I was just as curious to know how she came upon that line of work. I asked her how one becomes a psychic for a living. Her response was, simply, that there’s no diploma needed. Her family, she said, had a history of making spiritual predictions, and she had learned her craft from them.

“A psychic ability is something you cannot learn and train for,” she said. “A lot of people do have a sixth sense.”

During a consultation, Adams studies the lines on customers’ palms to determine a number of things about them. She calls the crease around the bottom of the thumb the “life line,” meaning that the longer it is, the longer its owner’s life will likely be. The wrinkles just below the little finger represent the number of loves in a person’s life — short ones indicate breakups or unrequited love, while a long one implies a lasting marriage.

So how did I do? Based on my palms, Adams predicted that I would live long and that I’d had a number of past lives. Something about my aura told her that I came from a military tradition, so she guessed that I might have covered wars in the past. And a short line near the thumb indicated that I had died young in one of my past incarnations.

My near future, though, is looking brighter. Adams surmised I will find a soul mate within the next year, and that it might be an older woman or a colleague (I pressed her for names and physical descriptions, but her sixth sense turned maddeningly vague).

And a new home, apparently, is in store for me, as well; Adams envisioned both a tiny residence near the beach and a spacious house farther inland, and said I might have to choose between them.

That’s the life of a business reporter — even my palm readings turn into stories about the housing market.

PSYCHIC PALM AND CARD READER

OWNER: Ruby Adams

SPECIALTY: Psychic, palm and Tarot readings

LOCATION: 1963 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday

CONTACT: (949) 645-5046

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].