“Ma’am? Ma’am, your total. Forty-two eighteen.”
I reached for my card, dropped it, picked it up, and tapped it against the reader with a hand that would not stop trembling.
The machine chirped its cheerful approval.
The cashier bagged the milk, bread, and cereal, then returned them to the cart without looking at me.
“Mommy, are you mad?”
“No, baby.”
“You look mad.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
The truth was, I was not angry yet.
I had gone somewhere colder than anger, somewhere numb, where every good memory of my husband was quietly reshaping itself into evidence.
The silver paint on Leo’s fingers.
Mark dismissing it with a laugh.
The locked guest room.
That private smile at his phone while I poured coffee.
My mother had been gone for three months.
For three months, I had blamed the strange imbalance in our home on grief.
On myself.
On the empty chair during family meals and the fading perfume trapped in a silk scarf.
I looked toward the woman again.
She had picked up a loaf of sourdough and was turning it in her hands as though studying the label.
“Leo,” I said softly. “How many times has the lady come over?”
He counted on his fingers, lost track, then began again.
“A lot. But only when you’re at work. And she brings the tall bag.”
“What tall bag?”
“With the sticks in it.”
Sticks.
Paintbrushes, perhaps.
Or something else.
My mind refused to settle on any harmless explanation.
I pushed the cart toward the exit.
Then I stopped.
My feet simply refused to move.
I could walk away.
I could buckle Leo into the car, drive home, and pretend I had never heard any of it.
I could confront Mark that evening in our kitchen, where the lighting was soft and I felt steady.
Or I could turn around now, ten feet away from a stranger who might already know more about my marriage than I did, and demand the truth from her.
“Mommy?”
“One second, sweetheart.”
I closed my eyes.
I thought about my mother and the way she used to say that anything worth knowing was worth knowing today.
Then I turned the cart around.
My legs felt disconnected from my body as I approached the bakery display. Leo fell silent, sensing the change in me the way small animals sense an approaching storm.
Ten feet.
Six feet.
Three.
“Excuse me,” I said.
My voice came out thinner than I intended.
The woman did not turn.
“Excuse me,” I repeated.
She looked up, distracted, still holding the loaf of bread.
Her eyes passed over me and landed on Leo.
Something flickered across her face.
Recognition.
A soft, startled recognition, like the expression someone gives a child they have seen before in photographs.
Then she looked back at me and understood who I must be.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
“Do you know my son?”
She slowly returned the bread to the shelf, as if buying herself a few more seconds.
“I…” She moistened her lips. “I think you should call your husband.”
“I’m asking you.”
She did not answer.
