Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Madison
I’d been on since seven and it was now half past six.
All I wanted was something I didn't have to cook for more than twenty minutes.
The supermarket was quiet at this hour, the after-work rush thinning out, leaving a few tired people moving through the aisles with the focus of those who hadn't eaten since lunch.
I was in the cereal aisle, looking for the one thing I actually needed, when I saw her.
Lily was standing in front of the children's vitamins display with a bottle in each hand.
She was reading the labels with a frown of concentration that was completely out of proportion to the task.
She was still in her school uniform, her backpack on, a long, plush rabbit's ear poking out from the top of the zipper.
I looked up.
Jack was two metres away. He was standing in front of the lunchbox aisle with the look of a man who had been there a while and wasn't getting anywhere. He hadn't seen me yet.
I had a clear path to the next aisle. I could have been gone in ten seconds.
"It's the doctor lady," Lily said.
Jack looked up.
For a second, nobody said anything. Then I walked over.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi," Lily said. She held up both vitamin bottles. "Which one."
I looked at them. One was a standard children's multivitamin. The other was a gummy version with twice the sugar and half the actual vitamins. "That one," I said, pointing to the first.
She put the other bottle back with the decisiveness of someone who had just been waiting for a second opinion to confirm her own. "I told him that one," she said. She gave Jack a look that suggested this had been a significant point of contention.
Jack looked at me. His expression was weary, the look of a man who had been outmatched by a five-year-old for the better part of an hour. "They looked the same to me."
"They’re not," I said.
"Apparently not."
I looked at his basket. It was reasonable enough: pasta, tinned tomatoes, bread, apples, eggs. But he was rooted in place in the lunchbox aisle, staring at the shelves like he was trying to solve an equation that didn't add up.
"Problem?" I said.
"She needs packed lunches," he said. "Starting Monday. School sent a list."
He held up his phone. The list was a wall of text. It was filled with bolded warnings about nut products and mandatory fruit portions and a total ban on chocolate.
"I don't know where to start," he admitted.
I took the phone from him. "Okay. It’s manageable."
I started walking and they followed, Jack’s basket rattling as we moved. "Cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches. She’ll eat those. Grapes. Cereal bars—the oat ones, not the ones that are basically candy bars. Cheese cubes if you have the patience to cut them."
Jack was typing into his phone as I talked.
"Also," I said, stopping by the freezers. "Fish fingers. Not the value pack."
"What’s wrong with the value pack?"
"Nothing, if you want her to eat two bites and decide she's done."
He looked at the yellow-labeled box, then at me, and reached for the brand-name one instead. It hit the basket with a heavy thud.
We kept moving. I led the way toward the bakery and then the dairy, and somewhere along the way I stopped noticing that I was still walking with them. The tension had shifted. It wasn't the braced silence of the funeral anymore. It was just a chore.
"Are you coming for dinner?" Lily said.
I looked down. She was hugging the vitamins to her chest.
"I'm just doing my shopping, Lily," I said.
"We're having pasta," she said. "There's enough."
"Lily." Jack’s voice was quiet, a quick attempt to pull her back.
She didn't look at him. She held my gaze for a second longer, then turned and wandered toward a display of juice boxes. She’d made her point.
Jack and I stood by the milk.
"Sorry," he said.
"Don't be."
We ended up at the checkout at the same time. Lily put the vitamins on the belt with great ceremony. Jack unloaded the rest—the eggs, the fish fingers, the lunchbox things—and I put my items down after him. We stood in the ordinary quiet of the line and it was, as it turned out, completely fine.
Easy, even.
Outside in the parking lot, the air was sharp and smelled like rain. Lily stopped and looked up at me. "Are you sure you don't want to come?" she said. "Gerald would like it."
"Maybe another time," I said.
She considered this for a moment. "Okay," she said. "Friday then."
Jack looked at her. "Lily—"
"She said another time," Lily said. "Friday is another time."
I looked at Jack. He looked at me. Neither of us had a good answer for that.
"That's really sweet," I said. "But I don't want to impose."
"Uncle Jack always makes too much," Lily said. "We had leftovers three times this week."
Jack looked at her. "That's not—" He stopped. "That's fair, actually."
"It's just pasta," he said, looking at me now. He hesitated, and for a second, he looked exactly like the person I’d known twelve years ago. "I mean—only if you wanted to. You don't have to."
Lily watched us both, waiting.
"I'd have to check my—" I started.
Lily's expression didn't change. She just waited for me to arrive at the only logical conclusion. Jack was looking somewhere slightly to the left of me, his hand resting on the handle of the shopping cart.
"Okay," I said. "Friday."
Lily nodded, satisfied. To her, this had never been in question.
I looked at Jack. He looked at me. And despite the long shift and the strange weight of the last two weeks, I smiled. I couldn't entirely help it.
Jack caught my eye over Lily's head. "Thanks," he said. "For the list. And the fish finger tip."
"Anytime."
I got in my car. The drive home was ten minutes and I didn't think about it once. Or I thought about it the whole way and told myself I wasn't. One of those.