“Can I put these beside the peppermint jar?” she asked.

“Put them right on the front corner,” I told her.

“Where everybody can see them.”

She set the packets down carefully, lining their edges up with the wooden lip of the counter.

She didn’t look at the front door when a truck passed on the street outside.

She didn’t twist her sleeve or whisper behind her hand.

At one o’clock, I took our winter coats down from the wooden pegs behind the butcher counter.

The sky over Oak Creek Park was a clear gray, and the big oak tree in the middle of the grass had dropped its last brown leaves onto the cold ground.