“She had to walk into that store herself and ask the assistant manager for a manual cash override.”

I didn’t type a reply.

I saved both photos to my camera roll and exported copies to my secure engineering cloud drive.

Monica came out of the kitchen with two clean glasses of water and set one on the table beside my phone.

“Is that your mother again?” Monica asked, taking off her rimless glasses to polish them on the hem of her sweater.

“She took the Christmas gifts from under the tree to a department store in Portland,” I said.