He told himself he was following out of spite, or curiosity, or the unfinished business of a fight he’d waited four years to have.

But that was not really why, and he knew it even then.

What actually moved him off his spot behind that counter was the bread.

He had watched her not eat — watched a visibly hungry, visibly exhausted woman take a free meal and then not lift a single bite to her own mouth.

Instead she had wrapped the bread, with a care that snagged at something in him, and put it away in a child’s backpack.

A child’s backpack.