And I walked straight past it, because I was not, in that moment, a rational person.
I was a woman whose child had pointed at a stranger and said she comes to our house, and every other consideration had been washed downstream by that one sentence.
I have thought since about how close I came to just paying for my milk and going home and asking Wade about it that night, calmly, like an adult — how easily this whole scene need never have happened.
But that would have required a composure I did not have with my heart going the way it was going.
So instead I stopped the cart a couple of feet behind her, and my hands were shaking badly enough that I had to let go of the handle.
Chapter 5 — Excuse Me