“The gold sticker lady!
I told you!”
He had, in fact, told me.
And looking at him there in the cart, cheerfully triumphant, juice box in hand, entirely unaware that he had just detonated and then defused the single most dramatic fifteen minutes of my adult life, I felt a helpless wave of love for him so strong it nearly set me off crying again.
Because none of this was Sammy’s fault, and all of it was Sammy’s doing.
He had simply reported the world as he saw it, the way five-year-olds do, with no filter and no sense of consequence — that’s the lady from our house — and in doing so he had very nearly wrecked his father’s surprise, briefly convinced his mother her marriage was over, and terrified an innocent notary against a display of muffins.