And then I heard her.
“The avocados on the left are better. You always pick the wrong ones.”
I spun around. An older man in a fishing vest gave me a startled look and wheeled his cart in the opposite direction. No one else was nearby. No silver-haired ghost critiquing my fruit selection.
But the voice had been right there. Right in my ear.
For just a second, half a second, I could’ve sworn I saw a shape reflected in the chrome side of the produce scale. A woman. Pearls.
Then it was gone, and I was just a sweaty middle-aged woman clutching an avocado in a grocery store, trying very hard not to cry.
So much for aggressively normal.
“You’re Amelia’s niece, aren’t you?”
The voice came from behind me, and I almost dropped the avocado. I turned to find a round woman with steel-gray hair and reading glasses perched on her nose, studying me the way a doctor studies an Xray. She wore a cardigan with pockets deep enough to smuggle paperbacks, and her shoes were the sensible kind that said she’d long ago stopped caring what anyone thought about her footwear.
“I—yes.” I swiped at my damp forehead with the back of my hand. “Sorry, do I know you?”
“Not yet.” She tilted her head, those sharp blue eyes taking inventory of something I couldn’t see. “I’m Lori Marchetti. I was a friend of your aunt’s.” She paused, and something softened in her face. “Sit down, honey. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I laughed.
It came out wrong—too loud, too high, with a hysterical edge that made the man in the fishing vest look back over his shoulder from the canned goods aisle. I pressed my hand over my mouth, but the laughter kept coming, shaking my shoulders, building in my chest until my eyes were watering and I had to lean against the avocado bin for support.
“Oh gosh,” I managed between gasps. “That’s—you have no idea how?—“
Lori didn’t move. Didn’t look alarmed, didn’t back away, didn’t do any of the things a normal person does when a stranger starts laughing like a lunatic in the produce section. She just waited, arms crossed, head still tilted.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, when I’d finally gotten myself under control. “That’s about what I expected.”
I wiped my eyes. “What?”
“The hot flashes. The flickering lights. The general look of a woman who didn’t sleep last night because something she can’t explain happened and she’s not sure if she’s losing her mind.” Lori pulled a packet of tissues from one of those cavernous pockets and held it out to me. “Am I warm?”
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“How did you?—“
“Because I looked exactly like you twenty years ago. Stood right in this store, as a matter of fact, trying to buy chicken thighs while my hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold the package.” She tucked the tissues back when I didn’t takethem. “Your aunt called me that night. Said I’d figure it out eventually but a little guidance wouldn’t hurt.”
I stared at her. The grocery store hummed around us—the rattle of a cart wheel, a Fleetwood Mac song on the overhead speakers, the mister going off on schedule this time. Normal sounds. Normal world. And this woman standing in front of me talking like she knew exactly what had happened in my bathroom.
“I don’t—“ I started.
“You don’t have to say it here.” Lori glanced at the fishing vest man, who was pretending to read the label on a can of clam chowder while clearly eavesdropping. “There’s a coffee shop on Birch Street. Decent espresso, bad scones, nobody listens to anybody else’s conversations. My treat.”
Every reasonable part of me said to decline. To go home, close the curtains, and continue my perfectly reasonable plan of pretending nothing was wrong.
But the avocado in my hand was the one from the left side of the bin. The side Rosaria’s voice had recommended. And it felt perfect—firm with just the right give under my thumb.
I put it in my cart.
“Lead the way,” I said.
The coffee shop was called The Cracked Mug, which I appreciated for its honesty. We ordered cappuccinos and sat at a corner table near the window, and she let me blow on my coffee and fidget with the sugar packets for a full minute before she spoke.
"So. Who'd you see?"
