bread, milk, eggs, cheese, ham, pudding, trash bags, peas, soup, salad-in-a-bag
[BL3]Maytag, Serial #S-989732-25
[BL3]Sears Home Insurance Policy #782913
[BL3]TOM fixed it last time
Claim #J87-0213-537
When you struggle to get through any given today, like Aura’s grandmother Opal, someone else has got to step in and worry about tomorrow for you. So they work through the list as a team, seated side-by-side at Grams’s kitchen table. They pay the bills and stamp the envelopes. Drive to the grocery store for the milk and the eggs, the bread and the pudding. They cook the pork chops and the rice, the beans and the stew. They seal the meals in airtight Tupperware containers, stack the tubs neatly in the fridge for Opal to reheat during the week. Then Aura bathes her grandmother, tucks her tight in the crisp, laundered bedsheets, just as Opal did for Aura when she was a child.
They’ve come full circle.
It’s dusk when Aura locks her grandmother’s front door. That blue-gray hour of the day when things feel torn. Daybreak or nightfall, it could go either way. Flip a coin and the light might leak right back into the sky.
Aura drives west out of town into a towering cloudscape. She turns north at the interstate, trailing a neon-red caravan of taillights headed for Stillwater. She’s driven this route so many times, sometimes Aura doesn’t even see the road. She’ll find herself suddenly home, dazed and wondering: How’d I end up here?
It doesn’t hit her until full dark.
She’s gone the long way around, steering clear of Coyle after sundown.