Then, without warning, he became completely still.
He grabbed my sleeve and pulled hard.
“Mommy. Mommy, look.”
The cashier’s scanner beeped somewhere behind me, but the noise suddenly seemed distant, as though it belonged to someone else’s afternoon.
Leo continued tugging at my sleeve and pointed toward the bakery display.
“I see her, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Keep your voice down.”
“But that’s her,” he said, still pointing. “That’s the lady who comes to our house when you’re at work! She plays in the room upstairs.”
My hand clenched around the milk carton so tightly that the cardboard began to buckle.
I quickly placed it on the conveyor belt before I crushed it.
The woman near the bakery had not turned around.
She looked young, perhaps 30.
She wore a short green dress, her dark hair loosely pinned up, with a canvas tote hanging from one shoulder.
