“I’m proud of all you did, Libby. Your father would be, too.”

She left us forty dollars this time, and Marie and I took the bus to King of Prussia to go food shopping at the Acme. It was there that we saw Sage and Charlotte Adams.

We had gotten a shopping cart, even though we had to pack light to carry the groceries up the mountain in backpacks. Marie said she was going to cook properly for us, and we picked up fillets of steak and green beans and potatoes. We chose three ears of corn. Our dad used to buy paper bags full of corn from stalls on the back roads in New Jersey and bring them home and tell us to start shucking. We’d done it outside to avoid mess. We bought flour, eggs, and maple syrup to take to the Walkers because, as Marie said, she didn’t want them to have one up on us. Ever. We were in the baking stuff aisle, and Marie was reading a recipe for brownies on the back of a Hershey’s block of chocolate. I was looking at the boxes of brownie mix where you just add eggs and water when I turned and saw Charlotte and Sage coming toward us with their shopping cart. Sage was in her J. C. Penney’s waitressing uniform. Charlotte had sunglasses on even though she was inside and wore a madras golf skirt and pink tennis shirt, but when she got closer, I could see she looked disheveled, and I knew she knew. They had stopped but hadn’t seen me yet. Sage was speaking to her, leaning over, intense and serious. Charlotte turned and saw me just as I was going to look away.

“Libby,” she said, and it came out like a sob. I took a step toward her. “Libby, your hair. I didn’t recognize you. Can you believe he’s done this to us?” And Charlotte Adams put her arms around me and held me, and she was crying in the baking section of the Acme supermarket. I put my arms around her thin frame and tried to hug her back, feeling awkward and tall. I’d only ever seen Charlotte as elegant and distant. She was always kind but reserved, and this was unfiltered raw emotion; she was showing us how hurt she was. Her hair was flattened at the top and back, as if she had just got out of bed, and she seemed suddenly small and diminished.

“Charlotte, stop it,” said Sage. “Please. Come on. Leave the cart. We’re going back out to the car.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Adams. I am so, so sorry.”

“I know you are, Libby.” Her shoulders were shaking, she was crying so much. “I’ve always thought you and your father . . . had empathy.”