“Excuse me, miss?” A woman in a Safeway vest was gesturing to me. “I’ll take you over here.”

I followed her to the next checkout lane and realized I was still carrying the magazine. She looked at me, clutching the shampoo and Cosmopolitan.

“Are you ready?” she asked a little impatiently. She had brownish-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and a name tag that read LISA, MANAGER.

“Sorry,” I said. I put the magazine on the conveyor belt along with the shampoo. I hadn’t intended to buy it, but now it felt weird to put it back.

As Lisa rang up my purchases, the woman who did Joan’s yard work showed up—it looked like she had come straight to my lane from the entrance—and said, “Lis, you ready?” She sort of did a double take when she saw me and said, “Oh, hey.”

“Hi,” I said to Steph.

Lisa shot Steph a puzzled look. “You know each other?”

Steph said, “I do her grandma’s yard—you know, Joan West out in Woodacre.”

“Oh.” Lisa shrugged. “Do you want a bag?” she asked me. “It’s ten cents.”

“Um, that’s okay,” I said.

She handed me the shampoo, Cosmo, and a receipt.

“Thanks.” I stepped out of the aisle and started to head toward the exit, but Steph was still there. “Nice to see you,” I said. I didn’t want to appear rude, but I didn’t want to be in the Safeway anymore either.

“Yeah. Hey, hang on,” Steph said. She glanced at Lisa. “Are you ready to go soon?”

“Maybe five, ten minutes,” Lisa answered. “There’s a backup. Cheryl didn’t come in today.”

“I’ll meet you outside then.” Steph looked at me. “You have five minutes?”

I hesitated, but I had all day. “Sure.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Steph said.

We headed for the exit and I flipped my sunglasses back on. As we left the store, my phone chimed again. I ignored it and asked, “What’s up?”

She gestured to a bench nearby in the shade of the entryway and we both sat down.

“I wanted to talk to you about your grandma,” she said. “You’re gonna be here all summer, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

She grinned. “I got the impression this was a last-minute kind of thing.”

“Yeah.” I wondered what Joan had told her. Did Steph know why I was here? The idea of her knowing made me uncomfortable.

“I know your grandma’s pretty healthy, especially for someone her age, but I worry about her, you know?” Steph said.

This surprised me. “I thought you just did her gardening.”

“Yeah, I do that, but I help her out with other stuff sometimes. If she needs something fixed, she’ll call me and I’ll come climb a ladder to change a light bulb or whatever. And sometimes I help her move her canvases or set things up.”