“It’s the same,” I said, as if that wasn’t what she feared.

“Can we stop at H-E-B?” she asked. “Grocery stores are the only American thing I miss.”

“There’s food at the house.”

“Please,” she said. “I came all this way.”

We detoured to the twenty-four-hour branch on Montrose. Inside, we carried separate baskets in opposite directions. As soon as Leah disappeared, I fished my last hydrocodone from my mom’s purse and swallowed, throwing my head back dramatically to get the pill to the back of my throat. It was something I’d seen Jake do. I took out my phone to check on him. He was another world, belonging to another world: selfie-mode, tropical flowers tucked behind both ears. “Mood forever,” hovered in modern font above his head.

“Baaaaabe,” I commented, “don’t forget about me,” desperate.

The frame flipped. Jake laughed from behind the camera as two old men used pitchforks to drape a boa constrictor over a bro’s meaty shoulders. In the background: a woman’s playful scream.

I grabbed a bag of skinny chips off the shelf, threw it too hard into my basket, then replaced it with a fresh bag. In LA I ate what Jake ate only less of it, less often. Here, I could do what I wanted, binge if I wanted. Was that what I wanted? I wove up and down the aisles, phone out, watching stories, watching the light mirage as the pill metabolized. People pushed carts past mine. A man talked to his AirPods, “Well, the Pampers are on sale.” Three kids petitioned their mom for cereal she said cost too much in sugar points. “Ninety grams!” she said, and the whines picked up. I turned the corner, made my way down the candy aisle. Every hungry shade of orange, yellow and red asked to be eaten. I stopped, considered the calories in a Reese’s. I picked up a bar, checked the label, questioned my motives. Are you really hungry? read a Post-it stuck to my mother’s fridge. The note had been there so long and had become so familiar that the question had gone invisible. But it was also constant, posed every time I opened my mouth to consume. No, I wasn’t hungry, not for sugar, not then. But Leah’s body, like my mother’s, scared me. I wanted her to be healthy, alive. I wanted to shock her into nourishing herself. I had a feeling that if she didn’t, I would have to, and caretaking Leah in addition to my mom was a burden I couldn’t bear. For a moment, I imagined force-feeding her. This is for your own good, I would say, mashing meat into her mouth. But I didn’t want to see her cry again.