She knew she should leave, but she decided to wait for a moment to see if her gift would kick in. She stared at him, but nothing occurred to her. She had nothing to give him but advice, and most people weren’t inclined to take that too seriously. Evanelle was neither as mysterious nor as clever as her Waverley relatives who had always lived in the Queen Anne home on Pendland Street. But she did have the gift of anticipation. From the time she was a little girl, she brought her mother dishcloths before the milk was spilled, she closed the windows before there was even a hint of a storm, and she gave the preacher a cough drop before he had a coughing spell during the sermon.

Evanelle had been married once, a long time ago. The first time she met her husband they were six years old, and she gave him a small black stone she’d found on the road that day. That night he used it to tap on her window to get her attention, and they became the best of friends. After thirty-eight years of marriage and not once feeling the need to give him something again, she was seized with the need to buy her husband a new suit. It turned out to be because he didn’t have a decent one to be buried in when he died the following week. She tried not to think too hard about her gift, because then she would think about how frustrating it was not to know why people needed the things. Sometimes at night when her house felt particularly empty, she still wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t bought her husband that suit.

She watched Fred go to the picnic-supply aisle and open a box of plastic utensils. He took out a plastic spoon and opened his cup of yogurt. She really should be moving on, but then she got to thinking about how nice it would be to live in a grocery store, or better yet a Wal-Mart, or better still a mall, because they had beds in the linen departments of the stores and a big food court. She suddenly realized that Fred had stopped short, the plastic spoon in his mouth, and he was looking back at her through the window.

She smiled and gave him a little wave.

He walked to the door and unlocked it. “Can I help you with something, Evanelle?” he said, stepping outside.

“Nope. I was just passing by when I saw you.”

“Is there something you want to give me?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Oh,” he said, as if he really wanted something, something that would make everything all better. But relationships were hard. There was no cure for them. He looked around to see if anyone on the street had seen them, then he leaned forward and whispered, “I’ve asked him to be home early for the past two nights, and the past two nights he hasn’t come home at all. I don’t know what to do with my time at home when he’s not there, Evanelle. He’s always so good at making the decisions. Last night I couldn’t even figure out what time I should eat. If I ate too early and he came home, then I couldn’t eat with him. But if I waited too long, it would be too late to eat. At around two o’clock this morning I figured I should get things ready to fix breakfast in case he came in. That would be a nice gesture, right? I came here to pick some things up, but James usually leaves me a grocery list, so when I got here I wasn’t sure what to get. I kept thinking, what if he doesn’t want grapefruit? And what if I brought home coffee beans he doesn’t like? I ended up falling asleep on the couch in my office. I don’t know what I’m doing.”