Just then she heard someone say, “Lu Trusdale?” She whipped her head around to see a woman with a strong, square chin, indented with a perfectly round dimple. “You’re Lu, aren’t you?”

Lu looked at her warily. Her insides felt jumpy. She nodded.

“I’m Jessica!” The woman leaned toward Lu, like she expected to be congratulated. “My mom is super-best-friends with your mother-in-law, and we’re here for the summer too. You probably don’t remember this, but I was at your baby shower!”

“Of course,” said Lu. “Jessica, of course.” Lu didn’t remember a single thing about her baby shower except for a feeling of near panic that came over her in waves. Jeremy’s mother had planned the whole thing, and there were so many people there that it took two full hours to open the gifts. The day had made Lu feel unnecessarily extravagant and spoiled. Also, she hated to be the center of attention, unless there was a judge and a jury involved, so by the end of the event her face hurt from smiling so hard and so insincerely.

Jessica wasn’t shy about looking in Lu’s shopping cart. “Oooooh!” she said. “Artichokes! How brave of you. What are you making?”

Lu didn’t say, Broken artichoke heart salad to go on the side of pasta puttanesca. She said, “I don’t know. Something very simple. Truth be told, I’m not much of a cook.”

“Yes, you are!” said Chase. He was kicking at the wheel of the shopping cart. “You cook all the time!”

“Oh,” said Lu, growing flustered. “His definition of cooking and mine are a little different.” She could have stopped there, but something made her go on. “You know kids! You throw some chicken nuggets on a sheet pan and they think you’ve cooked for them!”

Jessica nodded appraisingly. “Well,” she said finally. “We should definitely hang out. I’ll get your number from your MIL.” She actually said the letters, not the words: M. I. L.

OMG, thought Lu.

“Great!” said Lu. “Definitely do that.” She waited until Jessica had turned in to the frozen food section and then she allowed herself to exhale in relief. She hated not being anonymous while she shopped or cooked. She didn’t like surprises in any form: she liked to be the one who doled out the surprises, controlled them. She told Chase to hold on to the cart so he wouldn’t get lost and she hightailed it toward the register and paid as quickly as she could.

There was a man in a gray T-shirt perusing the display of mass-market paperbacks near the register. From the back, she didn’t recognize him, but when he turned slightly to reach for a book she saw that he was her neighbor, the grumpy one who didn’t have any sugar and didn’t invite her inside and hardly said two words to her. Lu watched as he picked up a book and flipped through it. As it turned out, Lu, who read everything, had read that book. Because she believed in second chances, she said, “That one was good. You should get it.”