By the hard cheeses, she saw her neighbors from two doors down, the Walkers. She kept her head pointed toward the floor and avoided eye contact. In the nonorganic fruit aisle she saw the mother of the first family she ever babysat for, Mrs. Reyes, but she was sans children and thus easily circumvented. In the organic fruit aisle she came upon Caitlin, of all people, who was taking a selfie with a container of raspberries. Alexa didn’t know why and wasn’t about to ask. She skirted out of the fruit aisle, undetected.

She gathered enough random food in her cart (broccoli, seltzer, those crostini Tuscan crackers Morgan liked, as an olive branch of sorts—a cracker branch) so that her trip looked legit but not over the top, and she headed toward the checkouts. Cam wasn’t working any of the registers. She chose a line with a young checkout person who might be friendly with him. Everyone else working was at least forty-five.

“You could have gone in the express line,” the girl chirped, surveying Alexa’s items. “You wouldn’t have had to wait!”

Alexa shot her a withering glance that said, I know, but I didn’t want to. Then she tossed her hair and said, “Hey, do you know if Cam’s working today?”

“Did you bring your reusable bags or do you want paper?”

Was this an answer? “Paper,” growled Alexa, and she repeated her question about Cam.

“I don’t know,” said the girl. She called, way too loudly, over to the manager’s station. “Bill! When is Cam working next?”

“He’s off for a few days,” said Bill. He moved over to the end of the checkout lane and began bagging Alexa’s groceries. “No reusables?”

“She didn’t bring any,” said the checkout girl. She shrugged at Bill as if to indicate that she couldn’t help it if people didn’t care about the planet.

Bill said, “I think he’s at the lake.”

“Thanks,” said Alexa. She took her paper bag and hightailed it back to her Jeep before she could run into anyone else she knew.

The first thing she did after putting away the groceries, and—out of some inexplicable spite toward the checkout girl—throwing the paper bag in the garbage can instead of recycling it, was to climb the stairs to her bedroom and call Hannah to see if she would switch shifts with Alexa. Alexa would work for her the following day if Hannah would work for her this afternoon at four.

“I don’t know, Amazon,” said Hannah. “I’m at the beach.”

Alexa gritted her teeth at the nickname and set her wheels turning. “Which beach?”

“Jenness.”

“Oh boy,” said Alexa.

“What?”

“Aren’t they getting those crazy thunderstorms up there today?”

Hannah hesitated. “I don’t think so? It looks like really clear now?”