He held up his phone. The list was a wall of text. It was filled with bolded warnings about nut products and mandatory fruit portions and a total ban on chocolate.
"I don't know where to start," he admitted.
I took the phone from him. "Okay. It’s manageable."
I started walking and they followed, Jack’s basket rattling as we moved. "Cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches. She’ll eat those. Grapes. Cereal bars—the oat ones, not the ones that arebasically candy bars. Cheese cubes if you have the patience to cut them."
Jack was typing into his phone as I talked.
"Also," I said, stopping by the freezers. "Fish fingers. Not the value pack."
"What’s wrong with the value pack?"
"Nothing, if you want her to eat two bites and decide she's done."
He looked at the yellow-labeled box, then at me, and reached for the brand-name one instead. It hit the basket with a heavy thud.
We kept moving. I led the way toward the bakery and then the dairy, and somewhere along the way I stopped noticing that I was still walking with them. The tension had shifted. It wasn't the braced silence of the funeral anymore. It was just a chore.
"Are you coming for dinner?" Lily said.
I looked down. She was hugging the vitamins to her chest.
"I'm just doing my shopping, Lily," I said.
"We're having pasta," she said. "There's enough."
"Lily." Jack’s voice was quiet, a quick attempt to pull her back.
She didn't look at him. She held my gaze for a second longer, then turned and wandered toward a display of juice boxes. She’d made her point.
Jack and I stood by the milk.
"Sorry," he said.
"Don't be."
We ended up at the checkout at the same time. Lily put the vitamins on the belt with great ceremony. Jack unloaded the rest—the eggs, the fish fingers, the lunchbox things—and I put my items down after him. We stood in the ordinary quiet of the line and it was, as it turned out, completely fine.
Easy, even.
Outside in the parking lot, the air was sharp and smelled like rain. Lily stopped and looked up at me. "Are you sure you don't want to come?" she said. "Gerald would like it."
"Maybe another time," I said.
She considered this for a moment. "Okay," she said. "Friday then."
Jack looked at her. "Lily?—"
"She said another time," Lily said. "Friday is another time."
I looked at Jack. He looked at me. Neither of us had a good answer for that.
"That's really sweet," I said. "But I don't want to impose."
"Uncle Jack always makes too much," Lily said. "We had leftovers three times this week."
Jack looked at her. "That's not—" He stopped. "That's fair, actually."