Chapter 3: What Maria Knew
"Do you know who that was?"
I shook my head.
My cart was still in front of me.
The two cereal boxes were still in my hands.
I set them both back on the shelf without looking at which one I'd chosen.
"No," I said.
"Should I?"
Maria glanced toward the end of the aisle where he'd gone.
Then she looked back at her phone screen.
"His name is Gerald Patton," she said.
"He's on the city council."
I stared at her.
"The city council."
"District 4.
He's been on it for eleven years." She turned the phone so I could see.
It was a local news photo — the same navy polo, the same gray stubble, standing at a podium with a small American flag behind him.
"He ran a whole campaign last year on family values."
I didn't say anything.
"He has a website," Maria said.
"There's a section on it called Community Standards."
The woman with the toddler had moved on.
The man in the store vest had gone back to restocking bread.
The aisle was just an aisle again — fluorescent lights, linoleum, cereal boxes in rows.
My cart had a squeaky wheel I hadn't noticed until right then.
"Maria."
"Yeah."
"What do we do with the picture?"
She looked at it again.
She didn't answer right away.
"I don't know yet," she said.
"But I'm not deleting it."
We checked out in the same line without planning to.
Maria put her things on the belt behind mine.
The cashier — a young woman, maybe twenty, with a braid over one shoulder — glanced at my shirt and then looked away quickly, the way people do when they're pretending not to see something.
I pulled the flannel closed with one hand and held it there while I paid.
In the parking lot, Maria loaded her bag into her trunk and then came around to where I was standing beside my car.
"How are you doing," she said.
Not a question.
The kind of sentence that means something different.
"I said sorry to him three times," I said.
"I know."
"I didn't even know what I was apologizing for.
I just — started apologizing."
"I know," she said again.
The sun was directly overhead.
My car was hot to the touch.
Somewhere across the lot a cart was rolling slowly into a parked bumper, making a small, dull sound over and over.
"He said he thought he was helping," I said.
"People always think that," Maria said.
"That's the part that makes it worse."
She hugged me then, in the parking lot, with my flannel still held shut and my grocery bag cutting into my wrist.
She held on longer than I expected.
When she pulled back, her eyes were wet.
"I'm posting it," she said.
"Maria —"
"Not yet.
I want to think about how." She looked at her phone again.
"But I'm not letting him walk back into that council chamber like nothing happened."
I drove home with the milk in the passenger seat because I'd run out of room in the trunk.
Dan was still on the couch with Nora when I came in.
He looked up.
"That was fast," he said.
I set the bag on the counter.
I didn't answer right away.
"There was a man," I said finally.
Dan sat up straighter.
Nora made a small sound against his chest.
"What kind of man?"
I told him.
All of it — the aisle, the wet circles, the three apologies, Maria and the phone.
I told him about the city council and the navy polo and the website with the section called Community Standards.
Dan was quiet for a long time after I finished.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"I don't know," I said.
"I think so.
I'm not sure."
He stood up carefully, keeping Nora against him, and crossed the room.
He put his free arm around me and held me there in the kitchen with the groceries still on the counter.
"You didn't do anything wrong," he said.
"I know," I said.
But I was still holding my flannel closed.
I hadn't let go of it since the parking lot.
Dan reached down gently and moved my hand away from the fabric.
He let the flannel fall open.
"You don't have to hold it," he said.
That's when my phone buzzed.
A text from Maria.
May you like
Four words.
*He just called me.*
