Look Again

Chapter Forty-seven

Ellen couldn't see Carol Braverman's face because she had on large black sunglasses and a hot pink visor, but she still felt a tingle of excitement at the sight of her. Carol got out of the car, tall and shapely in a white cotton tank top and an old-school tennis skirt. Pink pompoms wiggled from the backs of her sneakers, and a bouncy dark blond ponytail popped out of her visor. She slipped a white quilted bag over her shoulder and hurried to the gourmet grocery, where she picked a shopping cart and rolled it inside the tinted glass doors of the store.

Ellen grabbed her keys and purse, got out of the car, and hustled through the parking lot to the grocery, snagging a shopping cart for show. The entrance doors slid aside, and the air-conditioning hit like January, but two women shoppers stood bottlenecking the entrance, looking at the green stand for cut flowers. She kept an eye on Carol but didn't want to draw attention to herself, especially when she realized how out of place she looked. Nobody else had on a thick white turtleneck, Mom jeans, and brown clogs accessorized with Pennsylvania mud.

She ducked into the back row of the flower department, going around the shoppers, and fake-lingered at the bird-of-paradise plants, then glanced over her shoulder. In the next minute, the women moved, leaving Carol right behind her, using the ATM machine, and so close that Ellen could almost hear her humming. She couldn't risk Carol seeing her and maybe recognizing her later, so she kept her head down and her sunglasses on her nose. The ATM beeped, and the humming grew fainter, so she knew that Carol had moved on.

Time to get stalking.

Ellen never knew when she'd get another opportunity and she had to see Carol's face, close up. She drifted sideways past a wall of nuts in plastic scoop-it-yourself canisters and fake-browsed the roasted un-salted almonds, raw salted almonds, and raw unsalted almonds. For a minute, she couldn't even fake-decide. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Carol looking at the peppers, her back turned.

Ellen pulled a plastic bag from a perforated roll, picked up a plastic scoop, and dug out some raw almonds, then spotted Carol moving around the perimeter of the produce department, bagging a head of romaine and putting it in her cart, her back still turned. Ellen got a twist tie for her almond bag and crossed nearer to Carol, keeping her head down in the apple aisle, where rosy galas, fat Macintoshes, and Golden Delicious sat mounded like Egyptian pyramids. She positioned herself midway down the aisle, so that she could get a good look at Carol's face if she turned around.

Ellen picked up a Granny Smith and examined it with ersatz absorption, and in the split second she bent over to put it back, Carol spun around with her cart.

No!

The rest happened even before Ellen could process it. Carol's cart crashed squarely into Ellen's hip, startling her so that she backed into the apple pyramid, and before she could stop them, Gala and Fuji apples were rolling toward her in a pesticide-free avalanche.

"Oh no!" Ellen yelped, punching up her glasses.

"I'm so sorry!" Carol tried to catch the apples, but they hit the lacquered floor and shot off in all directions, like billiard balls.

"Oh, jeez!" Ellen bent over to hide her face, fake-collecting apples, just as Carol straightened up, her cheeks slightly flushed, her hands full of apples.

"I can't believe I did that! I'm so sorry!"

"It's okay," Ellen said, but she glanced up and almost gasped.

Carol had taken off her sunglasses, and in person, the resemblance between her and Will was obvious. She had Will's sea-blue eyes and creamy coloring. Her lips were on the thin side, like his, and her chin slightly pointed, too. Carol struck her instantly as being o/will, as if Ellen could smell the blood they shared. Stricken, she put her head down, but Carol knelt next to her, gathering apples in her tennis skirt.

"It was my fault. That's what I get for rushing."

"No, it was me. I knocked them over." Ellen collected the escaping apples, flushed with emotion, keeping her face to the floor.

"I was doing too much. I always think I can squeeze in one little errand. You ever do that?" Sure.

"Of course that's when things go wrong."

"Mrs. Braverman, let me help you," a stockboy said, hurrying over in a pepper green smock and checkered Vans. He bent down and corralled some of the apples, his fuzzy dreadlocks falling into his young face.

"Thanks, Henrique." Carol rose, brushing off a pair of tan, finely muscled legs. "I'm such a klutz today. I hit this woman with my cart."

"Really, I'm fine." Ellen rose, looking for the exit, but suddenly, Carol placed a manicured hand on her arm.

"Again, I'm so sorry."

"It's nothing, thanks." Ellen shed Carol's hand, turned away as calmly as possible, and walked through the produce department and out of the store. She hit the humid air and made a beeline for the rental car. Her eyes welled up behind her sunglasses, and her throat thickened. She fumbled in her purse for the car keys, let herself inside, then slumped low in the driver's seat.

She sat in the car, staring out the windshield. Cars broiled in the Miami sun, and pink flowers ringed the parking lot. She gazed at them without really seeing them, wiping her eyes and trying to process what she'd seen. Carol Braverman, a grieving mother. She seemed like a nice woman, she seemed like W. She could be missing the child who was at her home right now, up north.

Ellen thought of Susan Sulaman, haunted by the loss of her children, and then Laticia Williams, bereft. She knew how they felt, and she could guess how Carol Braverman felt. A wave of conscience engulfed her, and she felt awful that she might be causing another woman that sort of pain. Another mother.

His real mother.

She reached for the bottle of water and took a sip, but it was hot and burned her throat. She couldn't help but feel it was a penance, of sorts.

A swinging white bag drew her attention, and Ellen looked out the window. Carol was leaving the grocery store and hurrying to her car, carrying a brown paper bag, then she chirped the car unlocked, got in the driver's seat, and reversed out of the space.

Ellen started the ignition, shaken.