I saw her again the next morning. Her smile even bigger than it was yesterday.

She’s basically floating as she makes her way to the back of the store. She emerges from the family planning aisle with a two-pack of prenatal vitamins. She begins floating towards my register, but stops suddenly and takes a sharp turn down the grocery aisle. As she walks up to me, I see that she has added ginger ale and saltine crackers to her basket. Her smile cuts through the cloudy gloom of this snowy morning.

I closed last night; she was here then, too. I was stocking shelves, but it was easy to notice her- floating then too, wide smile present. She had a secret, her smile revealed. I watched as she purchased two boxes of pregnancy tests.

“Must’ve been positive,” I thought to myself as she laid the prenatal vitamins out in front of me. I gently grabbed them and slid them over the scanner. She made her purchase and turned to leave the store.
“Have a good day,” she said, as she walked out into the snow.

. . .

I saw her a few other times over the course of the next week. She bought a variety of vitamins each visit, probably to supplement for the ingredients her prenatal vitamins lacked. It was obvious that she was happy and excited.

I opened the store this morning, my shift starting long before the sun started its. She came in shortly after we opened, but something was different. I knew as soon as I saw her; I didn’t need to see what she was grabbing off of the shelves to know that something was different.

As she approached my register I noticed that her posture was more limp than I had ever seen it. She wasn’t floating this time.

She slowly placed a heating pad, a bottle of wine, and a box of pads in front of me. The chore of lifting the items from her basket to the plastic mat on the counter seemed to drain her of what little energy she appeared to have left.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t sell you this bottle of wine. We’re not allowed to sell alcohol before 8 a.m.,” I tell her, regrettably.
“That’s okay,” she says with a weak smile, her eyes damp. “There are worse things.”