She opened the glass door of the freezer case and reached for the yellow waffle box, right at eye level, the one with the red logo across the front.

As her fingertips touched the waxy box, she felt her thoughts going elsewhere, to the scenes she’d found herself imagining for the last few months.

A car accident. The front end of his Volvo crumpled like laundry smashed into a hamper. Blue chunks of metal folded around black rubber bumpers; wrinkled, pressed, and molded into unrecognizable metal wounds. Glass scattered across black pavement, white concrete curbs spotted with orange and red remnants of turn signal covers and brake lights. Two cars pulled over, witnesses, looking around in white shock, waiting for police intervention. The smell of exhaust, of hot rubber, of the anxious sweat of perpetrators and victims. A driver hunched over the wheel, alone in his blue coffin. Finally, the sounds of sirens, the white flash of ambulance doors, the metal glint of a stretcher, and the crisp white of a sheet being pulled over a stained face.

The scene in Emily’s head scattered as she dropped the waffles into her cart. Why did she keep imagining this, this horrifying image? She wasn’t a violent person. And she loved Tim. Really, she did. But she was terrified that he, or anyone, for that matter, might one day look her in the eye and see the awful things she kept inventing.

She glanced around to see if anyone was watching her now. An old woman was looking at the ice cream case, through the clouded glass, squinting at the rocky road. The old woman’s little head of curly hair was turned to the side, pushed right up against the cold glass doors. She couldn’t have seen.

It was just a thought, Emily told herself. No one can see my thoughts. That’s all it was. Just a thought.

Emily pushed her cart toward the end of the aisle, watching the baby in her seat as she slept. The baby’s car seat took up almost the entire cart, leaving just a little bit of room at the back for sliding in groceries. The baby had been asleep the whole time—from the dry cleaners, to the hardware store, to the frozen food aisle. A good, sleepy baby day. Emily sighed, wondering when she’d luck into this kind of day again.

At the dairy case, she stopped to look at creamers, carefully comparing labels. Half and half, non-dairy, flavored, soy—the array of choices was overwhelming. The ones that had the most fat had the least sugar; the ones that had the most sugar had the least fat. Which was the lesser evil? Maybe she should just drink her coffee black. The thought made her stomach upset. No, she had to choose. Soy. Soy was supposed to be healthy, right?

As she dropped the creamer behind the baby’s car seat into the cart, she remembered Tim wanted cashews. She wondered whether they were cheaper in bulk than in the prepackaged tins on the snack aisle. The bulk aisle was hard to maneuver with the giant cart. She knocked over candy on an end cap display on her way around the corner. Bulk cashews, $8.99 a pound. Backing her cart slowly away, she swung it around carefully and headed another aisle over to snacks. Roasted cashews, $6.99. But only 12 ounces. Salted were more expensive than that. Mixed with walnuts, they were only $5.99. Why did he need cashews anyway? she thought. He always ate the entire thing in a day anyway. She wondered if he’d mind regular old peanuts instead. She tried to figure out the cost savings if she got bulk cashews versus regular, and then if she got peanuts versus cashews, and then if she got salted versus raw versus walnuts versus sunflower seeds. Her head spun with the math. Frustrated, she dropped a 12-ounce tin of unsalted cashews into the cart, and it clanged loudly against the metal frame. The clang woke the baby, who opened her muddled green eyes long enough to see light, then immediately shut them tightly in protest and began to cry.

“Aw, Sophie. Sophie, no,” Emily whispered, touching the baby’s socked feet. Sophie made little fists with her hands and pounded them in the air, her eyes still shut tight and her cries growing louder.

Emily looked up to see a woman watching her from the coffee side of the aisle. The woman’s face crinkled into annoyance as she turned and pushed her cart away from Sophie’s cries. The woman was older, maybe fifty, with a leopard print cardigan, elastic waist pants, and little black velvet slippers. Emily wondered if the woman had ever had a crying baby of her own or a husband who was picky about his cashews. She wondered if the woman had ever been this exhausted this young. Emily spun her giant cart back towards the other end of the aisle and let Sophie cry a little longer.

On the cereal aisle, the Volvo came back again. This time, Emily couldn’t help but envision the face slung over the steering wheel. It was clean shaven; the man had a small scar embedded in his left eyebrow; his short, clean brown haircut confirmed his suburbanism. It was Tim. Emily noticed a small line of spit dribbling from the left corner of his mouth, and his head lay motionless on the wheel. He looked like he was in bed, asleep, drooling like that. Like he’d fallen asleep hastily after a long night of beer and sex, like he was so exhausted he couldn’t control the things his spit could do. Emily hadn’t seen him like that in years, since well before Sophie’s time. Lately Tim slept lightly, waking at every sound, never so lost in satisfaction that he’d let himself drool on the pillow.

Except this wasn’t a pillow. It was the steering wheel of his cracked up blue Volvo, and EMTs were rushing to crack him out of the car. As she imagined them forcing the doors open with crow bars or sledgehammers or whatever they used, she turned the cart onto the paper aisle. Her eyes met with the eyes of the woman from the freezer aisle, the old lady who had been looking at rocky road, and this time the lady looked right at Emily, right through Emily, Emily thought, right to the awful imagination Emily hoped to hide. Emily froze where she was for just a second, sure that pausing would keep the women from seeing into her mind, from seeing the drool and Tim and the cracked up Volvo. The woman, though, looked down at Sophie, who’d finally quieted down again, and smiled.

“You have a beautiful daughter,” the woman said. “She has your nose.”

“No,” Emily managed to respond, looking down at Sophie’s socked feet, unable to bring her eyes up to meet the woman’s directly. “She looks like my husband.”

“Well, in any case,” the woman continued, “you’re lucky. I’m sure she and your husband are the light of your life. You must be so happy to be a mom.”

Emily slowly looked up from Sophie’s feet to her short brown hair and closed green eyes, the hair and eyes Sophie shared with Tim. Of course she was happy, she thought. There were no other words for how she felt. The only thing she could be was happy.

“Yes—yes, of course,” she replied. She touched Sophie’s sock, the soft cotton tickling her fingertips. “How could I not be?”