She smiled widely at me and winked. “Police stations make me crave bacon.”
Alice was the worst shopper. The produce was clearly laid out to the right of the entrance, but she went left. I thought maybe she was the kind of shopper who had to wander the aisles and look at everything before picking out what she actually came to the store to purchase. But I didn’t feel like following her around, so I gathered what we’d need all on my own, only catching glimpses of Alice as she stood before the aisles, pausing to tilt her head, like she was trying to decide what she wanted from the shelves before walking along them. At the second-to-last aisle, she smiled, then looked over at me and winked before disappearing down the rabbit hole.
The crash I heard soon after made me jump enough to drop the apple I was about to add to my basket. Alice’s overloud, “Oh no!” sent me hurrying to the aisle just in time to watch an older man offering his hand to a downtrodden Alice, who was sprawled on the tile, surrounded by a puddle of liquid, shards of glass, and an assortment of colored olives.
Her defeated expression was such a contrast to the bright smile I’d seen only seconds before, I almost thought I’d had a weird apple-checking lapse in time, somehow.
“I’m so, so sorry. I just can’t imagine how this happened,” Alice said.
“Careful, now,” the man said. Alice rested her hand in his and rose up from the ruin, with as much grace as a princess drifting down from her carriage. Her eyes shone up into his as though he were her balding savior prince, rescuing her from a band of outlaws rather than a mess of her own creation. He reacted in kind, standing a little taller. He pushed his thumbs into the tiny pockets of his vest and rolled back his shoulders a bit at her attention. “Mind the glass, won’t you,” he said valiantly. “Are you injured anywhere?”
“I’ve a better question.” It was perhaps only the sound of my voice that brought the two of them to their senses. “What are you even doing in this aisle? We are supposed to be shopping for spinach.”
Alice pointed to a puddle that had been hidden behind her. “Oil for dressing,” she said pitifully. Her whole countenance drooped then, so that you’d think she was confessing to some grand crime. “What do I do now?”
We definitely had at least four kinds of oil at home. I started to say, “Let’s just pay for this mess and go—”
But before I could finish, Alice’s prince spoke up. “You just let me worry about all this.”
I half expected Alice to give in and laugh that it had all been a prank, but her eyes shone with actual tears.
“I can’t let you—,” she started, but he didn’t let her finish either.
“Never mind this. I’ll take care of everything. You just run along home to those children you care for. Don’t give this another thought.”
Her eyes still shone, but her expression changed to pure gratitude. She thanked the man perhaps one hundred times on our way out of the store, tears threatening the entire time—tears of thankfulness, I was left to presume.
By the time we reached the corner, Alice’s smile was almost wicked. I tried very, very hard to say nothing, but when she winked at me, I lost all restraint.
“On purpose? Really?”
Alice draped an arm around my shoulders, and I pushed it off. “Don’t be like that. It’s just a little fun.”
I stared at her for a few seconds, then turned and crossed the street against the light. She followed, almost getting hit by a horn-blaring MINI Cooper.
I knew I was overreacting—that my level of frustration with her was more about my mood than her actions—but she was wasting time that I didn’t have. Time I could have spent trying to figure out who was sending me threatening letters in the mail.
Alice caught up finally just as a strange female voice called out, “Jamie? Jamie Moriarty!”
I started walking faster, but Alice slowed her pace.
“Miss Jamie Moriarty?”
The reporters who’d followed us around after my father had been arrested all assumed I didn’t go by James, but none, it seemed, had done enough homework to know what name I actually used in my day-to-day life, which made it extremely easy to ignore them.
“Back off,” Alice said. She then lowered her voice to make a few vague threats, I was sure.
I didn’t stay close enough to hear. I raced ahead and almost made it home before Alice’s arm looped around my shoulders. I didn’t throw her arm off this time. “Thanks,” I said. “For Mallory and the reporter.”
“At the market,” she started, but I waved her off.
“I’m just in a bad mood today.” I started to walk again, thinking she’d let it go, but she held my arm to stop me. It was apparently time for some kind of talk. I supposed we were overdue for one. We hadn’t had time to talk about how long she was willing to stay, or to come up with a plan about how to handle all that had happened in the past two days. I’d not even showed her around the house yet.
But she surprised me by saying, “It’s lesson time.”