“Come on. We still need butter.”
“You’re too calm, Grandpa.”
We moved on.
A few aisles later, Grandpa suddenly stopped.
“The butter.”
“What about it?” I breathed.
“We forgot it.”
“I thought you put it in, Grandpa.”
“You thought wrong.”
“We forgot it.”
I sighed dramatically.
“Stay with the cart.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I am 78, not seven.”
“Give me two minutes, Grandpa.”
“I am 78, not seven.”
As I turned away, he called after me.
“Tell me where you’re going, Addy.”
I stopped. “I just did.”
“Say it again.”
“The dairy section.”
He smiled. “Good.”
“Say it again.”
Then came the line I’d heard hundreds of times.
“I already lost you once.”
I shook my head.
“You’ve been using that joke for 23 years, Grandpa.”
“It still works.”
“I already lost you once.”
***
When I was five, I’d wandered away from Grandpa at a county fair.
I barely remembered it. He remembered all 11 minutes.
He’d told the story so many times I could recite it myself.
One second I was beside him.
The next I was gone.
I barely remembered it.
He searched through the crowd until he heard me crying near a game booth.
After that, whenever I walked away in public, he made me say exactly where I was going.
Even now.
Even when he was blind.
“Two minutes,” he said. “I’ll count.”
He made me say exactly where I was going.
I hurried toward dairy.
The butter had been moved again.
Of course it had.
I found it at the far end of the refrigerated wall and headed back.
Halfway down the main aisle, I noticed employees moving faster than before.
I hurried toward dairy.
One worker hurried toward customer service.
Another spoke into a radio.
A woman near the bakery turned sharply, scanning the crowd.
Something had happened.
Then I heard a man’s voice.
“Kelly!”
Something had happened.
Another shout.
Louder.
“KELLY!”
I knew that voice.
The man from aisle nine… John.
He rushed around a display so fast he nearly collided with another cart.
I knew that voice.
His face looked nothing like it had five minutes earlier.
No arrogance.
No impatience.
Only panic.
His wife followed several feet behind him, crying.
“Did you check the bathrooms?”
His face looked nothing like it had five minutes earlier.
“Yes.”
“Customer service?”
“They’re looking.”
“Kelly!”
The man turned in a full circle.
Then he saw something behind me.
