Chapter 5: Plain Sight

Lucinda's POV

The General Store in Chatsworth sold boots, flannel, bait and birdseed.

On a shelf behind the register it sold whatever else a person in the Barrens was too proud to order online.

I walked in wearing Reuben's flannel shirt and a pair of his sweatpants rolled four times at the ankle.

I was barefoot, with berry stains up to my wrists.

Every head in the place turned.

It was a Sunday, and half the pack buys its groceries here after church.

Nobody said anything.

Reuben came in behind me with his hat in his hand, and the silence changed.

A Stray does not walk into a pack store at noon, and he does not walk in beside the bride who left the Flooding.

"Boots first," I said, loud enough for the aisle. "Size eight."

The clerk was a woman of seventy in a cardigan with a cat on it.

She had sold me birdseed since I was nine.

She looked at my bare feet and at Reuben's hand resting at the small of my back.

She went into the stockroom without a word and came out with three boxes.

"The brown ones," she said. "They won't rub."

They fit.

I picked out two pairs of jeans, four sweaters, a coat and a three-pack of socks, and I laid it all on the counter.

"Your mother was in here at nine," the clerk said. "She said you'd come in barefoot. Everything goes on her account."

"She did?"

"She bought him a pound of coffee." The clerk's eyes went to Reuben and stayed there a moment.

I looked at the shelf behind her.

I looked at it for exactly as long as it took to decide I was done being shy in my own life.

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