“Are you out of your mind? You want my mother to p…

Straightforward. Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. I planned to spend the afternoon raking leaves from the backyard, making a pot of soup, and reading the novel sitting on my nightstand with a bookmark stuck seventeen pages in.

Patricia had her own list, though she had not mentioned it until we were already inside. She pulled a folded piece of paper from her canvas tote with the practiced casualness of someone who had been planning this for a while. “Just a few special things,” she said, already moving toward the specialty aisle.

“I’ve been wanting to make a proper charcuterie board. And there’s a cheese Daniel used to love when he was little.”

I followed her, because what else do you do? Daniel trailed behind us, looking at his phone.

The few special things took forty minutes and covered most of the cart. I watched it fill with a peculiar, detached feeling, like observing something happen through a window. The smoked salmon.

The French brie. The aged balsamic. The truffle oil.