Hat Check at the End

Emma stood at the pharmaceutical aisle, staring at the vitamin supplements like they held answers to questions she'd never asked. Her iPhone buzzed in her pocket — David again. He'd been calling since the funeral.

She picked up a bottle of B12, remembered how Mark used to tease her about her supplement obsession. 'You can't vitamin away mortality, Em,' he'd say, grinning that crooked grin that made her forgive him for being right.

The bull of a man at the end of the aisle was arguing loudly with someone on his phone. Emma flinched. Violence lived in her bones now, a permanent resident since the accident report had crossed her desk three months ago.

Her phone buzzed again. David. Her oldest friend, the one who'd held her hair back when she was twenty-three and crying over a married man, who'd sat with her in hospital waiting rooms when her mother died, who'd somehow become the person she called when she couldn't breathe.

She answered.

'Em, please. Just let me come over.'

'I'm fine, David.'

'You're not. You haven't been fine since—'

'Stop.' She ended the call, her hand trembling. The bull at the end of the aisle had stopped shouting. The pharmacy felt suddenly, violently quiet.

She'd worn Mark's hat to the funeral. A ridiculous beige fedora he'd bought on impulse in New Orleans, worn exactly twice. The eulogist had talked about heaven. Emma had thought about how Mark would hate the beige, how he'd make some terrible joke about needing more color in the afterlife.

'Everything okay?' A woman's voice. The bull from the aisle stood nearby, looking concerned. Up close, he wasn't a bull at all — just an older man with sad eyes and a cell phone that had caused more trouble than it was worth.

Emma realized she was crying.

'No,' she said. 'But I think I'm supposed to be.'

The man nodded, like this was the most natural thing in the world. 'My wife died two years ago today. I still buy her favorite cereal. It expires before I can finish it.' He paused. 'Some things don't get okay. They just get different.'

Emma stood there among the vitamins and weeping strangers, her phone silent in her pocket, and for the first time in three months, she breathed all the way in.