The Bear in the Aisle

Margaret found herself running late again—running from the truth, really. At 47, she'd mastered the art of running toward everything that didn't matter and away from everything that did. The fluorescent lights of the grocery store hummed their merciless song at 11 PM as she reached for the organic spinach, her hands trembling slightly.

Her iPhone buzzed in her pocket—David, again. Three missed calls, twelve texts. She knew what they said. She'd read them a hundred times in her head since finding his shirt that smelled of another woman's perfume—something sweet and synthetic, nothing like her own sandalwood and old books scent.

She adjusted the floppy hat she'd thrown on to hide her unwashed hair, the brim casting shadows over eyes that hadn't slept properly in weeks. The hat was her armor, her way of becoming someone else—someone whose husband wasn't sleeping with his 26-year-old assistant.

"Excuse me," a deep voice rumbled behind her. Margaret turned to find a mountain of a man in a faded work jacket, his beard shot through with gray, eyes kind and impossibly sad. He gestured toward the spinach she was crushing in her grip. "You're going to bruise it."

The absurdity of it caught in her throat—a laugh that sounded more like a sob. She let the plastic box drop into her cart, where it joined the wine, the chocolate, the pathetic dinner for one.

"My wife," the man said suddenly, apropos of nothing, "used to buy spinach every week. Said she'd make salads. Never did. It would rot in the crisper drawer while we ordered pizza." His mouth twisted. "She died two years ago tomorrow."

Margaret's phone buzzed again. She looked at this stranger—this bear of a man with his grief worn like comfortable old clothes—and something shifted inside her, something that had been frozen since discovering David's betrayal.

"I'm sorry," she said. And she was. For both of them. For all the ways love rotted in crisper drawers, uneaten and unlived.

"Don't be," he said, already turning away. "Better to have had it and lost it than..." He waved a massive hand. "Whatever comes next."

Margaret stood there a long time, her phone silent in her pocket, the spinach mocking her from the cart. Eventually, she pulled it out and deleted David's messages without reading them. Then she called her sister.

Some bears, she realized, were the only ones worth running toward.