I've worked the Sunday morning register at Fairview Grocery for almost three years, and Mr. Halloran has been coming in nearly every one of those Sundays, always around nine-fifteen, always with the same folded piece of paper in his coat pocket.
My name is Katie. I noticed the pattern within a few months of starting — the list itself, written in shaky, careful cursive, never seemed to change. Two percent milk. A dozen eggs. Wheat bread. A small bag of apples. Ground coffee. Canned soup, always the same brand. Two frozen dinners. A newspaper from the rack by the door. He'd move through the store in the same order every time, slow and deliberate, checking each item off with a stub of pencil before setting it in his cart.
He didn't talk much, not in any extended way. A polite "good morning" at the register, a comment about the weather if I offered one first, exact change counted out carefully from a coin purse rather than a wallet.
I started, somewhere along the way, slowing down when I bagged his groceries. Not dramatically, nothing he'd necessarily notice as deliberate — just a little more care with the eggs, a little more time double-checking the receipt, a few extra seconds folding the paper bags before loading them. It gave him, I think, a few more minutes of simply standing at that counter, being spoken to, before he