Chapter 1 - The Call from Aisle Nine
By sixty-seven, Eleanor Whitfield had stopped asking to be included anywhere.
Still, in the frozen-food aisle of a Meijer outside Dayton, Ohio, she pulled out her phone and called her only son, Grant, because Thanksgiving had always been the one thing that still belonged to the two of them.
"Pumpkin or apple pie?" she asked, a boxed pie tucked under each arm against her coat.
A pause on the line.
"Oh," Grant said. "Mom… we did Thanksgiving yesterday."
Eleanor looked up at the buzzing fluorescent lights. "Yesterday?"
In the background, clear enough that Eleanor knew she was meant to hear it, his wife, Bethany, said, "It was simpler without you."
May you like
The line went quiet.
Eleanor put the pumpkin pie back on the shelf. She kept the apple one, only because it was already in her cart, and walked out into the cold parking lot with nowhere in particular to be.
