“I know that store,” Henry said.
“A man yelled at her once,” I said. “Because his eggs broke. He called her terrible things. In front of everybody.”
My voice was shaking.
“I was there,” I said. “I was thirteen. I was standing ten feet away. And I didn’t say anything.”
Henry didn’t say anything.
He just listened.
“I pretended I didn’t know her,” I said. “I picked up a magazine. And I pretended I didn’t know my own sister.”
I was crying now. In the juice aisle at Lakeview Foods. In front of a nineteen-year-old I’d known for twenty minutes.
“She quit the next week,” I said. “She never worked again. She died when she was thirty-four. And I never told her I was sorry.”
Henry looked at me for a long time.
Then he said something I’ll never forget.
“You said something today,” he said.
