I passed the bakery on my way to produce and saw them.
A woman stood at the counter with a little boy beside her. He was small and serious-looking, wearing a red T-shirt with a faded dinosaur on the front. In one hand he held a pack of number candles. The six was bright blue. The woman looked a few years younger than me, maybe late thirties, dressed in leggings and a sweatshirt, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail. She was not polished or remarkable. She looked like hundreds of other mothers I had stood beside in school pickup lines and grocery aisles, tired and trying to hold everything together with one hand.
“Just the chocolate one,” she said quietly to the bakery cashier. “The small one in the corner.”
The cashier boxed it up and rang it in. “Twenty-two fifty.”
The woman slid her card.
Declined.
She gave a quick little laugh, the kind meant to soften embarrassment before it spread. “Sorry. Let me try again.”
She did.
Declined.
The little boy looked up at her with solemn, hopeful eyes that had not learned yet to hide disappointment. She swallowed hard and said, “I must have done the math wrong.”
