The dashboard clock informed her she’d wasted seven whole minutes sitting in the Malibu, fretting about going inside. She huffed in self-disgust.
“It’s just a freaking grocery store. Now get out of this damn car and do this,” she coached under her breath, releasing her seat belt.
She reached for the hessian tote she’d stashed on the passenger seat, checked to see if any of the entering or exiting patrons had brought their own bags, then decided to leave hers in the car. Lord knew they’d already smell the civilian on her—she didn’t need to raise more hackles with her hippie grocery bag.
“It’s exactly like any other grocery store in America, except there’s no sales tax and it’s packed with grunts every payday. There’s a Dillons and a Walmart in Meridian if you’d rather drive into town. The prices aren’t that different.” Chance had shrugged the night before when she announced her plan to make her first solo trip on post.
But she was resolute. Although they were still sleeping separately and hadn’t kissed again, every day they were taking baby steps toward a full-fledged relationship. Chance touched her now, squeezing her knee when she joined him on the couch or leaving his hand on her back as he looked over her shoulder at her improving culinary efforts. In turn she was trying to calm her temper, to give him the benefit of the doubt, to hold open the door her self-defensive instincts longed to slam shut whenever he paid her a compliment or said something so unexpectedly tender her heart hammered in her chest.
She was going to become the supportive army wife he deserved if it killed her. And from the height of the heels on the woman preceding her into the commissary, it very well might.
Tara paused inside the door to let her eyes adjust to the fluorescent-lit interior, which was much brighter than the overcast November day outside. She took in her surroundings, noting with relief that apart from the above-average numbers of shoppers in ACUs, Chance was right. The commissary was nothing more exciting than a run-of-the-mill grocery store.
She picked up a plastic basket and unfolded her shopping list. Although Chance insisted she didn’t need to cook—and probably preferred she didn’t, to be honest—she hoped today’s trip would simultaneously relieve him of the errand and allow her to get what she needed for a recipe she knew she could handle, rather than try to mimic his ability to concoct a delicious meal out of whatever odd ingredients he had hanging around.
She started in the produce section, choosing carrots and potatoes and a bagged side salad. She moved onto meat, adding mince beef and chicken breasts to her basket, then turned into the canned goods aisle. She was constantly self-conscious, certain the women pushing carts, scolding children, smiling as they reached around her for a tin of kidney beans were judging her or at least identifying her difference. Could they tell this was her first trip to the commissary? Did they notice that her so-called wedding ring was a thirty-dollar piece of crap from a casino gift store? Would they convene at some secret army wives’ tea later that afternoon and speculate about the racially ambiguous piece of trailer trash who’d wandered onto their post? Would they whisper to their husbands that Sergeant McKinley had gone too far this time, and something had to be done?
She recalled Chance’s frown as she’d explained her theory that army wives were like a mean girls’ sorority, poised to viciously exclude anyone who didn’t measure up to their expectations.
“Don’t believe everything you see on TV,” he’d replied. “Army wives are as different from each other as soldiers. Some of them have full-time jobs, some stay home to raise their kids, hell, some are probably finishing PhDs while they PCS all over the country. And you know there are army husbands too, right? I can’t see them taking much interest in your choice of lipstick color.”
On a deep, rational level she knew he was right, but it was buried so far under layer after layer of paranoid insecurity that she struggled to see her fellow shoppers as normal people instead of members of a vast military-spouse conspiracy.
Then again, she reasoned as she selected a bag of frozen peas, she had some weird hang-ups about normal grocery stores too. For years her bartending shifts meant she tended to shop at twenty-four-hour superstores at unsociable hours, but on the rare occasions she stopped in during the day she approached the cashiers with irrational trepidation. The bleep of the scanner always brought her back to the arguments her father would have in the checkout line about what he could buy with his food stamps, usually ending in a drunken and utterly fictional claim that he was a full-blooded Native American raising a child on his own and he was going to call the American Civil Liberties Union the instant he got home to tell them about the racism and poor customer service he’d encountered.
More often than not she was left to shove their meager groceries into a bag while her father was escorted off the property by a manager. Even though the supermarket nearest her Kansas City apartment was miles away from those years-ago stores in Arkansas, she could never shake the feeling that they might know her, that news of America’s worst customer and his guilty-by-association daughter had spread through underground checkout teller channels and that when she passed over her debit card to pay for her items it would be refused and she’d be barred from the store for life.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered under her breath, squaring her shoulders and striding purposefully toward the commissary checkout. That was then and this was now. She had her groceries, she had plenty of money to pay for them, and she had Chance’s advice on tipping the baggers. She was ready. Everything would be fine.
She unloaded her basketful of items onto the conveyer belt, greeting the bored-looking cashier with a big smile.
After a moment of expectant silence and a stifled yawn the woman asked, “ID please?”
“Oh, right.” Tara slung her oversized purse on the conveyer belt, rummaging in its depths as her cheeks heated. Of course she needed her ID. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Hold on, I think it’s just—it was in this pocket. It must’ve fallen out. Sorry, give me a second.” Where had the damn thing gone? She began emptying the contents of her purse item by item, lining them up in an embarrassing potpourri of unneeded crap. Hair ties, mostly empty tubes of lip gloss, gas receipts from three years ago, but no ID card.
She froze, the humiliation becoming too much to bear. She’d had her ID to get through the post gate—was it in the car? On the ground in the parking lot? Had she lost it? What the hell was she supposed to do now?
“I’m so sorry, I think I must’ve left in the car. Do you mind if I run out real quick and check?”
By this point a middle-aged man carrying most of his weight in his belly had taken an interest. His cheap tie suggested he was a manager, and his narrowed eyes broadcast how seriously he took that responsibility. Her heart started to pound in earnest.
“Who’s your sponsor, ma’am?”
“My husband. Sergeant Chance McKinley.”
“Which unit?”
Her mind drew a panicked blank. C’mon, Tara, you know this. Wait, is a company the same as a unit?
“Alpha.”
The cashier crossed her arms as the manager raised a disapproving brow. “Alpha Company’s deployed to Afghanistan, ma’am.”
“Right, I knew that, I mean he was in Echo, but he just moved to Alpha, so I wasn’t sure what you—”
“Will you step aside, please?”
Tara realized with abject horror that a line of shoppers had formed behind her, all wearing keen gazes underlined by a hint of annoyance. She scooped everything back into her purse, and the implausibly loud sound of her hairbrush missing its target and hitting the linoleum floor was only slightly less mortifying than her fumbling attempt to kneel down and retrieve it, her hand unsteady, her knees shaking.
She joined the manager at the front of the store, forcing herself to look away from the depressing sight of the cashier ruthlessly sweeping her unclaimed groceries back into a basket and shoving it onto the floor.
“You know the commissary is only open to military members and dependents,” he scolded. “The tax breaks offered here are—”
“I swear, my husband is a soldier here. I probably dropped the ID in the parking lot, can I please—”
“No need,” he said imperiously, his voice full of the kind of threat she’d heard parents use on children telling improbable lies. “I’ll call up his unit to check. Alpha Company, you said?”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, if you’d just—”
“Who’s his commanding officer?”
“I don’t know, he’s a medic, he’s supposed to replace—”
“Great, I’ll call the clinic. Wait there.”
He disappeared into what looked like an administration office. She plopped down on the plastic chair beside the plywood door, fourteen years old again and waiting while the principal called her house to report on her poor behavior. Back then she could usually count on her dad forgetting the conversation by the time she got home. She had a feeling Chance’s memory was a lot longer.
