Three days passed.
On the third morning, a police officer walked into my store.
He looked to be in his thirties.
“Are you Mary? The owner?”
“Yes.”
“I’m following up on a report about this business being unattended earlier this week.”
I put down the price labels I was sorting.
“Is something wrong?”
“Were you the person who drove a woman and her son to the hospital?”
“Yes. Is Tyler all right?”
“I haven’t had an update on the child, ma’am. I’m here about the shop.”
He glanced toward the camera.
“Have you watched your security footage from that morning?”
“No.”
“Ma’am, you need to watch your security footage. Then you’ll understand.”
My hands started shaking.
“Why? What is this about?”
I looked at the register.
“Was somebody stealing?”
“We haven’t had a theft reported. I’d like to confirm what happened and whether anything’s missing.”
He explained that someone had called the non-emergency line after finding the store unattended.
A patrol officer had checked on it that morning.
Several people were already there.
“They said you’d left because of a medical emergency,” he told me.
I frowned.
“Several people?”
He nodded toward the computer.
“Would you mind showing me the recording?”
I opened the camera system.
My hands weren’t steady enough to type the password correctly the first time.
Finally, the footage appeared.
There I was, hurrying through the door with Diana and Tyler.
The door swung shut behind us.
It didn’t latch.
A few minutes later, a man entered.
He wore a faded delivery-company jacket.
He looked around.
Called toward the back of the shop.
Then he stepped behind my counter.
“Oh, no,” I whispered.
The officer waited.
On the screen, the man looked down at the register.
He reached toward it.
I leaned closer.
But he didn’t open it.
Instead, he took out his phone.
He made a call.
A woman entered a few minutes later.
Then another man.
They spoke, gesturing toward the door.
The recording had no sound.
The first man moved away from the register.
He picked up a piece of paper and wrote something.
Then he taped it to the glass.
BACK SOON. OWNER AWAY.
I sat back.
“What?”
The officer pointed at the screen.
“Keep watching.”
A woman I recognized from the bakery across the street arrived carrying a chair.
She placed it near the entrance.
An older woman sat down.
June.
One of my longtime customers.
She stayed there while the others moved around the shop.
A man checked the back door.
Someone straightened the handwritten sign.
The delivery-jacket man stood near the counter, greeting customers and explaining something I couldn’t hear.
Nobody opened the till.
Nobody carried anything away.
When the first group left, two other people arrived.
They took turns staying near the entrance.
The footage continued until I returned from the hospital.
Just before my car pulled up, the man in the delivery jacket checked that the register was closed.
As he bent forward, his sleeve slipped back.
I noticed an old metal wristwatch with a cracked dark strap.
He had a rectangular patch on his jacket where a name badge used to be.
Then he stepped away from the counter.
By the time I pushed the door open, everyone was gone.
I looked at the officer.
“They were watching my store?”
“That’s what it appears.”
“All that time?”
He nodded.
“Someone nearby knew you’d taken a child to the hospital. Word got around.”
I looked again at June sitting beside the handwritten sign.
“Do you recognize the man in the jacket?” the officer asked.
“No.”
“Anything missing?”
I checked the till again, then the stock nearest the counter.
“No.”
He made a note.
He finished the report, then hesitated.
“There’s something else I’d like to ask. It isn’t police business.”
I looked up.
He glanced at the paused recording, then took his notebook off the counter.
“My father was one of the people here that morning.”
“The man in the jacket?”
“Yes.”
“That was kind of him.”
The officer looked at the floor for a moment.
“He asked me to pass along a message. He’d like to speak with you, if you’re willing.”
“About the store?”
“About something that happened a long time ago.”
I waited.
He took a breath.
“He thinks he may have seen you on the road the day your son died.”
I put one hand on the counter.
“How would he know about that?”
“He remembered the blue station wagon and the woman waving beside it. When he heard about Ben’s death, he saw your name and photograph in the local paper. The bakery owner called him on Tuesday and said Mary’s store had been left open because she’d taken a sick child to the hospital. He knew which Mary she meant.”
I looked at the paused image on the screen.
The man in the delivery jacket stood behind my counter.
Thirty years earlier, I’d watched so many cars pass that I couldn’t have described a single driver.
“Does he want me to forgive him?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
The officer placed a small piece of paper on the counter.
“My father’s number. You don’t have to call.”
He left.
