She hunts for a space the way I used to, that little lean forward over the wheel, eyes flicking, and I want to tell her it doesn't matter, take any of them, they're all just squares of gray, you are alive and it is Tuesday and the light is doing that thing on the puddle by the cart return.
She finds one and sighs. The bad kind of sigh, the whole-body one, like the parking has cost her something. Oh, love. I would give anything to be annoyed by a parking lot again. To feel the sun bake through a windshield onto my forearm. To hold hot keys in a fist. To slam a door and hear it and feel the little shudder of it in my teeth.
She's carrying the bags in one trip, of course, straps cutting red lines into her fingers, because two trips is beneath her dignity. That grip. That grimace. That gorgeous stubborn refusal to just set them down. A milk jug swinging against her knee with every step.
She steps over the concrete bumper without looking. Her body knows exactly how high to lift the foot. It knows. Thirty years of practice in a machine she will never once thank.
Somewhere a shopping cart rattles loose and rolls, slow, and nobody chases it, and the asphalt holds the day's heat up into the evening the way warm things do, the way I remember warm things doing.
Take your time crossing back, my darling. Let a car wait for you. Feel the strap dig in.
Feel all of it.