Page 72 of Broken Chorus

“It is, but it wasn’t stolen, sweetheart, It grew from a tree, I’m guessing, and someone came along and picked it and it wound up here.”

“But how can they pick it if wasn’t theirs?”

“Ummmm….” Aaron stammered. “It probably grew on a tree farm, so the farmer paid people to pick the fruit when it was ready. It’s called harvesting, and that’s what some people do to make money.”

“You harvest money?”

“Naw sweetheart,” he drawled, “Money, unfortunately, doesn’t grow on trees.”

“How you get money?” She asked as they wheeled away from the produce section.

“I play the guitar and now I sing.”

She narrowed her eyes at that, bottom lip poking out a little. “You sing for me!”

“Yeah, I do,” Aaron explained. “But sometimes I sing for other people too.”

“They my songs!” she declared, hugging her narwhal tight to her chest. “You said so!”

Well they’d just slid sideways into potential meltdown territory. Aaron leaned in, kissed her forehead, and ruffled her hair. “Yes, I did, which I way I don’t singthosesongs to anyone but you, but sometimes, I sing other songs to the people who come to hear me play, like the ones I sang in the music room. Those are songs anyone can hear.”

“Not my Itsy Bitsy!” She declared.

“No, not any of the sings we sing together at home.”

She smiled at that and nodded her little head. “My songs special.”

“That’s right, they are.”

And just like that, crisis averted, and she was happy again. Time to get moving on the first part of the list. Flour, sugar, rice, who the fuck knew there were so many varieties of pasta and jars of sauce. He got red, white, and one that was some shade in between. Chili fixings, hold the beans, the plan was to serve it with corn bread. Speaking of which…he found a couple boxes of mix, several seasonings, honey, brown sugar, pancake mix and syrup. Pudding, Jell-o, cake mix, peanut butter, jelly, simple items the kids loved soon occupied his cart. Dani occasionally turned the book his way to show him an image, or ask about the words, but for the most part, she was content to show it to her narwhal while he shopped.

They were in the canned fruit aisle, with Aaron carefully scrutinizing the labels, since Hawk had been very specific when he’d written out and underlined,packed in juice or water only!Aaron had never known that it mattered what liquid was in the can, until he’d turned one around and seen the difference in the sugar content. Now he understood why Hawk was so insistent on not getting the ones that used syrup of any kind, heavy or light.

He was so focused on what he was doing, that Dani’s sudden, sharp intake of breath started the hell out of him. He dropped the cans he was holding and whirled around, expected to see some hideous disaster about to befall them, but aside from a woman in a wheelchair several feet away, they were alone in the aisle.

“Dani, what’s wrong sweetheart? Did you get your fingers pinched? I didn’t knock anything on you, did I?”

“N-n-nooooo.”

“Then what’s wrong?” He knew he was getting frantic, his tone, his movements, he kept looking for blood or something poking her, and seeing nothing, started to lift her up out of the cart’s seat, when suddenly she pointed, nearly poking him in the eye in her haste.

“It’s eating her!”

“Wh-what….?”

Sputtering, he looked around, sure there was a reasonable explanation. It was closing in on Halloween, maybe some box had a person being nibbled by a vampire or chewed on by a werewolf.

Only….

She wasn’t pointing at something on a shelf, she was pointing at the far end of the aisle and the woman who was staring at them, dismayed by Dani’s freakout. She didn’t have a dog with her, or even an overly large cat. There was no service animalof any kind to speak of, which left him even more baffled as to why Dani was screeching about something being eaten while she was trying to scramble onto his shoulders, her hands pulling at his hair. Then he remembered Hawk’s words to her about not climbing in the swiveling desk chair because it would tip over and gobble her up and god dammit he had half a mind to kick Hawk in the shin for putting that in her head.

“Whoa, whoa, settle down, Dani, stop squirming, I don’t wanna drop you.”

“No no no no no put down! No put down it’ll get me!”

She was still pointing. The woman in the chair was still staring, several more people had entered the aisle, and they were staring too, and Aaron had no fuckin’ clue what to do or say to put her at ease. Maybe it was cowardly, but he clutched her close, grabbed the cart’s handle and hurried away, pulling it behind him.

Shit shit shit shit shit what the fuck was he supposed to do. Did he cut their trip short and take her home? Go to another store? Call in an order for pickup?

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