Kelsey stepped out into the empty hall, looking around. Which one? Coffee or soda?

Exit signs hung at either end. She could hear Peter say something. His family laughed.

She didn’t even know if there was a cafeteria in the small hospital, let alone where it was. She blew out a breath and decided to go the way she came, toward reception. Maybe she could drop coffees off with one of the nurses and wait for Peter somewhere else. She wondered if she should have come at all.

“Hey!” she heard behind her.

She turned around.

Peter was walking toward her. “Coffee machine’s this way,” he said, pointing behind him.

“Oh” was all she could manage to get out, and she walked quickly past him with a cursory smile.

“Wait for a second, I’m going to get some change,” he said.

“No, no, that’s all right,” she said, continuing toward the exit.

“Please wait?” he said, a puzzled smile growing on his face. “I want to come with you.”

“Okay,” Kelsey said.

He must have sensed she was feeling out of place. Those faces looked at her with Peter’s eyes, Peter’s nose, his childhood, giving her the wrong name. Her body, her trusted self, mislabeled in a tiny room.

But with him by her side, she was simply someone he had chosen.

When he emerged from the room, putting his arm around her, a grateful feeling spread in her that she was not used to. She could get used to it, though. She wouldn’t even have to try.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When they left the hospital that evening, Peter insisted that Kelsey stay over at their house so she didn’t have to make the four-hour drive back in the dark. As he said it, he subtly ran his hand down her back. Kelsey bit her lip, wishing, but politely refused.

Peter’s sister said, “You should totally stay,” but Kelsey declined again. She was surprised to see Meg’s mouth fall in disappointment. When Peter mentioned that Meg was trying out for El Dorado’s dance team at the end of the year, the girls had slipped immediately into dancer talk, discussing pirouettes and fouetté turns and high kicks. She had to explain she knew all this through Kelsey, careful not to get too excited.

“Please stay?” Meg said.

“Come on,” Peter said, and he had that look again. The look that said, I’ve already won.

“Thank you, but I don’t want to impose,” Kelsey said, and they entered the parking lot.

Peter’s father unlocked their car and said, “Stay, or we’ll tell everyone in Lawrence you should be jailed for treason.”

Kelsey opened her mouth, aghast. “Why?”

“Anyone who doesn’t know the starting lineup of the KU basketball team is committing a gross betrayal of the state.”

They laughed, Kelsey shrugged, and Peter muttered, “He’s serious, though.”

She answered her mother’s multiple voice mails with a text that she was staying at Ingrid’s, and followed them in her car to pick up ingredients for dinner at the nearest grocery store, a Kroger with the R portion of the sign flickering in and out.

“Welcome to the finest twenty-four-hour food store in El Dorado,” Peter said as they went through the automatic doors. The store was empty except for two cashiers manning the late shift.

“The only twenty-four-hour food store in El Dorado,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. Kelsey had to suppress a smile at how much Meg reminded her of herself at that age, right down to the attitude and the high ponytail.

“Carly, Todd,” Peter’s dad said in greeting to the cashiers.

“Hey, Bill,” Carly said. Kelsey noticed that she didn’t even have to look up from her manicure to recognize him.

“Welcome home, Pete,” called Todd.

“All right, you know the drill,” Bill said to his children, looking at a list he had pulled out of his pocket.

Meg sighed. “Do we really have to do this? Even with Mom in the hospital?”

“Wait, what are we doing?” Kelsey asked, looking around the fluorescent, empty store for a clue.

“No excuses,” Peter said, bracing himself against the shopping cart as if he was about to run. “Mom would have wanted us to get a good score tonight.”

“It’s not like she’s dead,” Meg muttered, but then she posed on the other side of the cart, also ready to run.

Bill cleared his throat. “Peter, you’ve got spaghetti noodles, garlic bread, romaine lettuce, onions, and mushrooms. You know what kind of mushrooms. Meg, you’ve got marinara, ground beef, Caesar dressing, Parmesan, and croutons. Stopwatch set,” he said, setting off a beep on his watch.

“You’re going down, Meg,” Peter said, and then he raised his eyebrows at Kelsey.

“I may be small, but I’m fast,” Meg said, leaning forward.

“On your marks, get set, GO!” Bill yelled, and Meg and Peter bolted to their respective aisles.

“Go, Peter!” the cashier, Todd, yelled from Lane 3, putting his fists in the air.

“Is this a regular thing?” Kelsey asked Bill.

“If ‘regular’ means ‘every time we get groceries,’ then yes,” Bill replied.

Peter hurdled out of the pasta aisle, tossing a couple of bags of spaghetti in the cart before he jetted off to produce. “Help me!” he called back to Kelsey.

“Not fair!” Meg yelled, tossing a few jars of red sauce into the cart before running to the meat section.

“Michelle with two ‘l’s’!” Bill pointed at Kelsey. “Ice cream sandwiches, eggs, bacon, orange juice, and bread. Go!”

“What?” Kelsey was too busy laughing at the sight of Meg putting Peter in a headlock to pay attention. Did Peter’s dad actually want her to run around with them?

“Go!” Bill pointed again, the first traces of a smile appearing under his mustache.

“You better go,” Peter called from under Meg’s arm.

Kelsey walked quickly to the frozen aisle, trying not to slip on the linoleum in her boots.

“No walking allowed!” Bill called to her.

On the edge of embarrassment and mirth, Kelsey broke into a sprint. There was no point in not playing along. And hell, she was kind of fast. She could win this thing.

“Thatta girl,” Bill said as she threw ice cream sandwiches into the cart with force.

On her way to get eggs, she ran smack into Peter, and they bumped heads.

“Ow!” He collapsed to the floor, red-faced, with mushrooms in hand, and they cracked up.

“Here, let me help you,” Kelsey said between laughs as she keeled over.

When he reached for her hand, she pushed it aside, leapt over him, and pretended to laugh villainously. “Muahahaha!” she cried, and turned the corner to the eggs and dairy.

“Treachery!” Peter called, but when he was on his feet, he followed her, leaping in front of the eggs as if he were a mother hen, protecting them.

Kelsey snatched around his side, but he was too quick, blocking her again.

“Do they really do this every time?” she asked, out of breath.

“Only when I’m home,” he said, and while he was distracted, she reached under his legs and got her prize.

“I’m impressed,” she said over her shoulder on the way to the cart, eggs under her arm.

Then it hit her: She was having a great time. With Peter’s middle-aged father and his kid sister. In a mostly empty supermarket in El Dorado, Kansas.

She set the eggs gently in the cart, feeling a pang of envy. She thought of the day she and her mother and father had tried to go to the market. Since that day, they had not tried again.

It wasn’t like the Farrows had it easy. They had a son in Afghanistan and a mother in the hospital. But they were making the best of it. They were quite a family.

Meg ended up victorious, with a time of five minutes and thirty-two seconds, mostly because Peter and Kelsey met in the aisles too often, out of sight, getting distracted by each other.