hen did department stores replace their overhead lights with supernovas? For how long has the binned fruit wept at its own beauty? At what point did baked goods begin sighing sugary secrets into a cloud that beaded upon her face like happy tears? When did shoppers, those disapproving ladies with bulky purses and rude carts, transform into women who smiled at her, insisted she go first, complimented her on her choices? Perhaps they’d seen what Elisa saw reflected in butcher-counter glass: not a timid huncher hiding her throat scars, but a woman straight of back pointing out the cuts of fish and meat she wanted. Quite a lot of both, the butcher probably thought, but why not? Surely a woman like this had a hungry man waiting at home. And she did. Elisa laughs. She did.

Not just meat, either. Eggs, loads of them, cartons arranged in her cart in playful crisscross patterns that make other shoppers laugh at her moxie. Bags of salt, too—Hoffstetler’s saline pills won’t last forever. It takes her a while to find these items, but she doesn’t mind. Shopping for someone else is wonderful. Giles had offered to do it, but she’d refused; she felt only she could intuit what the creature needed. She’d used public transit, ignoring uniformed police, reminding herself that they had no clue what she’d done, and gone all the way to Edmondson Village. Zelda has always raved about the shopping-center cornucopia, and she’d been right. Zelda: Elisa has a lot to say to her, and she will, on her next shift—it’s critical she not miss a single shift if she hopes to evade suspicion. Thinking of Zelda, Elisa’s heart, already full, presses at the limits of her rib cage.

She is surprised to find at the front of the store a section of plants and flowers. It draws her in; she lets the reaching fronds and dangling ivy toss across her cheeks. This is what the creature had needed to fill the lab’s bareness and what he needs now to round the bathroom’s sharp edges. She selects the leafiest plants she can find. Two thick, potted ferns; they’ll hide a lot of porcelain and tile. A fan palm with leaves like the creature’s hands; maybe he will feel less lonely? A dragon tree tall enough to reach the lights over the sink; perhaps it will tint the whole room green.

Piled inside the cart, the leaves tickle her nose, make her giggle. How is she going to get all of this home? She’ll have to buy one of the handcarts she saw near the entrance. An unexpected expense, but what difference will a few more dollars make? Today is the first day of her life she hasn’t counted pennies, and she’s determined to revel in it. She’s as conscious of her big smile as she would be a gaudy hat. She ought to try to temper it. Any cop in his right mind sees a woman this overjoyed about buying groceries, a red flag will rise.

It’s difficult, and quite amusing, to navigate through the plants in her cart, and upon steering into the checkout aisle, the cart bumps into a standing display. A hundred cardboard air fresheners dance from their hooks. She idles a finger across them. They are shaped like little trees, each advertising a different scent. Pink cherry. Brown cinnamon. Red apple. Several are green. REAL PINE SCENT!, a cellophane package proclaims.

She doesn’t think her smile can get bigger, but it does. She plucks one from the rack. No—she takes all the green ones off the peg. Six of them. Not much trees for a jungle, but a start.