“Could you get another one?” She held up the loaf of bargain priced sandwich bread, voice calm, eyes flickering.

The clerk at the register, who’d just finished bagging the groceries, scrunched his brows together. “Ma’am, is there something wrong with the bread?”

The woman was barely a day over twenty-two and wasn’t used to being addressed so formally. She adjusted the ruffled collar of her silken blouse and replied, “Yes. You bagged it and now the slices are all smashed in the middle.” She pointed with a long, acrylic nail painted to look French. “How can I eat it if it’s all misshapen like that?”

A man in the checkout line behind her rolled his eyes. Sadie ignored him, waiting, hoping the checker who was nice enough to call her Ma’am, might be nice enough to let her exchange the imperfect loaf without further explanation. Hope surged within her when…