Episode 5: The Checkout Lane

Marcus scans the basil. The tomatoes. The garlic. San Marzano tomatoes, the expensive ones Elena always insisted on. His thumb hovers over the screen, each beep another ingredient in the recipe they used to make together every Sunday.

The cart is small tonight. Groceries for one.

He picks up the wine—a Chianti, the same label from their honeymoon in Tuscany. The barcode catches the red scanner light, and the price appears: $24.99.

Same price as fifteen years ago, he thinks. Some things don't change.

He reaches for the 'Pay Now' button, then stops.

His finger freezes an inch from the screen. The fluorescent lights hum their lonely frequency. Outside, rain starts to fall, tapping against the windows like fingernails seeking entry.

Marcus stares at the total. $67.43. The exact cost of moving forward. Of cooking Elena's Sunday sauce alone for the first time since the funeral.

Press it, he tells himself. Just press it.

But his hand won't move.

The moment stretches. Marcus glances around the empty store. The night clerk is nowhere to be seen. The other self-checkout lanes glow softly in the dimness, patient as confessionals.

Then he notices them.

Other shoppers. Standing at their own screens. Hands hovering. All frozen in the same moment of almost-paying.

A woman at Lane 3, maybe thirty, staring at her cart full of protein shakes and meal-prep containers. Her gym bag reads Fresh Start Fitness. Her hand trembles over the button.

A teenager at Lane 5, holding a single greeting card. To Dad. The reconciliation kind. Unsigned. Unpaid.

An elderly man at Lane 1, cart full of cleaning supplies and garbage bags. Moving boxes visible at the bottom. His weathered hand frozen mid-reach, wedding ring catching the light.

They're all here. Suspended. Caught between scanning and paying, between choosing and committing.

"First time back?"

Marcus turns. A store employee stands beside him—young, maybe twenty-five, wearing a vest that says Nora - Night Manager.

"Back where?"

"Grocery shopping. After." She gestures vaguely at his cart. "Sunday sauce, right? The real kind. The kind that takes all day."

Marcus feels his throat tighten. "How did you—"

"This is the checkout lane," Nora says gently. "The space between deciding and doing. People think it's about paying for groceries. But really, it's about paying for the choice to move forward."

"I don't know if I can," Marcus admits. "The last time I made this, she was here. We'd put on music, drink wine, argue about how much oregano. It was... ours."

"And now?" Nora asks.

"Now it's just mine. And I don't know if I want it if it can't be ours."

The woman at Lane 3 speaks suddenly, her voice carrying across space and time: "I bought these same meal-prep containers two years ago. Never used them. Too scared to change."

The teenager turns, card still in hand: "I wrote this in the parking lot. Three times. But what if he tears it up?"

"What if he doesn't?" Marcus surprises himself by saying.

Nora walks between the frozen shoppers like a curator in a museum. "You know what this place really is? It's where we keep all the versions of ourselves we're not sure we're ready to become."

She touches the woman's cart at Lane 3. "The healthy version. The one who commits to change."

The teenager's card. "The forgiving version. The one who tries again."

The elderly man's moving boxes. "The free version. The one who moves on.»

She returns to Marcus. "The continuing version. The one who carries love forward instead of letting it freeze in memory."

"But what if the sauce tastes wrong without her?" Marcus whispers.

"What if it tastes like memory?" Nora replies. "Like holding onto something beautiful by letting it become something new?"

Marcus looks at his cart. At the ingredients that used to mean Sunday with Elena and now mean something else. Something singular and solo and terrifyingly his own.

"She used to say the sauce was forgiving," he remembers aloud. "That you could adjust it, add more of this, less of that. That it wanted to be tasted and fixed and made your own."

"Sounds like she was talking about more than sauce," Nora says.

Marcus feels the weight of the moment—of all moments like this, where life asks you to choose forward motion over comfortable paralysis. He thinks about Elena. About Sunday mornings and simmering pots and the way she'd taste the sauce from a wooden spoon and nod with approval. About love that doesn't end just because someone does.

"The sauce," he says slowly, "was never just hers. It was her grandmother's. And her grandmother's mother's. It's been passed down for generations, tasted and adjusted and made new by each person who cooked it."

He looks at Nora. At the other frozen shoppers.

"It's supposed to change. That's the whole point."

Marcus presses Pay Now.

Time rushes back like a tide. The price appears, the receipt prints, the payment processes. Around him, he hears other beeps—the woman at Lane 3, the teenager at Lane 5, all pressing their own buttons, making their own leaps.

Only the elderly man remains frozen.

Marcus bags his groceries slowly. Through the window, the rain has stopped. The parking lot glistens like new possibility.

"Thank you," he tells Nora.

But when he turns, she's gone. Just a vest folded neatly on the counter, name tag reading Night Manager - In Training.

Marcus loads his car in the cool night air. The basil smells like memory and future mixed together. Tomorrow, he'll wake early. He'll chop and simmer and taste and adjust. He'll make the sauce his own way—still Elena's recipe, but also something new. Something that honors the past by living forward.

The first few hours of Sunday taste like preparation. Marcus unpacks his groceries in the kitchen that used to be theirs and now is his. He sets the ingredients on the counter—basil, tomatoes, garlic, wine.

The wooden spoon hangs where Elena left it. He takes it down, feels its familiar weight.

Through the window, dawn is still hours away. But in the warm glow of the kitchen light, Marcus begins to cook. And in the first stir of the pot, in the first simmer of tomatoes, he feels it—not Elena's presence exactly, but her echo. Her blessing.

The sauce will take all day. That's the point. Some things worth having require time and patience and the courage to begin again.

He tastes it with the wooden spoon.

Needs more basil, he thinks, smiling. Elena would agree.

// END EPISODE 5

A peak behind the scenes at the first draft for the chapter image: