The grocery store was packed in that uniquely draining way that only a weekday evening can manage. Carts nudged ankles, scanners chirped relentlessly, and the sharp scent of disinfectant hung in the air, mixing with collective fatigue. Everyone in line wore the same expression: get through this and go home.
Then the crying cut through everything.
It wasn’t a soft whimper or a short-lived fuss. It was the full-bodied, exhausted scream of a toddler who had reached his limit. The boy, no more than three years old, sat stiff in the cart, his face flushed, tiny hands clenched, voice cracked from the effort of screaming so hard for so long. Nothing was soothing him. Not his mother’s whispered pleas, not the sway of the cart, not the promise of being “almost done.”
