An hour before she died, Dahlia was pacing through an aisle of an unfamiliar Safeway.

Eggs, she thought. Butter and eggs. She pushed her cart around the corner of the aisle and found herself in the meat section. A beeline to the left and she’d be in the dairy section. Eggs wouldn’t be too far after that.

Butter? Ah yes, here was the butter. Somehow they didn’t have Kerrygold. Out of stock? Inscrutable supply chain issues? Now she had to decide between a few other untested brands in uninspiring packaging. Unsalted, or salted? The recipe didn’t say. She’d used the Kerrygold before and the pie turned out fine, but she couldn’t remember if it was unsalted or not. Did it really matter?

She picked up an unsalted butter.

Ah, the milk’s here too. She’d forgotten to prepare a grocery list, apart from the ingredient list for the Auntie Marian’s Delicious Apple Cream Pie that she had screenshotted, but she knew milk was running low at home. How low? Probably low enough to warrant picking up another gallon here.

Fat free? One percent? Two percent? She usually got the milk with the pink cap, but that brand wasn’t here, and she couldn’t remember what percent the pink cap corresponded to. How bad would it be if she got the wrong percent milk? She’d definitely felt queasy before when drinking unfamiliar milk. Maybe it was best to wait and check what percent the milk at home was.

Where was she in the list? Ah yes, butter and eggs. She got them. No, she got butter, she needed eggs.

Large eggs, regular eggs, brown eggs, white eggs. A full emporium of eggs! She picked out a carton of a dozen regular white eggs, turned each egg around to inspect for cracks, replaced one egg with another egg from another carton because she couldn’t tell if it had a crack or just an unusually crisp decoloration, and deposited the carton in her cart.

What else did she need? Flour? She had enough flour. Sugar? Did she have enough sugar? Maybe it was worth doubling back to the baking aisle (dammit, she was just in the baking aisle!) to pick up another box. But a few months ago she had come home with a jar of honey only to find two more unopened jars of honey in her pantry, and she worried she might be doing the same thing now, just with sugar instead of honey. Whatever. Better too much sugar for to-night than not enough sugar.

Did she have everything? Apples, whipped cream, vanilla, eggs, butter, sugar, flour. Was she forgetting something? This question lodged itself uneasily in her mind as she headed for checkout.

Forty minutes before she died, Dahlia pulled out of the Safeway parking lot and set off into the sun-streaked dusk.