I picked out my tomatoes. I chose three large ones, so heavy they nearly broke the paper bag.

I stepped up to the metal scale.

“That is five dollars even, Clara,” he said to the woman next to me, but he was looking at my bag.

I reached into my purse. I pulled out my creased five-dollar bill. The one with the ink stain.

I held it out.

“Take it, Arthur,” I said. My voice was firmer than I expected. “I am not doing this for another year. Take the money.”

He did not even blink. He just reached out, folded my fingers over the paper, and started organizing a crate of green peppers.

“No charge for you, Clara,” he said. He said it like he was telling me the weather.

My face got hot. I could feel the heat rising from my collar up to my ears.

“I am not a beggar,” I said. I did not care if the people around us were looking. “I worked thirty-four years. I can pay for my own dinner.”

Arthur stopped. He had a green pepper in each hand.

He looked at me for a long three seconds.

His eyes are very pale blue. They look like ice when the sun hits it.

He slowly set the peppers down on the dark wood of the table. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a red bandanna.

He wiped his hands. They were stained dark with tomato vine juice, that sticky green sap that never really comes out of your skin.

He looked down at my feet.

I was wearing my old white Orthofeet walking shoes. The left one has a split in the leather near the toe. It squeaks every time I step on my left heel.

I don’t even know why I still wear them. They are ugly and dirty, but they are the only shoes that do not make my hips ache after an hour of walking.

“Do you remember the ice storm of ninety-four, Clara?” he asked quietly.

I stopped.

My mind went blank for a second. My brain just did not connect the farmers market to that winter.

“Of course I remember it,” I said. “Everyone does.”

It was January of 1994. The temperature dropped forty degrees in three hours.

The rain started at noon, and by four o’clock, the entire county was coated in two inches of solid black ice.

The power lines came down like matchsticks. The pine trees were snapping under the weight of the ice, sounding like gunshots in the dark.

I was working the day shift at Mercy Memorial.

But by seven that evening, the night shift could not get in. The roads were blocked by fallen oaks and tangled live wires.

The hospital director came into the breakroom. His face was white.

“We have a list of twelve critical patients in the county who are trapped,” he told us. “Most of them are elderly. No power. No heat.”