A baby cries, alone in a parking lot.

Lucy unpacks groceries from her shopping cart, placing them into the trunk of her car on a sunny afternoon in September; a perfect, Narragansett Beach day. She holds the baby in one arm, safe and tight, as she shuttles bag after bag of eggs, milk, bunches of kale, baby gem lettuce, organic greens. The baby, Emma, leans into the top of her mother’s bare shoulder, her mouth wide and blowing raspberries against Lucy’s skin. Between bags Lucy runs her palm over her daughter’s fuzzy head, presses her lips against her baby’s skull.

“Momma is doing better, isn’t she?” Lucy says to Emma. Even Lucy can hear the strain in her own voice.

“Hmmm, hmmm,” Emma says, sucking away on her mother’s shoulder.

Lucy fits everything side by side in the trunk so the bags won’t fall over. She always ends up with eggs broken, milk cartons dented or spilled, stalks of rainbow chard snapped in half. Sam, her husband, says it’s the way Lucy drives, not how she packs the trunk, but he’s wrong. He’s wrong about so many things, lately. Including the biggest one of all.

Lucy needs to shove the last canvas recyclable sack into the spot where it will keep the rest of her purchases snug, but she needs two hands. She sets Emma into the seat of the shopping cart, then wedges the wheel of it against the wheel of the car so Emma won’t roll away across the lot of Belmont Market. She makes sure her baby is sitting just so, her body only a little slumped. Emma gets stronger and stronger by the day, back and neck. It does seem a miracle to watch.