“That shelf fed people.”
“I know it did.”
“Then why’s it chained up?”
She looked around before answering, which told me the answer had more weight than she wanted it to.
“Regional office called,” she said.
There it was.
Not a real person.
An office.
A floating cloud of people who never stood in front of a crying baby and still felt entitled to decide what looked acceptable near the front entrance.
“They said we need a plan,” she went on. “Inventory, oversight, basic rules. There’s concern about fairness. And safety. And whether people are taking specialty items that some families can’t replace.”
I stared at the chain.
There had been maybe forty dollars’ worth of plastic and canned food on those shelves when I last saw them.
Now it looked like a bank vault.
“Fairness,” I said.
Joanie didn’t flinch.
“That’s what they’re calling it.”
“And what are you calling it?”
She took a second before answering.
“I’m calling it a town full of scared people trying to control the wrong thing.”
That surprised me.
So did the way she said it.
Like she had been holding it in.
I glanced back at the notice.
“There more to it than complaints?”
She nodded.
“Someone posted photos of the shelf half empty and wrote that people were ‘cleaning it out.’ Then somebody else said a family couldn’t find the formula they needed because donations were getting taken too fast. Then three more people piled on. By yesterday afternoon, everybody had an opinion.”
“Everybody always does once there’s a camera involved.”
She gave me a look.
“Your video’s still making the rounds.”
I felt my shoulders tighten.
I hated hearing it put that way.
My video.
As if the internet had not simply taken a hungry young mother and a loudmouthed fool and turned both into chewing gum.
“I didn’t ask for any of that,” I said.
“I know.”
“But they’re using it.”
“I know that too.”
Tyler set the box down by the office door.
