Percival took Norma's hand, and the two of them emerged from the back room laden with shopping bags. My body went colder than before.
Norma was a school principal—a respectable position with a decent salary.
But only I knew that more than half of what she earned went to the students at her school who couldn't even afford to eat.
Our life together had been painfully meager. Some months, we didn't see a single scrap of meat.
I'd felt sorry for her. I'd bought two runty piglets at a discount from a farm owner and raised them with care.
When they got sick, no one was more frantic than me. I'd hauled them on a flatbed cart to a town dozens of miles away to see a vet.
Blisters formed on my feet, but I didn't stop to tend to them. Every penny saved was another dose of medicine for those pigs.
But they still didn't make it.
I would never forget that weekend—Norma had asked me to come home, then told me both pigs had died and she'd disposed of the carcasses.