I had my attention on picking out what I was looking for at the local Big R store.

I may not have noticed her if I hadn’t heard her labored breathing and smelled a whiff of stale smoke and sweat that followed her as she walked by me.

She was looking at Milwaukee power tools, I was looking at Dewalt.

 I heard her muttering “Which one . . . where is it?”

And then I heard her say, “This is the last time.”

That remark didn’t make sense, and, as she left the area I was in, I thought a bit on it but soon dismissed.

It wasn’t long and I was walking to the front of the store to check out.

I noticed she and I were walking side by side to the front of the store, and I also noticed she was empty handed.  I figured she hadn’t found what she needed.

But I noticed something else.  She kept looking at me in a nervous sort of way.  And the closer we got to the front of the store, the faster she walked.

I breezed right through the checkout line and was walking out the front door when I saw her again.

She was walking to a very old and tired looking Ford Bronco.  She kept looking at me in that same sort of way,

It was only as she stepped into the car waiting for her, that her hand bag opened a little, and I caught a flash of a red box within.

And then I knew. 

She had found what she was looking for after all.

And I knew she hadn’t checked out because I was the only one at the register.

I felt sorry for her, then.  Because then it made sense why she had said, “This is the last time.”

The man she had lifted for didn’t look like he sported very many gentlemanly traits, if any.

She gave me one more guilty look as they drove away.  I thought about snapping a pic of their license plate, but I knew that the odds would be against her rather than him.

Because she looked pretty much used up the way it was.

I think, according to a recent test I was required to take, there was a good chance that she was either being trafficked or at the very least was an abused woman. 

According to the info in that course, I didn’t have a chance to help her, because by the time I became aware of her plight, she was already with her perpetrator. 

But had I known back in the power tool aisle . . .

I wish I had.

Written in my truck while waiting for my lovely at Walmart