As soon as the door closes, her shoulders drop and she lets out a sigh of relief. Giving me a weak smile, she looks at the bag in my hand and says, “Is that all?”

“Uh, no actually,” I say as I give her a sheepish grin. “Got distracted by those assholes. I need a few more things.”

“Yeah,” she agrees in a tired voice, brushing her long bangs back before turning away from me to an open cardboard box she has sitting on a stool to her left. She reaches in, pulls out a carton of cigarettes which she efficiently opens and starts stocking the rack of cigarettes behind the counter. I’m effectively dismissed and there’s no doubt in my mind she doesn’t know who I am.

I head back down the chips aisle, take a bag of corn nuts and continue straight back to the sodas. I grab a Mountain Dew, never once considering the diet option because that would totally destroy the point of having a junk food night, and then head straight to the candy aisle. Two Snickers in my hand and I’m set.

When I get to the counter, she must hear my approach as she turns around with the same tired smile. Walking to the register, her eyes drop to the items that I set on the counter, robotically punching in the price of each one. I watch her delicate fingers work the keys, taking in her slumped shoulders as she rings in the last item and raises those eyes back to me.

They’re golden . . . well, a light brown actually but so light as to appear like a burnished gold.

A piercing shriek comes from behind the closed door, so sharp and high-pitched that it actually makes my teeth hurt. I also practically jump out of my skin, the noise was so unexpected.

The woman—Julianne according to that name tag—does nothing more than close her eyes, lower her head, and let out a pained sigh. It’s such an agonized motion that for a brief moment I want to reach out and squeeze her shoulder in sympathy, but I have no clue what I’m empathizing with because I don’t know what that unholy sound was. I open my mouth to ask her if she’s okay when the closed door beside the cigarette rack flies open and a tiny blur comes flying out.

No more than three feet high, followed by another blur of the same size.

Then another piercing shriek from within that room, this time louder because the door is now open, and for a terrible moment I think someone must have been murdered. I even take a step to the side, intent on rounding the counter.

Julianne moves lightning fast, reaching her hands out and snagging each tiny blur by their collars. When they’re brought to a full halt, I see it’s two little boys, both with light brown hair and equally light brown eyes. One holds a baby doll in his hands and the other holds what looks to be a truck made of Legos.

Looking at me with apology-filled eyes, she says, “I’m so sorry. This will only take a second.”

With firm but gentle hands she turns the little boys toward the room and pushes them inside, disappearing behind them. Immediately, I hear a horrible crash, another shriek, and the woman I know to be named Julianne curses loudly, “Son of a bitch.”

One more screech from what I’m thinking might be a psychotic pterodactyl and my feet are moving without thought. I round the edge of the counter, step behind it and head toward the door. When I step over the threshold, I take in a small room set up to be a combo office/break room. There’s a small desk along one wall covered with papers, another wall with a counter, sink, and minifridge under it, and a card table with rusty legs and four folding metal chairs.

It also suddenly becomes clear what manner of creature was making that noise that rivaled nails on chalkboard.

A little girl, smaller than the boys, is tied to one of the chairs with what looks like masking tape wrapped several times around her and the chair, coming across the middle of her stomach. Her legs are free, and the crash was apparently a stack of toys she had managed to knock off the top of the table.

“Rocco . . . Levy . . . you promised you’d behave,” Julianne says in a quavering voice as she kneels beside the little girl and starts pulling at the tape. The little boys stand there, heads hanging low as they watch their mom attempt to unwrap their sister.

I can’t help myself. The tone of the woman’s voice, the utter fatigue and frustration, and the mere fact that these little hellions taped their sister to a chair, has me moving. I drop to my knees beside the woman, my hands going to the tape to help her pull it off.

Her head snaps my way and she says, “Don’t.”

My eyes slide from the tape to her, and I’m almost bowled over by the sheen of thick tears, glistening but refusing to drop.

“Please . . . do you mind just waiting out there. If any customers come in . . . just tell them I’ll be out in a moment,” she pleads with me, a faint note of independence and need to handle this on her own shining through the defeat.

“Sure,” I say immediately as I stand up, not meaning to further upset this poor lady with the beautiful tear-soaked eyes. She clearly has enough on her plate without me adding to it.

She turns back to tearing at the masking tape, being extremely gentle, I notice, to the pieces on the little girl’s arms. I glance to the two little boys, and although I see their heads are bowed down in what looks like apology, they both have slight smirks on their face.

Little hellions for sure.

I back out of the break room and consider just leaving my snacks on the counter, but I dismiss it. I want to make sure everything is okay, because unless I’m mistaken, that beautiful lady is on the edge of a serious meltdown.

She doesn’t keep me waiting long, just a few minutes before she’s backing out of the door and pulling it shut behind her. She gives a final plea to the kids inside: “Will you please just behave for the rest of the night, and if you do, we’ll go shopping for a new toy for each of you this weekend, okay?”

Nice. Bribery usually works with kids.

I don’t hear any type of response from the inside, and with a mighty sigh, she pulls the door shut and turns to me. She jumps slightly, maybe so lost in her thoughts that she forgot I was there, but then her eyes dart down to the items on the counter.

“I am so sorry you had to witness that,” she says as she rushes to the register, then rings up the rest of my purchases, which she hadn’t gotten to before the hellions busted loose.

“Not a problem,” I say with a chuckle. “You handled it well.”

She blows out a gust of frustrated air upward from her mouth and her bangs lift slightly before falling down. “They can be trying at times.”