Sullivan's Market was just as Walker remembered it.

The wooden floors still creaked in all the same spots, and the hand-painted signs above each aisle bore the same careful lettering he'd admired as a teenager. While the Sullivans had updated the refrigeration units and installed energy-efficient lighting, the heart of the place remained unchanged—warm, welcoming, and utterly authentic. Old man Sullivan's son, Danny, now manned the register with the same patient smile his father had worn for decades. The market was still delightfully compact compared to the sprawling chain stores that dominated the highways, but that intimacy made it feel like stepping into someone's well-loved kitchen rather than a sterile shopping experience.

Walker meandered down the narrow aisles, his leather messenger bag slung across his shoulder and a green plastic basket dangling from his arm. The afternoon sun streamed through the front windows, casting golden rectangles across the polished floor. He found himself humming along to the oldies station playing softly overhead—something by The Temptations that made him think of lazy summer evenings from his youth. His wire-rimmed glasses had slipped down his nose slightly as he studied the shelves, absently pushing them up with his index finger, a habit that had followed him from adolescence into middle age.

The canned goods aisle stretched before him like a colorful canyon of possibilities.

Walker paused, shifting his weight from one worn sneaker to the other as he contemplated dinner options. Jamie and Laurie were both out for the evening—his eldest at a study group, his youngest on what he hoped was actually a date and not another one of those mysterious "hanging out" sessions that seemed to define modern romance. The prospect of cooking for one still felt strange after twenty years of meal planning for a family of four.

"Ah, maybe some chili..." he murmured to himself, reaching toward a can of kidney beans on the middle shelf.

His fingers had barely brushed the cool metal when they collided with another hand reaching for the same item. The contact sent a small jolt through him—not unpleasant, just unexpected in the quiet solitude of his grocery shopping ritual.

"Oh, I'm so sorry—" Walker began, automatically stepping back as he turned to offer an apology to the other shopper.

But the words died in his throat as recognition crashed over him like a wave hitting the shore. Time seemed to slow as he took in the familiar features, older now but unmistakably the same person who had occupied so many of his teenage daydreams and, if he was being honest, more than a few of his recent nostalgic moments since returning home.

The smile that spread across his face was involuntary and genuine, crinkling the corners of his dark eyes behind his glasses and carving deeper lines into the laugh lines that hadn't existed when they were seventeen. His free hand unconsciously moved to smooth down his salt-and-pepper hair, a nervous gesture he'd never quite outgrown.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said softly, his voice carrying that familiar warm rasp that years of late-night research sessions and too much coffee had given him. "Is that really you, petal?"

The old pet name came right out before he could stop it, carrying with it the weight of shared history and teenage tenderness. He reached for the can of beans they'd both been after, his movements deliberate and gentle as he offered it to them with a slight bow of his head—ever the gentleman his mother had raised him to be.

As he extended the can, the light caught his left hand, illuminating the faint pale band of skin where a wedding ring had lived for two decades.

"How have you been? How's your ma?"