Chapter 4 - Why I Came Barefoot
She stepped away with the clipboard pressed flat against her chest, phone already to her ear as she pushed through toward the back. I could hear the low murmur of her voice but not the words. The crowd didn't move. Their breathing had gone shallow in that way people breathe when they're waiting for someone else to decide what happens next.
Marcus stayed where he was. He didn't crouch. He didn't offer his hand again. He just stood a half-step to my side, broad enough that the recessed spots didn't hit my eyes so hard. The marble was cold under me. I could feel it through the thin cream fabric stuck to the back of my thighs.
That morning I hadn't planned to be on the floor. I'd planned to be in and out.
I had driven my father's old sedan, not the SUV. I'd taken the county road instead of the highway because the highway made me feel rushed, and I didn't want to walk into the store rushed. I parked in the far corner of the parking lot, past the white lines where the asphalt met the curb and the landscaping started. I remembered sitting there with the engine off, looking down at my shoes in the passenger footwell.
They were tan slingbacks I'd bought for the foundation visit that afternoon. My dad had asked me to stop by the downtown office after, just to say hello to the staff. I'd picked the sleeveless cream dress because it looked clean without trying too hard. It was the kind of dress you could wear to a charity lunch and to a back office without changing. I checked my reflection in the rearview and smoothed my hair forward over my shoulders.
I left the shoes in the car on purpose. I unbuckled them and set them side by side on the mat. My feet were bare against the brake pedal for a second before I stepped out onto the hot asphalt. It stung. I liked that it stung. It kept me honest.
For the last two months my dad had been getting letters. Not emails. Handwritten letters sent to his office. Customers saying they'd been followed around this location, saying they'd been judged for what they wore, saying they'd left without buying anything. He'd read me one over coffee in his kitchen. A woman wrote that she'd been told the display bags were probably out of her budget before she'd even asked a price. My dad had folded that letter twice and put it back in the envelope like it weighed more than paper.
He didn't ask me to go. He just said, I don't recognize my own store anymore. I told him I'd stop by and look around.
I walked from the far lot toward the entrance in bare feet. People stared from their cars. The sidewalk leading to the boutique was lined with those big square planters, the heavy concrete ones with boxwoods and dark mulch. The one closest to the glass doors was crumbling at the edge. The soil had spilled over onto the concrete, a dark fan of dirt that the morning crew hadn't swept yet.
An older woman with a cane was trying to step around it. Her tote kept slipping off her shoulder. I stopped and held the tote while she got her footing, and then I bent down and started pushing the loose soil back into the planter with my hands. It was damp underneath. It caked under my nails and across my palms and stuck to the soles of my feet when I stepped back. The woman thanked me and went inside ahead of me. I didn't wipe my hands clean. I didn't rinse my feet on the grass strip.
I wanted to see what would happen if I walked in exactly like that.
When I pushed through the entrance, the cold air hit my bare shoulders first. My feet left faint dark prints on the white marble for the first three steps. Then the woman with the clipboard saw me.
I didn't fall. I want to be clear about that because later it would matter. After she told me to leave, after she raised her voice, I looked at the dirt still clinging to my ankles and I chose the floor. I lowered myself down beside the small pile my feet had tracked in and sat. My knees to one side, hands in my lap. If I stayed standing, we would argue about my shoes. If I sat, we would have to talk about why I wasn't allowed to stand there at all.
Back in the present, the marble hummed faintly with the store music restarting. Marcus shifted his weight.
"You walked here like that?" he asked quietly, his eyes on my feet, not my face.
May you like
I nodded once. "I parked in the back lot."
He breathed out through his nose. He didn't say it was a bad idea. He didn't say it was brave, either. He just glanced toward the entrance, toward that planter I knew was still out there spilling over, and then back at the dark smudge beside me that everyone kept staring at like it had appeared out of nowhere.
