She didn't plan to see it.
Friday morning, December. She was taking Ivy for the walk she took most mornings when the weather permitted — Ivy had recently developed strong opinions about the pram and whether the pram was moving or stationary, and mornings that involved movement were better for everyone.
The route took her past the newsstand on Crane Street.
She had walked past this newsstand most mornings for fifteen months. She knew the arrangement of the racks, the position of the owner's folding chair, the particular smell of newsprint in cold air. It was background, the way all familiar things become background when you stop processing them.
She almost walked past it today.
She stopped.
Not because she had planned to. Because her eyes had landed on the large-format quarterly on the upper rack before her brain had processed what she was looking at, and the stopping happened before the thought.
The Fontaine print edition.
