Pearl searched for something simple.
Behind her, she heard Evan speaking with another employee.
She could not hear every word.
She heard enough.
“Twenty invitations.”
Then a laugh.
Another voice asked something.
Evan replied:
“She brought a notebook.”
Pearl froze.
She stared at the screen.
The cursor blinked.
Another low laugh came from behind the counter.
Pearl’s cheeks burned.
She could have left then.
Part of her wanted to.
Instead, she clicked a simple template.
A pale invitation appeared.
PLACE TITLE HERE.
PLACE EVENT INFORMATION HERE.
She understood that.
Pearl clicked the title box.
Nothing happened.
She clicked again.
The words highlighted.
She typed slowly.
EVELYN BENNETT
The text appeared.
Pearl’s shoulders relaxed.
“Good.”
She added:
80TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
She looked toward the counter.
Evan happened to be watching.
“Well, look at that.”
Pearl did not respond.
“You got it moving.”
She returned her attention to the screen.
The date came next.
April 12.
Then time.
Then location.
She searched for a floral corner decoration.
That was harder.
Pearl clicked something called ELEMENTS.
A menu exploded across the screen.
ICONS.
GRAPHICS.
SHAPES.
LINES.
STICKERS.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
She hesitated.
From behind her:
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Pearl turned.
Evan was standing several feet away.
“What?”
“Finding a template doesn’t mean you know how to build the file.”
Pearl looked at him.
“I know.”
“Just saying.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“So you don’t mess it up and then blame us.”
Pearl slowly turned back toward the monitor.
Something inside her changed.
She had spent decades being patient with young people.
Cashiers.
Nurses.
Waiters.
Receptionists.
Students.
Her own grandchildren.
She understood that everybody had difficult days.
She understood jobs could be boring.
She understood customers could be demanding.
But this was not impatience.
Evan seemed to enjoy the fact that she did not know something.
That bothered her.
Pearl found a small flower.
Too large.
She dragged one corner.
It became smaller.
She smiled.
Then duplicated it.
Four flowers.
One for each corner.
Not identical to what she imagined.
Close.
She changed the text to navy.
Adjusted the border.
Centered the headline.
She made mistakes.
Once, she deleted the entire address.
Once, the flower covered Evelyn’s name.
Once, she somehow rotated the whole text box sideways.
Each time, Pearl figured out how to fix it.
Sometimes by reading.
Sometimes by pressing the undo arrow.
Sometimes by trying the opposite of whatever caused the problem.
It took forty minutes.
Evan walked past twice.
The second time, he glanced at her screen.
“That’s what you spent all that time making?”
Pearl looked up.
“Yes.”
He tilted his head.
“It still looks homemade.”
The sentence hurt.
Pearl looked at the invitation.
Cream background.
Thin blue border.
Small flowers.
Warm navy text.
Exactly what she had pictured.
Maybe it did look homemade.