She turns, "Yes-? Oh! Cati, is that you?"

Cati shrugs, looking incredulous. "Yeah, in the flesh. Jesus, you look all right. Thought you got out of this dump?"

She laughs, "Thanks. I did, yes, but I heard they needed help at the hospital here, and I was looking for an excuse to come back for a while, so..." She gestures, "Voila!" No need to focus on why she needed an excuse, "How have you been? I haven't heard from you since... High school, I guess." 

"You were looking for an excuse to come back?" Cati snorts. "Most people are looking for any reason to leave." 

Cati coughs awkwardly, and gestures vaguely to her name-badge. "Yeah, I'm...doing awesome." 

Ah, yeah, that's... a little awkward. 

Subject change? "Have you heard from anyone else? I talk to Robin sometimes, but I haven't spoken to anyone else in years."

"Oh. Uh. Not really. After we graduated I kinda...blew the joint? And now I'm back and I'm a bit of a shut in. A lot of a shut in." 

Cati coughs. "Ah. Anyway. It's nice to see you. What's going on at the hospital?"

"I shouldn't say too much, but... Well, there's some sort of strange infection, they've been getting a lot of cases and the staff is very overworked trying to keep up with it."

"Well. Shit. Good luck with that." 

Cati casts a look back at her flat trolley, stacked with boxes. "I...uh, I should probably get back to work. Nice seeing you?"

"Yeah, hey, do you want to meet up for drinks or something sometime? Swap stories, reminisce about the good old days, rag on the decision to make EU non-canon..." She holds up her phone in an implicit offer to exchange numbers.

A real, genuine smile from Cati, that looks like she hasn't smiled like that in a while. 

"Anyone who makes Mara Jade non-canon should be shot," she says, and pulls her phone out of her pocket. "Quick, before my supervisor sees."

"The worst blasphemy," she agrees. 

Numbers are exchanged! "I'll call you later?" 

"I'll make sure I actually pick up, most people calling me these days are telemarketers," Cati says, but this time it's a joke. 

She waves over her shoulder, and heads back to work.

And Erin gets back to her shopping, and then back out to her car.

Outside the supermarket, a man leans against Erin's car.

...Okay, she's been trying to keep herself from it, but there's only so much weirdness she can deal with before she starts considering that she might have fallen into some kind of sci-fi novel, and 'the MIB are watching me' is apparently past that threshold. 

She's going to have to check her car for any tampering once she gets to it. 

The man winks at her, and walks off. 

Her car seems fine!

Great

...Did he pull his sunglasses down specifically to wink at her?

She rolls her eyes at him, covering a slightly amused smile as she gets into the car. 

She is thankfully not accosted by anyone else on the drive home, and even the Roswell house seems quiet. 

Back at the house, she gets to work on making herself a late dinner.

While it's cooking, she checks on the apple. Any changes? 

Now that sun has fallen, the apple seems to glow brighter than before. 

If this were a sci-fi novel this fact would be connected to the way the patients' symptoms worsen at night, and she would immediately go down to the hospital to find out more herself, which would then lead her down the path to discovering a grand conspiracy. 

Since this is not a sci-fi novel, she simply notes this fact down in a fresh notebook she pulls out of a drawer in her father's study and carries on with her night. She'll bring it in to the hospital on Tuesday so she can use their labs to take a closer, and safer, look at it. 

Then her night will pass peacefully, the apple glowing a little menacingly out of the corner of her eye.

Cati texts her, mentions that Robin was also still around, though they don't really talk. 

And that ladies night at the local bar was tomorrow, if her offer for drinks was still open.

Sounds great! How about 7:00?

she sends, and

Robin's still in town? He wouldn't tell me where he was living.