Can Lily be the keeper of the list? "P'eeeeeeeez?" 

(Lily cannot actually read well enough to use a grocery list. She just likes being the one holding it so she can proudly hold it up to Evelyn and be the one to check off each item.) 

Iomedae is going to meticulously using only addition and subtraction since she doesn't know division figure out a unit price of all these beans*, determine which are cheapest (it's the ones they always get), notice that the per-unit price is actually on the label, praise God and Costco again, and then, sure, they can move on.

(How? Well, you take a 15.5 ounce can of beans that costs $.85, and you meticulously check whether if each ounce of beans in it costs $.05 you successfully accounted for all the beans and all the money or not, and then you try again with a different number based on whether that one was too low or too high.)

Evelyn is suspicious that the number system of wherever-Iomedae-is-from that she's writing in is inconvenient for math, because that took ages. She's not incredibly bothered, four-hour Costco trips are a family tradition, but Lily is eventually going to get bored. 

Lily proudly shows her the list and Evelyn reads off "ground beef 80%/20%" and Lily grabs Iomedae by the hand and tugs her to the frozen meat section. It's a walk-in freezer the size of Evelyn's entire downstairs, every wall lined with shelves going to above Evelyn's head, with more standing shelf units in the middle, every single one of them loaded with a wide range of packaged meats. 

That is truly boggling and amazing and good and a civilizational achievement and also (she checks quickly) a lot more expensive than the beans. 

It is but it's a lot more protein-dense. Not to mention delicious. Evelyn does buy the cheaper meats - the list has ground beef (80% lean is cheaper than 90% lean) and stewing beef and chicken breasts, no fancy steaks for them, Evelyn doesn't even know how to cook a good steak - but once all three are in the cart, it does come to more dollars than Iomedae would have earned in a week before. 

"This is meat for the whole family for a month," she assures Iomedae. 

Iomedae wishes Evelyn would not say 'whole family' about Evelyn, the little girl who calls Evelyn 'mummy', and the fully grown holy warrior living with them temporarily under orders from local law enforcement, but she is not going to be petty when Evelyn is, after all, offering to spend Evelyn's money on food for her, and she's done everything in her power to make this not be under false pretenses. "You choose how spend your money, ma'am."

...Something about that interaction feels off but Evelyn doesn't want to try to unpack it in a Costco walk-in freezer when the last attempt at a serious conversation with Iomedae made Lily have a meltdown. 

(She's not upset or annoyed with Iomedae. It's - actually really understandable, how she feels - and if Evelyn didn't have to juggle Social Services rules, Iomedae is perhaps the only child she's ever had who she would trust to own a legal-to-carry knife. But she can't do that and so she's mostly...tired.) 

Next they need eggs (one of the 36-packs, Evelyn reuses normal egg cartons and will pack it more conveniently, but eggs last a while and Lily eats a lot of them) and cheese (cheddar, block not sliced) and bulk sandwich meat for Lily's lunch, and two loaves of sourdough and one of rye and one of white bread. (Unsliced is cheaper, she slices it at home before repacking it in its bag and popping it in the freezer, they don't go through bread quite fast enough for it not to go moldy if it's the no-preservatives kind and Evelyn is suspicious of preservatives on the vaguely-held principle that Additives Make Kids Behave Worse.) 

Lily wants a pack of croissants for "s'essl Su'dy beffas" and Evelyn agrees that seems reasonable this time, if Jeremy comes over for breakfast that's enough people to finish them before they're stale. 

- she's in fact one of the more grocery-spending-conscious of her fostering friends, being a single carer without a second household income-earner, but is nonetheless self-conscious at how extravagant she must look to Iomedae. 

It's her money. She's rich. Iomedae will make the pitch to people that they should use their money to fix the world but if they are unpersuaded by the first pitch they'll likely just be annoyed by the second, and at this point it'd be ungrateful. 

The stress about spending all this money will cancel out her delight at being in Costco eventually but not for a while.

If Evelyn were particularly thinking about this explicitly, she would probably think that she's fixing her corner of the world one child at a time, and Lily likes croissants, but she's not in fact thinking about this at all because she's mostly trying to keep Lily, who's getting restless, from throwing random dessert items into the cart. She puts back at least six and really hopes this isn't going to set off a tantrum. Maybe Iomedae can distract Lily while she hurries off to get apples and bananas and frozen veggies? 

Of course! Iomedae can tell Lily how all these vegetables are picked and which are the best ones to pick. ...some of them are out of season. It is super weird that they're here. How did they do that, preservation magic? On vegetables?

"I don't know a lot about the Costco supply chain but they might be from somewhere far away where they're in season? Transport is pretty cheap with container ships, like we saw in the video. Or they might be grown in a greenhouse - that's a big building with a glass roof that lets in the sun, but where you can keep it warmer inside than outside and sort of make the plants think it's the right time of year." 

"That is very good. Say to the seasons, no! We stronger!"

"YAH! WE S'OGER! P'AZE GOD N'COS'O!" 

This is fine this is fine Evelyn is not dying of mortification in the frozen vegetables aisle. "Lily, indoor voice, please." 

"God hear you even if you praise him only in your inside!"

That sounds less fun but Lily will reluctantly keep her exhortations to praise God and Costco to a more moderate volume. 

They make their way to checkout. 

The cashier who rings them up, sliding each item over the barcode-scanner bed without even looking down at his hands, is one who knows Evelyn. Most of the Costco staff know Evelyn. 

    "Hi, Lily! I think you've grown! Soon you'll be taller than me!" 

Lily beams at the attention. "Yay! Wh'I gowap be a howee wower God!" 

The cashier raises an eyebrow. "That one's new. - And you must be new to the family." He smiles at Iomedae. "I'm Pete, hi." 

Smiling smiling so so normally. "This is Iomedae. It's her first time in a Costco and she's very impressed." 

Iomedae does not smile at strange men lest they take it wrong but she'll nod politely. "Please meet you, Pete. God command we build Heaven on Earth and Costco part of it."

A slightly uncomfortable laugh. "Wow. If Costco counted like going to church I'd be a lot more religious!" 

Evelyn smiles pleasantly and hopes desperately that Iomedae isn't going to start an uncomfortable philosophical conversation with the checkout clerk. They only have like three items left to scan (it's a lot of food and money but not a huge number of total kinds of food) and then she can escape...

"Is good be going church but everywhere - people make world better, for us, for children - dogs and apple trees and out of season vegetables and laundry machines and dish-wasters - God is glad. If you feel a part of people march to better world here, then pray here, God still hear you," says Iomedae earnestly.

"- That's sweet," Pete says, clearly at a loss. "There you go, Evelyn."