"The Ranch" by Danielle Steel

In any other supermarket, the woman walking down the aisle, pushing a cart between canned goods and gourmet spices, would have looked strangely out of place.  She had impeccably groomed shoulder-length brown hair, beautiful skin, huge brown eyes, a trim figure, perfectly done nails, and she was wearing a navy linen suit that looked as though she had bought it in Paris.  She wore high-heeled navy blue shoes, a navy Chanel bag, and everything about her was perfection.  She could have easily pretended she'd never seen a supermarket before, but she looked surprisingly at home here.  In fact, she often stopped at Gristede's at Madison and Seventyeeventh on the way home.  Most of the shopping was done by their housekeeper, but in a funny old-fashioned way, Mary Stuart Walker liked doing the shopping herself.  She liked cooking for Bill at night when he came home, and they had never had a cook, even when the children were younger.  Despite the impeccable way she looked, she liked taking care of her family, and attending to every minute detail herself.

Their apartment was at Seventy-eighth and Fifth, with a splendid view of Central Park.  They had lived there for fifteen of the nearly twenty-two years of their marriage.  sary Stuart kept an impressive home.

The children teased herZometimes about how "perfect" everything always was, how everything had to look and be just right, and it was easy to believe that about her.  Just looking at her, it was easy to see that she was somewhat compulsive about it.  Even at six o'clock, on a hot June evening in New York, after six hours of meetings, Mary Stuart had just put on fresh lipstick, and she didn't have a hair out of place.

She selected two small steaks, two baking potatoes, some fresh asparagus, some fruit, and some yogurt, remembering too easily the days when her shopping cart had been filled with treats for the children.

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