House of Reviews

You've got a good start here. One thing that really needs to be fixed is the POV (Point of View) problem at the end. The story is told in the first person (through the mother's consciousness), yet the narrator appears to be unaware of the exchange between Olivia and the stranger. She (as narrator) also refers to herself as the "frail woman sitting on the bench." This violates narrative consistency. I think you could easily fix it by doing one of two things: either tell the whole story in the third person (omniscient POV), or else shift to the third person after "Thirty cents off brand name detergent....good." and keep with third person to the end. You might play with both.

Now, what does the story tell us about the mother? She doesn't appear to learn from her mistakes. And Olivia appears to be the one firmly in charge, not the mother. There are a lot of unanswered questions here, and they are more interesting than the mother's frantic search (something that has been done to death on TV), which takes up most of the story. I really like that last image of the frail, clueless woman alone on the bench with her coupons, unaware of just how little control she has over the world. Olivia probably has to mother herself to a certain extent. I would suggest that when you do a rewrite of this that you focus on the relationship between mother and daughter and explore how the events in the story reveal it.

Thanks for posting, and feel free to post a rewrite. I apologize for the delay in reviewing this.