“Always know that we love you so much. We always will. You are going to be remembered in this world. You will be someone special,” her mother and father said before her first day of school. They said it often, every night almost. But she remembers that morning specifically. She plays it back in her head over and over again.
She sits in the coffee shop sipping tea, gazing out the window without really looking at anything in particular. Every morning, she orders her tea, sits down in the remote corner booth, and looks out the large window toward the street. She never comes with anyone, rarely says anything, but still, everyday she comes. She just sits and listens to the stories of the people surrounding her. The laughs, the cries, the fights, the professions of love, and sometimes nothing in particular- just two people enjoying each other's company in silence. The silence is her favorite.
She seems to be an ordinary woman that just happens to spend twelve hours a day in the same coffee shop in the same neighborhood on the same street everyday. The baristas don't bother her much. They never make her leave. She is good business and never fails to leave a good tip. The baristas come to the booth occasionally, more out of necessity than desire, to ask if she needs another cup of tea. She turns and nods and returns to staring. Her focus jumps from the shady trees, to the birds, to the people strolling along the streets talking on their cell phones or walking their dogs. She sees the same people everyday like clockwork. The same woman walks past every morning on her way to work. The same man jogs past everyday at noon in a green tracksuit. A group of children walking home from school pass at around three fifteen. The world goes on everyday without her, while she sits, staring out the window onto the street.
Sometimes she gets too attached to the passersby. She creates stories for them- lives she imagines they live outside the thirty-second increments she sees them. How old they are, why they are rushing, where they are going, why they have frustrated looks on their faces as they pass, what they giggle about with their friends. The teenager passing is Laura. She’s sixteen. Laura is on her way to the ice cream parlor to order a large scoop of chocolate on a sugar cone because she doesn’t care that the other girls thinks she eats too much. The woman makes up their stories while sipping her tea, looking out the window onto the street- the street where her parents died.
She was very little when her parents died in the neighborhood the coffee shop is in, on the street it’s on. Her parents were on their way to get coffee at the same shop she’s been sitting in everyday for the past few years. She kissed and hugged them goodbye before she boarded the school bus and she gazed out the window in the back to wave to them until they disappeared from view. She was at school when her aunt came to get her and told her that mommy and daddy weren’t coming home that night. After several nights, she stopped questioning. She never really asked what happened. She knew they were gone forever. She moved with her aunt to a city far away from home. Her aunt said the man that did it was let out of jail, but she had to see for herself. She’s been back for a few years- living in her parents house.
He stills lives across from the coffee shop on the street it happened. She watches him take his children to school, walk with his wife, play with the dog in the front yard. She watches him live a life that was taken away from her parents. She watches him do the things her parents never got to do with her. She watches the man that murdered her parents be happy and live after he took the lives of the only people she loves.
"Would you like another tea?" the barista with the wavy dark brown hair asked in her too-bubbly voice, interrupting the woman’s thoughts.
"No. No thank you," said the woman before adding, "But I will take the check."
"Sure, no problem." The barista set the check down on the table and walked away. The woman looked at the clock, saw it was noon, put a fifty dollar bill on the table, and got up, taking her slouchy leather bag with her.
She walked across the street and stood in front of the man’s house. She stared at the blue window shutters and the oak doors. It was a lovely home with a large front yard and a swing set in the back. She knew it had an security system that safely allowed her to stand fifty feet away on the sidewalk for an extended period of time without setting off any alarms. She knew because she watched it get installed from her booth in the corner.
“Are you a friend of my mommy?” she heard a voice say. The woman looked down to find two little children, a young boy and a slightly older girl. They were wearing school uniforms and had large, colorful backpacks.
“No, I’m not a friend,” said the woman.
“Why are you looking at my house?” said the girl.
“I was just looking sweety,” the woman said.
“Do you want to see my bedroom?” the boy said eagerly.
“Ummmmm I don’t think your parents would like it is a stranger was in your house,” she said.
“It’s okay. Mommy says I can have friends over,” said the boy. “Is it okay?” he said directed towards his sister.
“I guess,” the sister said shrugging.
“Do you want to be my friend? Please, please, please,” said the boy. “You can see my stuffed animal collection.” Before she could answer, the kids ran into the house leaving the door opened behind them. The woman looked down the street and hesitated before walking up the path and into the house, shutting the door behind her.
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