When Julie arrived at the coffee shop for her morning shift, the door was locked. She cursed her employer for being late and waited in the early morning chill, blowing into her hands to keep the blood circulating. When she arrived, the owner, a laid back woman called Isabel who wore her glasses on a glittering chain, said good morning and let her in without any apology of her tardiness.
“You’re late,” Julie accused. “It’s cold.”
“Sorry, Jules, you know how it is,” Isabel flounced in and turned on the lights. “You have to relax, honey. And smile a little!” Isabel touched Julie on the nose and laughed when her hand was swatted away. “Seriously, smile. That frown of yours is going to make people think you’re a murderer.”
Julie rolled her eyes. She had too many things to worry about. There were expenses to pay. Law school wasn’t cheap and she was barely making rent. “Whatever. Just give me the keys.”
Isabel’s sunny smile faded as she dropped the cash register’s keys into Julie’s palm. “I’m not kidding, Julie. People have been talking about you. I know we’re just a little coffee shop, but you have to work on your people skills.”
Julie ignored the comment and went to the back room where her apron was hung.
By ten o’clock, there was still a line that filled the small café space. Magnolia Coffee Shop had long been a popular place for morning pit stops, and the bakery goods were famously delicious.
Julie was serving a man who was dressed in faded jeans and a wrinkled flannel shirt. He needed a shave, and his hair could use some serious TLC. “What do you want?” Julie asked in her bored drawl.
“I’m not sure…” He eyed the chalkboard menus.
Julie flared her nostrils. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to decide while waiting in line? She tapped her foot impatiently.
“I guess I’ll have a small coffee. No, no, a medium.”
Julie rang it up. “Anything else?” Isabel was right behind her, putting whipped cream on some sugary drink. Julie didn’t feel like being patient but she had no choice.
“Yeah, I need something for my daughter.” He kept staring at the menu. “I’m seeing her for the first time today. First time in fifteen years. What do you suggest?”
Julie didn’t think that the occasion merited any certain type of pastry so she just shrugged and drummed her fingers on the cash register.
The man in line behind him, a police officer in uniform, leaned around. “Get her a scone. They’re really good here, trust me.”
“I’ll have a scone then. Do you have blueberry ones?” The customer scanned the bakery display case.
“Yes.” Julie punched in the order and reached for a scone, dropping it in a paper bag.
“Laurie loves blueberries,” the man said, more to himself than to Julie.
“Total of $5.12. Name? For the order?”
The man handed over a five dollar bill and exact change from a Ziploc bag. “Ray.”
Julie eyed the tip jar, painted hot pink and sitting next to the packaged mints. Her jaw clenched when she saw it was empty.
The police officer stepped forward. “Morning, Isabel,” he waved behind Julie.
Isabel turned and smiled. “Charlie!” She stepped in front of Julie and shook the officer’s hand. “How have you been?”
“Good, really good. I’ve been thinking about retirement, you know. I’m getting a little too old for this and Liza wants to travel.”
“Retiring? Really? Wow, I can’t even imagine it.” Isabel punched his regular order into the cash register without asking and took Charlie’s credit card.
“Maybe,” he corrected. “I made myself a deal. If nothing goes wrong today, then I’ll retire in three months or so. I figure if nothing bad happens today, then the world must not need me.”
“We’re always going to need you, Charlie.” Isabel gave him his change and a wink and greeted the next customer.
Julie made the coffee of the scraggly man with the daughter, and then moved on to the cop’s order. This job was so mundane, so beneath her. Once she graduated with her law degree, she would never have to work like this again. She could do so much better than making other people’s coffee. Her friends told her that her determination and ferocity would make her a great lawyer. Her mother told her that her quick temper would make her entertaining to watch in court.
Julie wrinkled her nose as she poured syrup into a cup. People were ruining their coffee with all this crap. Didn’t they know it tasted better black?
“Excuse me, but could you remake this? It isn’t hot.” It was the officer, sheepishly holding up a drink she’d just made.
Julie muttered, “Sorry,” before snatching the drink back and throwing it away. Unfortunately for her, Isabel saw.
“Charlie! I’m so sorry!” Isabel gasped. “Julie – just go back to the register.”
“It’s okay, really, it’s okay,” the cop soothed. “It’s not a big deal.”
Isabel shook her head as she remade the drink. “Really, I’m sorry,” she apologized, handing him his new beverage and pressing a bag of shortbread into his hand. Then she lowered her voice. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with her.”
“Don’t worry about it, Izz.” Charlie held up the shortbread. “Thanks.”
Isabel waved goodbye as he walked away towards his squad car. Then she thought again of Julie, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
***
Ray had made several mistakes in his life but the biggest one – the one that tugged at his conscience whenever his mind wandered – was leaving his daughter. Fifteen years ago, Lauren had been the best thing about his life. His marriage, made too early in the ignorance of youth, had long crumbled apart by the time his girl was ten. He had once loved Karen, loved her bright smile and her angel colored hair, but love didn’t put all that much food on the table. That was fifteen years ago, and Ray hadn’t changed a whole lot.
“Leave. We don’t want you here. Don’t come back.” Karen’s words echoed in his head as he turned into an unfamiliar driveway with neatly trimmed shrubs and wind chimes. He tried to stop the truck but didn’t decelerate fast enough – and a light shattering sound filled his ears.
“Damn it,” Ray whispered. His truck was falling apart – the brakes were faulty, the left turn signal didn’t work, and there was no air conditioning. But now, the brakes chose to freeze up now? Ray stepped out and surveyed the damage. A flowerpot had been knocked over by his front bumper and the soil was strewn in a little heap. He dropped to the ground to scoop the dirt back in. This was not a good omen.
Ray took a clarifying breath and double-checked the embossed address on the wedding invitation. This was the place, the small little bungalow where his daughter – and her fiancé - lived.
His finger trembled as he pressed the doorbell.
The young woman who opened the door had Karen’s warm, round cheeks and rosy lips, but his unmistakably defiant chin. Without crossing the threshold, Lauren blinked in surprise at the stranger in her door.
Ray shifted his weight awkwardly. “It’s Dad. I mean – It’s Ray.” He held out his hand but Lauren took a step back instead, stiff as the frozen paper towels she loved to chew on when she was teething.
“What are you doing here?” she finally said. Ray shut his eyes for a second, savoring the sharp words. The first words his daughter had said to him in fifteen years – What are you doing?
He held up the wedding invitation as an answer. “I just… I wanted to talk. It’s been awhile.”
Lauren’s stony expression was relentless. “Yeah. It has.” She looked down at her father’s wrinkled shirt, the dirt on the knees of his jeans. She saw the plea in his eyes but felt nothing.
Leave, said Karen’s fifteen-years-ago voice. We don’t want you here. Don’t come back.
Ray cleared his throat, summoning up a decade’s worth of courage. “Will you go for a drive with me?” He saw his daughter’s hesitation and added a broken, “Please, Laurie?”
It was a hundred years before she replied, “It’s Lauren. But okay, I guess.”
Ray’s heart skipped and he sighed in relief.
“Just let me leave a note for John, in case he wonders where I am.”
By the time his daughter was finally seated next to him in the truck, Ray was still tense with nerves. He didn’t want to mess up. He’d already had to explain why there was no seatbelt in the passenger’s seat – “A friend of mine used it to tie some cargo” – and why the windows didn’t roll down. Every second she spent in the truck she saw another one of his shortcomings.
“I got you this,” Ray chirped, pointing at the bag between them. “It’s a scone. Blueberry, your favorite.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Lauren didn’t mention that she had no particular affinity for blueberries but accepted the gesture all the same. Lauren’s light hair was a curtain between her and Ray, so that when she spoke, he didn’t even see her mouth move. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Ray admitted. He had half a mind to just turn around, drop Lauren off, and avoid all contact for the rest of his life. He suddenly understood the phrase “estranged family members”. Everything was strange. Everything was forced.
“Well, if you’re hungry we could get lunch, I guess.”
Ray agreed, even though his stomach was probably too knotted to hold anything down. Lauren directed him to a sandwich shop, next door to the café he’d discovered just hours before. They sat outside, where there was enough white noise to fill the empty space between them. Lauren ordered a salad and Ray asked if they could make him a grilled cheese sandwich.
Before long, they had battered all forms of small talk to death. Yes, the weather was nice today. Of course, Lauren’s mother was doing fine. Sure, the economy was finally picking up. When the waiter brought their orders, the pair dove into their plates, grateful for the distraction.
Lauren picked her way through her salad, studying her father. He was thinner than she remembered, and he looked unkempt. She saw how his shirt hadn’t been ironed, that there were spots on the lapel, and guessed he lived very much alone.
Ray’s sandwich wasn’t half bad. The bread was hearty and the cheese was sharp. He had just taken a particularly large bite when a fork clattered on the plate across from him. He looked up, swallowing quickly at the piercing look in Lauren’s eyes.
“Why did you leave?” Lauren accused, out of nowhere.
“What?”
“When I was ten,” Lauren said flatly. “Why did you just leave?”
Ray’s gaze wandered to his plate, hoping the crumbs would spell out the words he should say next. “Your mom told me to,” he answered lamely. Leave. We don’t want you here. Don’t come back.
Lauren leaned forward, that defiant chin setting into place. “I’ve hated you for almost my whole life, for just leaving, without doing anything. Without trying.”
Ray’s hands reached forward, as if curled around a campfire. “Lauren, I didn’t just leave. I had to, I didn’t want to!”
“You didn’t have to.” Her eyes were starting to shimmer.
“Laurie… I’m sorry,” Ray offered.
“Did you even miss me?” Her voice was soft and breakable.
“Like hell. Laurie, I was trying to do what was best for you. I wasn’t best for you,” Ray’s voice croaked. “Your mom told me to leave. That you guys didn’t want me there. She told me not to come back.”
“But you’re here,” Lauren stated.
“I’m here.”
“Because of the wedding.” It was said matter-of-factly, with the biting sting of insult.
“Yes.” Ray continued apprehensively, “That’s how I knew where you lived. The invites had your address on them.
Lauren’s eyes widened with sudden realization. “You missed me – you just couldn’t find me?”
A commotion next door interrupted Ray’s confirmation. A woman he recognized as that morning’s barista stormed out of the café next door. Her middle finger was waving boldly in the air.
“...sue your ass for discrimination!” the woman was yelling. “You have some nerve. To fire me? Me?”
Another woman, older, ran out of the store behind her. “Julie! Come on, is this necessary?”
The barista threw her apron at the feet of the woman behind her, oblivious to the attention she was getting. “Go to hell!” Then she disappeared into a little blue car and sped away.
Ray whistled and Lauren gave a nervous laugh. Soon after, the check arrived, and when Ray insisted he pay – “I owe you, like, a hundred of these” – Lauren’s face softened.
“Can I take you somewhere?” Ray asked, digging through his pockets for the tip. “That museum in the city that we used to go to?”
“That’s kind of a long drive. I don’t even know if your truck can make it that far,” Lauren teased.
But she agreed, and ten minutes later they were cruising down the interstate with the windows rolled down. Lauren grew aware of the growing silence and turned the CD player on. It was a Billy Joel compilation album, the same one she and her dad used to listen to all the time in the car. The one they both knew all the words to.
Ray grinned, turned up the volume, and started bobbing his head to “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”. He looked absolutely ridiculous and Lauren found herself laughing easily. The sun lit up the cab of the truck.
“You’re just as crazy as always!” Lauren smiled happily. “I love it!”
When the music reached the bridge, Ray looked straight at his daughter, a hundred emotions in his gaze. “I always figured I’d meet up with you again, you know, once you were out of your mom’s place. I love you, Laurie. You’re my little girl.”
She looked back at him, filled with hope, believing that everything would turn out.
***
Julie gripped her steering wheel with white knuckles, cursing in her head. She cursed the cop who’d’ complained about his coffee and the law school for making tuition so high. Mostly, though, she cursed at Isabel for being such a bitch.
Money. Where was she going to get money? She’d have to pay her rent next Friday and her car payment the Sunday after that. She couldn’t go crawling back to her mother. That just wasn’t an option.
The car in front of her suddenly braked, causing her to swerve. She smashed down on her horn, adding the driver on her hit list. Blasted car, if he had hit her, she would have had to pay the damages, for following too closely. Julie’s eyebrows wrinkled. That gave her an idea.
There was a rusty, beat-up truck following behind her. If she timed it right, she could have him bumping her back fender. She could feign whiplash or something more serious, and sue the living daylights out of him. It was a perfect plan.
Julie’s foot slammed on the brake pedal, and closed her eyes for impact. But it never came.
She looked behind her and swore. Then she drove away.
***
Charlie was near the end of his shift. Unlike most of the other officers, the ones who swore they’d be detective by the time they had children, he didn’t mind traffic patrol. Sure, it wasn’t the most exciting thing, but it gave him time to think and observe. Charlie liked living that way – slowly. Plus it was always refreshing when the folks he pulled over were discovered he wasn’t a complete ass. Cops were just doing their jobs, and he liked to do his with a smile.
He wasn’t young anymore though. He had grown up children and a wife who wanted to travel. Some may see he was too young to retire, but he wanted to see the world before the world had enough of him. Today was the today. That was the deal, and he’d told his wife over bacon and eggs. If nothing went wrong today, he would retire.
Charlie tugged at the collar of his uniform. He had the air conditioning on high but the polyester blend around his neck was still sticking to his skin. With all of the new gadgets they were getting, one would think the department could afford nicer uniforms, or at least ones that breathed a little. He looked around for something to drink, but all that was in the cup holder was the remnants of this morning’s coffee. He sipped the dregs in desperation and made a face. Terrible.
Static crackled on the dashboard system of his cruiser and notified him of a crash up the interstate. There were possible fatalities. Weren’t there always? He called in his position and put on his lights and siren. Cars pulled aside for him and he recalled a joke one of the new recruits had made a week earlier. “We’re like Moses, aren’t we? Parting the red sea, saving the day!”
That newbie had never made it to a serious scene, because if he had, he would have realized that they were hardly there to “save the day”. Times like these, the officers were just damage control.
A car crash. Possible fatalities. Charlie accelerated a little.
When he saw it, Charlie’s gut plummeted. He was the first one on the scene and he called it into dispatch before running out of his cruiser. A truck had collided with a telephone pole, head on, and there was shattered glass all along the shoulder of the road. No other cars were hit, but he bet another car had caused this one to swerve into its collision. It was the afternoon, rare for drunk driving accidents.
Walking around to the truck’s cab, he saw her. The woman in the passenger’s seat had flown clear through the windshield and was now splayed on the grass like a fallen angel. Her hair, glistening with blood and shards of glass, was the color of butter. His niece had hair like that, hair like corn silk. Charlie felt bile creeping up his throat.
He knew she was dead. He knew to check for other passengers. Protocol always seemed ridiculous at times like these, but there might be others. “Hello?” He tried to look inside the truck but the door was bent like an accordion and the door’s window was a spider web. “Can anybody hear me?”
And miraculously, he heard someone inside. “Hello? I’m going to get you out! The ambulances are coming. Hold on!” He tugged at the door, listening at the same time. And when he heard the sound again, he dropped to his knees.
It was music. It was bouncy, happy, music. The car was crushed to bits, with one, maybe two, deaths, but the radio worked. Unless he was very mistaken, Billy Joel had the nerve to sing in the midst of this death.
The world spun and Charlie slid down the side of the cab, completely forgetting about the driver. “Come on Virginia, don’t let me wait…”
Other officers pulled on to the scene. Officer Clancy pulled him up and guided him aside.
“…sooner or later it comes down to fate…”
“Do you see this?” another officer said. “…wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. Typical.”
“I might as well be the one!”
“Charlie, you okay?” A face loomed in front of his. “Someone turn that damn radio off!”
“…told you to pray…”
He could see a limp body being pulled onto a stretcher. Someone yelled “He’s got a pulse!”
Cars were slowing down, their morbid curiosity getting the best of them. Were people actually entertained by this?
“…they never told you the price that you pay…”
Everyone was bustling around him but Charlie could barely breathe. Nobody paid him a second’s attention as he knelt on the road, stunned by the sick irony. And because people react to trauma in funny ways, he started singing under his breath. He even let out a laugh, a sad, cold laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all.
“Only the good die young!”
When you write your first book I would do anything for a copy.
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