The Return Home

Leaving her beloved city with lights dancing on the sidewalk was tough, but going home was tougher.

“Who says you can’t go home?” Abigail said to herself, as she rode the train.

“Me, that’s who.”

Following her mother’s death her father began to decline rapidly. None of her siblings were any help, or even interested in helping. Abigail was the eldest daughter and felt like the second mother. So, home she went.

When she arrived at the train station, she searched with hopeful anxiety as she scanned the crowd. Ah, there she is. Helen, Abigail’s best friend, appeared as a couple parted. Helen’s face broke into a wide smile.

“You made it!” Helen said.

“Barely,” Abigail said, with trepidation.

“Let’s get out of here. Coffee?”

“You know me,” said Abigail.

They drove in the fog to the quaint coffee shop just down the road from Abigail’s childhood home. As they walked inside, Abigail smelled the roasting coffee beans and her worry lifted, if only for a moment. She looked around the coffee shop and could see the ghosts, the memories, of her teenage years.

Over there, she sat in the corner booth with Scott when they were young and in love. They couldn’t go anywhere else, so the coffee shop was where they always landed. Too young to go anywhere, but too old to sit at home with their parents.

And then that table in the center, she sat there with Helen when it all fell apart.

She gasped as she saw Scott walk across the coffee shop.

“You’re home. I wondered if you would make it back here. Right where you belong,” he said.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Abigail said, trying not to sound cold in her obvious surprise.

“I own the place now. Too many good memories to let this place go.”