The café was as it had always been: quiet, a bit dingy. She sat outside, at one of the ancient iron tables. These were the same too. Faded, with the peeling green paint never even touched up. The chairs were new, but even then everything seemed a bit lacking. Still, Muriel had good memories of the place, and of more parts of her home town than she realised.
There had been one employee, a boy with dark, curly hair, who had noticed and greeted her when she arrived. He had been very polite, even pulling the chair out for her. There was a reek of smoke about him, not wholly unpleasant, and Muriel figured he must have been out on a smoke break. His apron was a little rumpled; in the old days, Mr. Leonis would never have stood for that. Still, those were the old days, and Mr. Leonis had been slowing up even then. Perhaps, with the passage of five years, he had got lax with things.
Muriel asked to wait a while before ordering, and the boy seemed all too eager to let her. He brought a glass of ice water, a slice of lime stuck on the rim, and smiled.
“When you’re ready,” he said, “just call for Lewis.”
“Thank you.”
He left her alone, and so she sat, looking out over the nearby square.
It was a Friday, just past midday. Traffic was light. On the square there were some young people near the band shell, goofing. A couple of them looked familiar, and Muriel suddenly laughed, recalling that her “old days” in this town had only been five years ago. Of course things might not have changed much. She had maybe gone to school with some of those kids, or more likely their older siblings.
When she laughed, one of the boys in the little group near the band shell turned and seemed to look directly at her. His expression was blank at first, then shifted to something like recognition. He looked away quickly, and Muriel found herself looking away as well, down at the table.
The boy’s look reminded her of why she had left town.
Suddenly, an afternoon of leisure around the old stomping grounds seemed less than ideal. Standing quickly, Muriel went and peered inside the café. Lewis was near the door, leaning back against a wall with his hands in his pockets.
“I’m going now,” Muriel said.
“I’m sorry.”
She pulled a crumpled bill from her pocket and thrust it into the boy’s hand, then hurried away. A few times, in her progress along Minton Street, she glanced back toward the square. The familiar-looking boy had moved around the band shell now and was sitting on a bench, watching her go.
On she went, turning onto Oak Avenue when she reached the corner. She had not intended, during this visit, to go anywhere particularly near her old house, but now she felt a keen pull. Home. Home would be safe.
She had thought, for a moment, of returning to the house on the night she left town. She had thought of a lot of things in the rush of fear that led her to flee with only the clothes on her back; after all, her parents would help her and look after her, considering what she had been through.
Would they have done that? Would they have been kind? Those questions had been roiling her gut long before she left, and had stayed so for most of the five years since she kissed this town goodbye. Her parents, to her knowledge, had never searched for her. They could have found her easily, had they wished to look, and if they did love and care about her as their only child, they could have reached out. She had tried to contact them herself, a few times, but the voice on the other end always muttered “Hello?” a few times before abruptly hanging up, no matter what she said.
Clearly, her parents had given her up. Not that she could entirely blame them. She was an adult, 25 years old now, and she had left so abruptly…
Muriel tried to forget that night: the canal, the shouting. She tried to forget the interminable drive with the kind woman who picked her up on the motorway, and who dropped her off in the even smaller town 40 miles from here.
She wished she had stayed in Cuir. Things were slow there, but easy. Mrs. Chorley was a kind employer, almost a friend really. In the past five years, Muriel had become friends with most of the locals of Cuir. They were good people, and asked no questions about her background.
Just at the place where she should turn and head up Grand Street, Muriel, head down lost entirely in her thoughts, collided with someone.
“You all right?” a familiar voice asked.
Muriel looked up, shocked for a moment, then smiled.
“Dana? Dana, is it…”
She had almost asked “Is it you?” but of course this was Dana. Same wild honey-coloured hair, same dimple on the left cheek. Hell, even the same old denim jacket she had been wearing…
No. No thinking of all that mess.
“How’ve you been?” Dana asked.
“I’m… I’ve been well. You?”
“Can’t complain. You home for a visit?”
“Yeah. You still living around here?”
Dana shrugged. She really had not changed much at all.
“You left real quick, Muri. Left and never even came back before, I guess.”
“No, I… That night was so… I had to leave.”
“Sure. Sure. We all gotta leave this place eventually, huh? You thinking of seeing your parents?”
Muriel nodded, and Dana turned, nodding for her to follow.
“Okay if I walk with you?”
“Of course,” Muriel said.
They went on in silence a while. It was good to see Dana again, to be near her again, but Muriel was uncertain of what to say.
“Things all right wherever you’ve been?” Dana muttered at last, and Muriel sighed with relief.
“Yeah. I, uh, fetched up in an okay little place. Nice people and everything.”
“Good. Good. You headed back there right away, as soon as you see your parents?”
“Probably. I work for an older lady. Well, not so much work, I guess. I’m sort of a companion, you know? Keep the house tidied up, cook a lot of the meals, spend time just keeping her company. I got someone to fill in, but only for a few days.”
“Oh. Well, then, guess…”
Dana’s voice trailed off, and they walked on in silence again.
A block from Muriel’s old house, they had to leap apart a bit to let a small child on a tricycle pass between them. The lad paid them no heed, but Muriel turned and watched him for a moment.
The trike was rickety, the front wheel a bit crooked, but still the little one peddled along, head tilted awkwardly to the side in concentration.
She knew that boy.
It was impossible, really, as he had to be younger than five years, but somehow she knew she knew him.
“That…” she started, but felt Dana’s hand on her wrist.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But that… That was Howie Ancaster! His family lived four down from us when I was little. He…”
“Got hit by a car while he was out on his trike,” Dana finished.
“Yes. He did. But that… That was years ago.”
Muriel felt her breath start to hitch, and then she paused. She looked at Dana.
“You…”
“Not just me,” Dana nodded.
It hit her then. That night. The canal. The shouting. They had been walking there not because it was romantic, but because no one much was around that part of town late at night. They had been near the edge of everything, really, toward the road that led to Bronwen Farm.
Dana had pulled her off the path a bit, into a spot near a windbreak. No lights, no one around to see.
They had thought no one was around to see.
It was as if the instant their lips met, a siren went off. They had not spotted the clot of others down the way sitting on the edge of the canal, but they had been seen. In the next moment, the gang of people, only five or six really but still enough, was on them, shouting awful stuff, hitting, pulling Muriel and Dana away from each other.
“One of them… I knew one of them.”
The boy. The one back in the square who had been watching her.
“Fred Bitter.”
Dana nodded.
“He… I remember he hustled me over back onto the path,” Muriel went on, “and toward the canal railing. He was slapping me, hitting me. Once he knocked me down, but then he pulled me back up and shoved me toward the canal railing. He punched me hard in the back and I went over. I… I just floated there, trying not to show I was alive…”
“You survived a while,” Dana said.
“I survived. Of course I did! I waited until it sounded like they had gone, and then I was treading water. I tried to find you. I called your name, I…”
“You climbed out of the canal. Thought you did, anyhow.”
“There was a bit of chain. The chains they have in case someone falls in.”
“They dragged me a ways,” Dana said.
“They beat me. Really did a number on me. Then they tossed me in, a good way up from where you’d been. I barely remember hitting the water.”
For the first time, Muriel noticed that Dana was not just wearing the same jacket she had worn that night. All of her clothes were the same.
The clothes were damp, too.
“They found us the next morning,” Dana continued.
“You a little after me. You’d been stabbed in the shoulder, and you drowned after Fred shoved you in.”
“Stabbed? I wasn’t…”
“That punch in the back wasn’t a punch, Muri.”
“But it… I’m… I’m here. I’m…”
“A lot of people stay after, for a while. They aren’t ready to go. They have unfinished business. And sometimes, they just don’t know they’re…”
“Don’t. Don’t say it.”
Teeth gritted tight, Muriel stared for a moment at Dana. Dana, the first person she had been in love with. The only person. They had been so careful, kept things so secret.
Muriel ran. She tore north along Grand Street, unthinking, unbreathing, until she skidded to a halt in front of the house she had grown up in.
It was not much different, but then, nothing in this town had changed much in the past few years, she supposed. It did look like the window frames had been freshly painted, and she saw through the little bay window that Mum had finally replaced the worn old dusty brown curtains. The new ones were green.
“They’re still living there.”
Turning sharp, she saw Dana there, right beside her. She was sure she had not been followed—she certainly had not heard Dana’s old, floppy-soled shoes smacking the pavement in a run.
“Your parents still live here,” Dana reiterated.
“You could go right in and see them, if you like.”
“I…”
“Just think it. Just think of being inside.”
The kitchen was warm; from the smell, Mum was baking apple cake.
“She’s changed the wallpaper,” Dana said.
“Yes,” Muriel agreed.
Dad came trundling in from the lounge, and as he passed by, his right shoulder went through Muriel.
“Dad,” she said, soft as a breeze.
No response.
“Want to stay a while?” Dana asked.
Muriel shook her head.
They were back on the pavement in an instant, and for some reason Lewis from the café was there too, leaning against the fence.
“You…” Muriel began.
“Moved to town about a year after you had gone,” the boy said.
“Died in a house fire a few months after I started working for Mr. Leonis.”
“Why are you here, then? I mean…”
“I called in a favour,” Dana said.
Lewis grinned.
“Dane was around here for a long while after you left,” he explained.
“She happened to help me across. I was a bit like you. Thought I made it out of the fire. Once I realised, I was free. Then Dane heard you were maybe going to be in a place to finally get peace, and I offered to help see about things. Was hoping to keep you at the café a while, but…”
“Fred. I saw Fred Bitter at the square. I didn’t know him right then, didn’t remember, but the sight of him…”
“He’ll probably always be stuck here,” Dana said.
“Never could let go of stuff.”
“How did he…”
Dana and Lewis both shrugged.
A car pulled up and idled nearby, the driver’s window rolling down.
“Ready to go at last?” the driver called.
Muriel looked and saw the same woman who had picked her up that night, all those years ago.
“Ready?” Dana asked, offering her hand.
“I… Is this real?”
“Realer than anything.”
Smiling, Muriel dared to take Dana’s hand.
“I’m ready.”
All original contents © L. Richmond, 2025-