“She’s gone. But I still make coffee for two every morning.”
The old Mr. Stanley didn’t say much anymore. He used to fill a room with his voice — a booming baritone softened by a midwestern drawl and twenty years of marriage. But after Lorraine passed, the words dried up. Now, he only spoke when necessary, and even then, it felt like the effort of lifting something too heavy with hands too tired.
Still, every morning, he shuffled into the kitchen of that weathered clapboard house at 6:12 sharp. Not 6:10. Not 6:15. 6:12 — because that’s when she used to come down the stairs, wrapped in that blue terry-cloth robe, hair smelling faintly of lavender and Vicks.
He didn’t bother with fancy machines. Just the same rusted Mr. Coffee they’d bought at a yard sale in 1983, the kind that wheezed and sputtered like it might give up the ghost any moment — but never did. Just like him.
Two chipped mugs. One with a faded picture of a cardinal, the other plain green. Cream and two sugars in hers. Black for him. Every day.
And every day, he set them both down on the table. One across from the other. The way it had always been. Then he sat. Sipped. Waited.
He didn’t talk to the empty chair. That would’ve felt wrong somehow, like pretending she was still there. No, he wasn’t delusional. He knew where she was. Under the oak out back. The one they planted together on their fifth anniversary when they were still young and foolish and thought time would never come for them.
But he felt her. That was the thing.
People talk about grief like it’s something that fades. A fog that lifts. But Stanley knew better. Grief wasn’t fog. It was bone. It settled into you. It became you. Some mornings, he swore he could feel her fingertips brushing past his shoulder as he reached for the sugar. Just a whisper of touch. Nothing more. Enough to break him, and enough to keep him going.
It’d been two winters since she’d gone. Pancreatic cancer. The mean kind. Came fast, didn’t linger, didn’t ask permission. Lorraine never had a chance. One minute she was humming Patsy Cline while folding the towels, and the next they were in some sterile white room, and she was telling him, “Don’t forget to water the violets, Stan. They don’t like too much sun.”
That was her last full sentence. Not “I love you.” Not “Goodbye.” Just something about the violets.
He watered them every Tuesday now.
The neighbors tried at first. Dropping off casseroles. Inviting him to church socials. Sending Christmas cards with smiling children he didn’t know. But grief made people uncomfortable. It stuck to the air, made it harder to breathe. And so, eventually, they stopped knocking.
He didn’t blame them.
The world had sped up around him anyway. Smartphones. Online banking. Groceries delivered to your door by someone who didn’t even look you in the eye. Stanley had a rotary phone on the kitchen wall and a box of change for payphones that no longer existed. He didn’t belong here, not really. But he wasn’t quite ready to leave either.
One morning in April, something different happened.
He was sitting with his coffee, staring out the window at the back field where deer sometimes crossed at dawn. The light was pink and soft, just the way Lorraine used to like it. Said it made the world look polite.
That’s when he heard the knock.
Soft. Hesitant.
He opened the door, and there she was. A girl — maybe eleven, maybe twelve. Skinny elbows poking out of a sweatshirt two sizes too big, a backpack slung over one shoulder, eyes too old for her face.
“You’re Mr. Stanley, right?”
He blinked. “That depends.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded envelope. “My grandma used to talk about you. Said you were the only one who remembered her birthday three years in a row.”
He took the envelope, fingers trembling just enough to betray his curiosity.
“I’m Becca,” she said. “I missed the bus. Could I… just wait on your porch?”
He nodded. She sat. He went inside, made a decision he hadn’t made since the day of the funeral. He poured a third cup.
She came back the next day.
And the one after.
By the end of the week, they were sitting at the kitchen table together, three mugs in front of them. Hers had a squirrel on it. She always added too much sugar, scrunching her face after the first sip like she was trying to convince herself it tasted right.
They didn’t talk much, at least not at first. But she watched the way he moved. The quiet rituals. The way he folded the napkin even when no one used it. The way he looked at the green cup as if someone was still holding it.
Then one morning, she asked, “Was she nice?”
He looked up.
“Your wife. Was she… the kind of person who’d let me stay here for a bit if it rained?”
Stanley didn’t answer right away. He just poured more coffee into the squirrel mug and said, “She would’ve put a blanket around your shoulders before you even asked.”
Becca didn’t say anything. Just wrapped her fingers around the warmth and nodded.
The weeks turned into months. And though she never said it, Stanley figured things weren’t great at home. Some mornings, she had a bruise just starting to yellow near her wrist. Once, her cheek was swollen. She said she tripped on the porch. He didn’t ask more.
He just started leaving the porch light on. Every night.
Sometimes, she’d show up early. Before the sun. Eyes red, shoes muddy. She never cried in front of him. Just sat, drank her coffee, and let the quiet hold her.
And he let it.
Because grief comes in all shapes. His was shaped like a green coffee cup. Hers was still unfolding.
On a Sunday in September, she didn’t come.
He waited until noon. Poured a fresh cup just in case. Set it across from him. The chair felt emptier than usual. The silence louder.
He left the porch light on that night.
And the next.
But days passed. No knock. No Becca.
He thought about calling someone — but he didn’t know who. She never gave a last name. Never said where she lived. Just showed up one day like a forgotten melody.
It was nearly two weeks later when he heard the knock again.
She looked thinner. Paler. Her backpack was missing.
Without a word, she walked in. Sat down. Picked up the squirrel mug. It was still warm.
Stanley didn’t ask where she’d been. He just poured another cup. Set the green mug down gently across from her.
She stared at it.
“Do you still miss her?” she asked.
He nodded. “Every morning.”
Becca’s lip trembled. She looked at her own reflection in the coffee and whispered, “I think I’m gonna start missing my mom soon.”
Stanley reached across the table. Placed a hand over hers. Weathered fingers, soft with age, holding trembling youth.
“You can come here whenever,” he said.
She nodded.
And for the first time, she let the tears fall.
That winter, the violets bloomed early.
He showed her how to water them.
They still brewed three cups every morning.
Two for them.
One for the seat that never stayed empty for long.
Sometimes, love lingers in the small things — like a green coffee cup waiting patiently across the table.
The blood on Becca’s sweatshirt wasn’t hers — but she wouldn’t say whose it was.
Stanley froze when he opened the door.
She was barefoot. Her jeans were soaked to the knees. The old squirrel mug was clutched to her chest like a teddy bear, but her eyes — Lord, her eyes looked like something had just been snatched out of her chest and never returned.
She didn’t ask to come in this time. She just stood on the porch, trembling. The morning frost clung to her eyelashes, and her breath came in sharp, uneven clouds.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she whispered.
He opened the door wider.
The girl walked in like a ghost. He wrapped a blanket around her shoulders — the plaid one Lorraine used to curl up in for Wheel of Fortune — and guided her to the kitchen table.
She stared at the green mug across from her.
He poured the coffee anyway.
It was the middle of February. A storm was coming in from the west — you could feel it in your teeth. Stanley’s knees ached something fierce, but he didn’t say anything. He just sat beside her and waited.
Becca didn’t drink. Didn’t speak. Just stared down at the table like she expected it to open and swallow her whole.
Finally, after a long silence, she said, “He hit her again.”
Stanley didn’t ask who “he” was. He’d seen enough bruises. Heard enough late-night knocks.
“And this time…” Her voice cracked. “She didn’t get up.”
He gripped his cup tighter.
“I think she’s still there.”
The kitchen went quiet.
Only the ticking of the old cat-shaped wall clock filled the space. Its tail swayed left to right, left to right, like some cruel reminder that time would keep moving, no matter who it left behind.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.
She flinched. “I didn’t do anything right either.”
He didn’t push her. Lorraine used to say pain was like a splinter — you had to let it work itself out, slow and careful, or you’d make it worse.
So he sat there.
And she sat there.
And the coffee went cold.
She slept in Lorraine’s old room that night. He’d never changed a thing — the pink quilt, the bookshelf full of dusty paperbacks, the old music box shaped like a swan. For the first time in years, someone turned on the light in that room.
He sat on the porch in the cold for a while, watching the snow start to fall, listening to the wind knock against the siding. He kept thinking about what she’d said — “I think she’s still there.”
That didn’t sit right.
In the morning, he made pancakes. Burned the first batch like always. Becca came into the kitchen without being asked, her hair still tangled, socks mismatched.
He didn’t mention the night before.
Just pointed to the plate. “Eat.”
She did.
Halfway through her third pancake, she asked, “Would you drive me somewhere?”
He set his fork down. “Where?”
She looked him dead in the eye. “Back to the trailer.”
Stanley’s hands shook, just a little.
“I left my brother.”
They didn’t speak on the way there.
The truck rattled like an old man clearing his throat, heater struggling to keep up. Country radio played static-filled classics from the ’70s, and the dashboard smelled faintly of peppermint and old motor oil.
Becca stared out the window the whole time, jaw clenched.
When they pulled up to the trailer, Stanley saw it immediately — the busted porch rail, the broken window, the beer cans scattered in the snow. There was a dog barking somewhere behind the rusted fence, and a tricycle flipped on its side like a forgotten promise.
“Wait here,” she said.
He didn’t.
Becca opened the door slowly. What they found inside made Stanley’s hand clench into a fist — and for the first time in twenty years, he wanted to hit a man.
