People Watching
Alice spent her nights, her afternoons, her mornings, and every time in between in awe of a woman who left her. Though in her mind, she was never left, or abandoned, or forgotten, like everyone tried to tell her she was. Her mother was called on a secret mission, left with the impossible choice of her family or her country. Or, she was an undercover spy, sent to spy on the daily lives of Americans and got too far in when her home country called her back. No, she never could have just -- left. Every afternoon at exactly 3:00, Alice would go to her favorite cafe in her town in Pennsylvania and order a pastrami sandwich, always making sure to add extra mayo. She’d sit at a table in the far corner, the one that always had the most light, with her notebook, eagerly jotting down notes of the possible past lives of each and every person that walked through the cafe doors that day. Maybe, just maybe, one of those people would be her mother.
