A Glorious Tip

Chelsea was halfway to her first table when she realized she didn't have any pens in her apron, so she grabbed a pack of crayons off the hostess stand and made her way over to the family of five. After much laughter, diagrams drawn on the children's menus to establish the correct way the grilled cheese were to be cut, and confirmation that the directions were put onto the order pad, Chelsea made her way to the window. Derek was less than impressed with the order being 4 tickets long due to the thick medium requiring more space to be made legible. When he voiced his concern, he was reminded that the waitresses had been requesting pens for days.

In the meantime, a woman had sat down at the counter. She stood out in the way a rose would be noticed among wildflowers. Her posture expressed a calm confidence that radiated to her surroundings, a calm energy.

"My apologies for him," Chelsea gestured towards Derek's barely visible head through the window. "He seems to think complaining will make me nicer," she laughed, and continued quickly as to not inconvenience their guest, "what can I help you with today?"

The woman had looked up from a black notebook when the waitress turned her attention to her and put her pen between the pages as she placed her order of a coffee and a scone. She pushed the notebook to the side and spent the next twenty minutes observing her surroundings while she enjoyed her mid-afternoon pick-me-up. She watched with delight as Derek, who had left cutting the sandwiches up to Chelsea, was dragged from the kitchen to do it by request of the young girls. He turned a vibrant shade of red when the girls, instructed by Chelsea, thanked him for making them perfect, and giggles followed him to the kitchen. The woman looked at the time and realized she would be late to her appointment if she didn't get going. She set down the funds to cover the bill and also included a lottery ticket. On top of the pile, she placed her pen and left.

"Have a great day!" Chelsea exclaimed from the booth she was cleaning. On her way to the back, she grabbed the pile on top of the receipt and smiled widely at gaining a pen, shoving everything into her pocket to be entered into the register.

When Chelsea came back up to the counter a few minutes later, she realized the woman had left her notebook behind. Not wanting it to be misplaced, she immediately placed it in the restaurant's lost and found. The rest of her work day went by uneventfully.

When Chelsea got home that night, she emptied out her apron on the coffee table, straightened out the crumpled bills and threw the coins into a jar that was almost half full. On her 6 hour shift, she had made an extra $68. She sighed and moved on to the scratchcard. She reached her hand into the jar, determined to grab the penny that was face up. After several attempts and finally realizing she would not be able to pull her fist out of the jar, she was able to pinch the coin between two fingers and retrieve it. She scratched off the ticket and stared down at it, rereading the rules and checking over the symbols.

"No," she said aloud, her hand and voice shaking. "There's absolutely no way."

Chelsea put on her jacket, shoved the ticket in the pocket, and headed to the corner store. When she scanned the ticket at the counter, she received the confirmation she had never expected. She was holding a ticket worth $20,000. She knew she couldn't keep this to herself. She repocketed the ticket knowing she would not be able to redeem it in the store and headed back to her apartment where she sat on the sofa staring at it in awe. She made a plan to pay this back to the woman who had left her this.

Before Chelsea headed into work, she mailed off the claim form to collect her winnings and set about her day, hoping that the woman would come in to claim her notebook. She didn't return that day, or the next. She didn't even return a month later when all was said and done and Chelsea held a check in her hands for $20,000 that she nervously took the bus to deposit at the closest bank. She sat thinking the whole time about that woman and how brief their interaction was. She had no idea how much she had changed the life of her waitress or of how grateful Chelsea was for the fact that she did not have to worry about how she was going to keep the lights on or consider dropping out of school. She realized she was going to have to find this woman because her guilt would never let her enjoy this money otherwise. What if she needed financial help? She had left a scratchcard as a tip afterall.

The next day, when Chelsea showed up for her shift, she dug through the lost and found for the notebook. She panicked for a moment thinking that it was gone, but finally, her fingers found the soft leather that had been slightly wrapped in a child's sweater. When she opened it, she was met with slender cursive absolutely filling the pages. It appeared to be her planner. Chelsea flipped back to the week she had been in the restaurant and was overwhelmed by how many appointments were listed. One word stuck out: oncology. This woman had cancer, and her chemo started immediately after she left the restaurant that day. Chelsea put the notebook in her pocket and went about waiting on tables until her break. She sat down at a booth with a cup of coffee and started pouring over the notebook looking for a name, an address, anything to find this woman, but she could only find the addresses of places she had gone. She decided that is where she would start.

Chelsea headed out the following morning. Her list led her to a shelter, a bookstore, and a cemetary, but without a name, she had no further leads to follow. Feeling defeated, she headed back to the bus stop. As she waited for the bus, she moved a newspaper off the bench to take a seat and saw a familiar face staring up at her. On the folded over page, Chelsea saw the picture of the woman she had spent all day looking for exactly where she didn't want to, in the obituaries. She frantically read the last sentiments left about this woman, Gloria, her name was Gloria. The obituary was vague but invited those who knew her to come to a memorial the following day at a church three blocks from Chelsea's apartment.

When Chelsea showed up at the church with the notebook tucked under her arm, she was nervous, but if she had expected a small turnout, she would have been wrong. She grabbed a seat in the back of the church and listened as people came up to the podium and spoke of all of the ways in which Gloria would be missed. They cried, they laughed, and they leaned on each other. Tears streamed down Chelsea's face, but she left the church with her head held high. Through the eulogies and shorthand in her notes, Chelsea had realized that the majority of the appointments in her notebook were volunteer work, and she decided that she would honor Gloria by volunteering to her causes in her free time.

Chelsea learned about Gloria through her friends. Gloria had fought cancer three times in the past ten years. It had not stopped her from being a positive influence on those around her just as the death of her husband hadn't. Chelsea learned the cemetary she had been to when looking for Gloria was where the couple was buried. She would bring them flowers, and when people asked her why, she would smile and say that Gloria had changed her life.

Three years later, she shoved the pen that had been left as part of her tip in the center of her bouquet as her "something blue" before walking down the aisle in the presence of the most important people in her life, some of which she would have never met had it not been for Gloria. Derek looked at her from the end of the aisle, and she knew she was exactly where she was supposed to be.