You're the reason for these tears.
A Short Story
"You're the reason for these tears”
was all that was written on the postcard Laura Rogers found behind the radiator in the bedroom. The picture on the front was of raindrops on a piece of glass, a window, she supposed. She carried the postcard through her apartment to the kitchen where she switched on the kettle to make a cup of tea. Coffee was out these days, it made her too anxious and jittery. She placed the postcard on the counter and picked up the newspaper she had bought in the corner shop when she was buying soya milk, sugar and loose tea that morning. ‘Subway Suicides - A leap too far?’ was the headline. "Why is there never any good news?" Laura mused and dropped the paper on top of the postcard as the kettle began to whistle.
Laura's mug had the word 'BOSS' written on it in strong, black, no-nonsense lettering, she had bought it because she liked the irony of it. "Well, I am the boss of my apartment", she'd thought as she passed over the money, "but that's about all". She was just a normal, ordinary young woman, the only product of a broken marriage and an average state education.
She returned to the pile of boxes in her new (to her) bedroom, pulled the tape off a sealed one and looked inside.
More shoes? She sighed and wondered how she'd ever managed to acquire so many different hues and styles of the same basic object. She opened up the wardrobe to stack up the shoes and on the third shelf down was a postcard, "You're the reason for these tears" it said to her. "That's odd", Laura mused, "I don't remember putting......." and she picked it up, went out to the kitchen, and there, under the newspaper in the exact same position she had left it, was the first postcard. She placed them together and, in pensive mood, wandered back to her room to continue unpacking.
Shoe after slingback after stiletto after boot were arranged in pairs, heels in, toes out, as the box slowly emptied. The last two items in the box were her Vegan Uggs.
“Huh? What…..”, Laura slipped a hand into one of the Uggs and brought out another postcard. “You’re the reason for these tears” was written in the same hand, on the exact same rainy postcard.
She took the postcard out to the kitchen and placed it with the others, a small knot of concern tangling up in her stomach, then carried on sorting shoes and blouses and skirts and crockery and books into their new homes.
After an unusually restless night, Laura woke, shuffled out to the kitchen to fire up the kettle and there, propped up against it was another rainy postcard. She tentatively picked it up and turned it over, "You’re the reason for these tears” it said.
"Okay... Whoever is doing this it stops NOW!"
The words echoed around the otherwise silent kitchen, and if they fell upon any ears at all, they were deaf ones.
Laura quickly checked around the entire apartment, every window was locked as it should be, the front door was locked as it should be, the safety chain was still attached, she was alone.
Hurriedly, she dressed, gathered her bag, checked every door and window again and left for work, deadlocking the door on her way out.
Laura worked for Dobney & Crouch (Lawyers) LLP, "The One-Stop-Shop for all your litigation and legal needs", as a paralegal, though as she was newly qualified, she was mainly responsible for research and drafting letters. The case she was working on at the moment was Etherington vs Moon, two long time neighbours who were fighting over who owned the lane between their two properties. Laura had been spent eight long hours every day for a week so far combing through title deeds and maps going back hundreds of years at the Land Registry archive and wasn't looking forward to today's dusty marathon. She flashed her temporary pass at Steve the security guard, signed herself in and dragged on down to the basement archive. She plonked her Gladstone down on the single desk, flicked the switch on the brass and green glass banker’s lamp and trudged off through the shelves to get the first document box. She pushed it back to the desk on the box cart, which, like every supermarket trolley she picked, had one rebellious castor with a mind very much of its own. She opened the box and started making a pile of musty old documents on the desk. Halfway through she lifted out an Elizabethan map of the area and something fell out from between the leaves and fluttered to the floor. It had fallen into the shadow beneath the desk, but as she knelt down and felt for it her fingered brushed upon a familiar shape. Another postcard, exactly the same as those in her apartment. She rushed upstairs found the guard and said, “Steve, did anyone use the archive last night after I left?”.
Steve looked at the log and then checked the night watch report, “No Laura… You were the last one out at five last night and the only one here this morning…. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, just got something on my mind…”, she replied and went back to her work. She propped the postcard against the base of the lamp so she could keep an eye on it and started taking notes and photocopies of documents.
The rest of the morning went without incident, so at noon she signed out, asked Steve if he needed anything, then walked down to ‘Coffee for Change’, and sat down at an empty table. She wasn't completely surprised at what she found between the leaves of the Vegan Menu.
There was another one tucked into the edge of the mirror in the ladies restroom back at the archive, and one on the only vacant seat on the homeward bound bus. The light was blinking on her answering machine when she got home.
“Laura Honey… It’s mum…”, she sounded distraught, “Can you call me please Honey?”, then an ominous ‘click’.
Her mum’s phone rang twice before, “Laura? Is that you?”, there were tears in her voice.
“Mum, yeah it's me, what's wrong? Are you okay?”.
“Honey… It’s your father, he’s…”.
“Dead mum?”.
“Oh Honey I'm sorry… He was buried yesterday”.
The tears were quick in coming, Laura and her father had never been close since the divorce, and whatever closeness there was had evaporated still further as Laura built her own life. She looked at the cemetery address she’d hastily scrawled down as years of frustration and grief began to spill out of her.
When Laura finally went to bed there was a postcard on her pillow, “Yes”, she mumbled through her tears “I know…”.
She woke after a night of tossing and turning to the raucous intrusion of her alarm. She dressed quickly and all but ran to the florist’s on the High Street. She fidgeted all through the taxi journey and was so nervous when it halted that she dropped her fare on the floor and could barely open the door to get out. It was raining as she trudged through the headstones looking for freshly turned sod and almost missed the small wooden cross with the name Michael Rogers written in marker pen. She laid the single white rose on her father’s grave and whispered “I’m sorry Dad…”. A single ray of Sunshine shone upon her, followed by another, and a third, until the sky was more blue than grey. Laura looked around her at the sunlit graveyard and spotted a familiar shape leaning against the neighbouring gravestone.
She picked it up and read the words “You’re the reason for this smile…” and turning it over saw a photo of the Sun in a perfect clear blue sky.
About the Creator
Coeurdelion
Amateur scribbler of words.
A little Form Poetry, a little Prosody, a smattering of freeverse, a whole mountain of emotion.
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