an averagetuesday

Cheyenne saw her aunt Maisie every Tuesday afternoon, like clockwork. It seemed sort of fitting that her funeral was also on a Tuesday.

Cheyenne stood at the back, staying quiet as others spoke. Some of what they said was accurate. Some of it wasn't. A lot of it was simply ... curated. They said Maisie was funny, without admitting she had a sense of humor that would make a porn star blush or a laugh that could put a supervillain to shame. They said she was kind, without saying how cranky or no-nonsense that kindness could sometimes be. They said a lot of the good things, but they left out most of the best.

Cheyenne was silent when she arrived, and silent when she made her way up to the casket, and silent as she set a single stargazer lily inside, on top of her aunt's crossed hands. Maisie had always loved lilies, and stargazers had always been her favorite. They weren't exactly in season, but Cheyenne had stopped by five florists until she found one who could help, and she had walked out with an entire bouquet of them and picked the very best of them as her final gift to her aunt.

The trip home after the funeral was a blur, but life over the following week seemed simply ... normal. But Cheyenne supposed that made sense. Grief could be all-consuming, but it usually wasn't constant. There was always normalcy scattered throughout, before the grief crashed in again, like an enormous elephant.

On the next Tuesday, Cheyenne got into her car at 11:45 AM mostly out of habit, and then she sat and stared at her dashboard for a moment before sighing and starting the engine. She was already in the car, after all. She may as well.

She and Maisie hadn't gone to the same place every Tuesday. They had gone all over, always willing to try new things, or at least as many new things as could be found in a small town. Sometimes it had been amazing, other times it had been disappointing, and for the most part it had simply been fine. They had their favorites, though. Maisie in particular was fond of a little cafe and bakery on Main Street. They had been there countless times.

It only seemed natural to go there.

Cheyenne parked a block away, where she wouldn't need to parallel park, and she walked the rest of the way to the cafe. When she walked in, the girl at the counter gave her a wide-eyed look, as if she was expecting to never see Cheyenne again, but she put on her perkiest voice when Cheyenne got to the counter to order.

Three items. Two of Maisie's favorite scone, and her favorite small latte.

The girl behind the counter looked sad, suddenly, but she didn't say anything until Cheyenne tried to hand her debit card across the counter.

“Not today,” the girl said quietly, shaking her head. She didn't touch Cheyenne, but she refused to take her card until Cheyenne put it back into her wallet and stepped aside to wait for her order. It didn't take long.

With a brown baggie and a cardboard cup in hand, Cheyenne stepped outside and crossed the street, to the bench she and Maisie had sometimes used when the cafe was too crowded to comfortably carry on a conversation. There was a courtyard behind it, with a statue of the town founder and a pair of bronzed cannons that had never made much sense.

Maisie was waiting on the bench already when Cheyenne sat down, her hair neatly done and her clothing pressed, like it had been for the interview she had been on the way to before she died. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, and she scarcely even looked at Cheyenne, her gaze focused on the people and the street and the cafe beyond it. Something about her eyes was far away, and perhaps not sad, but certainly wistful. As if even after everything else, she still regretted not ordering another scone to bring home with her for later.

Slowly, Cheyenne ate one of the scones, breaking it into one bite-sized piece after another and popping each one into her mouth. It was good in the way that anything well-made can be good, but it wasn't particularly to Cheyenne's taste. She had always been more of a double chocolate fan, and she had usually left the cranberries to her aunt.

The first scone disappeared slowly, piece by piece. When just the second scone remained, Cheyenne folded the brown bag closed around it and set it down on the bench, in the gap between her leg and her aunt's.

People past. Cars rumbled by. The world kept spinning as it always had and always would.

Cheyenne held the cardboard cup for a few moments, both hands curled around it, appreciating the way the warmth seeped into her fingers. It wasn't quite winter, but summer had certainly fled for the year, and the sunlight didn't quite seem to reach the bench. Eventually, though, she lifted the cup to her lips and took a few sips.

Maisie had always laughed about being a “pumpkin spice girly.” It had been one of her favorite things about one season ticking over to the next. In that moment, though, Cheyenne couldn't help but to think that it just tasted bitter. She took only a few sips before setting the cup down beside the little brown bag.

Her hands settled in her lap, her fingers folded together. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk in front of her, tracing the cracks in the cement and the paths of weeds.

Eventually, the wind began to pick up, and as Cheyenne pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face, she finally got to her feet. She brushed a few crumbs from that first scone off of her shirt and smoothed out her jeans, before turning to walk the block back up the street to her car.

Halfway there, she finally turned and looked back. The bench was empty when she did. There was no Maisie. There was no latte. There was no little brown bag.

Cheyenne took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly, before turning away once again.