I blinked and opened my mouth to force a more direct noise out.

“Welcome, Samantha.” The woman said, her lips spreading further across her face.

The expression revealed a mouth full of straight, white teeth. It was like looking at a picture of a fake jaw at a dentists office.

The bottom of my jaw found its way back to up to the rest of my mouth, where it tried to glue itself shut. I swallowed a hard ball of air as I tried to ready my body to wake all the way up and actually speak to the intruder.

“Lawrence must really like his coffee,” she said in the continued silence.

“Who are you? Why are you in my house? How do you know Lawrence?” I asked rapid-fire.

The words all came barreling out of me, and the last question surprised me. In a series of questionable decisions, I had chosen to ask the least relevant question I could think of.

The woman laughed. It was a belly laugh that resonated through my body. A joyous sound that in happy circumstances would have been contagious, but at that moment — it felt as if it were at my expense. She was laughing at me, and I couldn’t tell which part of me.

It may as well have been everything for all it mattered. She stood uninvited in my bedroom.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked as the anger built in my chest.

Catching her breath, she wiped her eyes dry. “Clarissa. I guess he meant it when he said you jumped.”

To call it annoying that she was still smiling at me was an understatement. “How did you get in here?” I asked, raising my voice for the first time.

“The same way I’ll leave,” she said and gave me and winked.

It was an exaggerated and dramatic wink. The importance of it was entirely lost on me.

“Wha-” I started to ask when my cell phone rang, causing music to echo through the room.

I gave up the question with a heavy sigh and a raised eyebrow in ‘Clarissas’ direction. The short tune started over, and I knew I needed to find my phone. I had vendors, employees, and customers and I had taken the day off unplanned.

I looked away from the wall she leaned on and looked on my nightstand for my phone. It wasn’t there — I must have left it in my purse when I stumbled through the house. My eyes narrowed and I looked back towards the wall. I thought I was going to get rude and then return the call on top of it. The entire exchange was odd on top of anxiety-inducing.

a stranger was in my house.

To make the entire matter worse, my eyes landed on a blank wall and one inanimate dresser. In the blink of an eye, the strange woman was no longer there.

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I didn’t hear footsteps or the front door open and close. The only thing I could hear was the music of my ring tone, fading out one last time. After that it was silence.

It was an odd silence that sat inside my house for the rest of the day. I couldn’t figure out how she had gotten in, or how she had gotten out so fast. The front door was locked when I went to check, and none of the windows were open.

The house is flat but it only has so many entrances, and it seemed as if she hadn’t used any of them.

The rest of the day was not only silent but overtly normal.

I settled the matter on the missed phone call after pouring a cup of coffee. It was the only call that came through my phone that day. I got no texts and no emails that would normally aggravate me so close to a Friday.

In 24 hours I had gone from normal, to my entire life appears to change, to normal once again.

If you have never spent an afternoon in solitude after a big life event, you may not understand how hollow your gut can feel. There exists a silence that is deeper than just a quiet afternoon, and this is how I felt all day. I had no drive to leave the house, but the walls were slowly moving in on me.

I was restless by the time my normal bedtime rolled around, and I thought I was going to fall right back into my old sleeping pattern. A shit pattern that meant I drank more cups of coffee at work than my customers did, and even then I would barely make it through the day sometimes.

Silence can be deafening, and it truly was that day.

I was thankful when my alarm went off the next morning before sunrise.

If an alarm wakes you up, it means you fell asleep at some point; and I couldn’t have asked for anything more. I wanted to rest, and to start the next day with a little bit of energy.

No strange women in my bedroom and no phone calls to contend with I rolled out of bed and started the day the same way I always did. A shower, a hot mug of liquid caffeine, and a short drive to the shop. I unlocked the glass doors and noticed with a smile that no one had taken the note off my closed sign.

No one else had come to open.

Probably for the better. I would have to double check the schedule to see who was supposed to be there, but I hadn’t planned on leaving the responsibility with anyone else. It didn’t matter if other people knew how to open if they weren’t actually expected to do it.

The mess from that night was still laying around but I didn’t mind that either. As I set my purse on a shelf in the break room, I wondered if any of it had actually happened. My hands tied my apron behind my back the same way it always had, and my feet carried me over the wood floor like nothing had happened.

Even a simple person like myself wouldn’t think that the rules of the universe would change over a long night and a handshake. I shook my head and turned the register on.

My body fell into routine before I even knew what was happening. Lost in my thoughts I had turned the register on, starting the coffee brewing, and set the espresso bowls aside to rinse. I had left grounds in them when I had left in a hurry, and my checklist wouldn’t allow the fresh brew to pass through dirty equipment.

I brought out spare containers of milk and was checking the status of the ice maker when I heard the bell on the door jingle.

Something about the sound stopped my body in the middle of its action. The freezer was wide open with my fingers around the handle, and my eyes were staring at the box without really seeing it. Despite the fact that all of my thoughts were still churning in my head, my body was refusing to move.

I heard footsteps approach the counter even in the back of the kitchen, and I felt my heart skip a beat.

“Samantha?” a voice called from the front counter.

The breath I had been holding finally left my chest, forcing me back into reality. I straightened my back and closed the freezer door. My hands compulsively straightened my apron before I turned, and walked out of the back room and behind the register.

I felt the corners of my mouth tug upwards as I made eye contact with Lawrence. I knew it would be him, yet was somehow just a little bit surprised. I looked at the time on the register screen and couldn’t stop a chuckle from leaving my mouth.

6:29 A.M.