It was 5:45 in the morning when I pushed open the door to Sullivan's.
It was my first time working a full shift the early one and, strangely enough, I was grateful for it. Sleep had become something fractured, unreliable. I drifted in and out of it, never long enough to feel rested, yet somehow never tired enough to collapse either. I existed in that uncomfortable space in between - awake, but heavy with exhaustion.
Over the past week, I had grown more confident in what I was doing. The register no longer felt like a foreign language beneath my fingertips. There were no more long, awkward pauses while I searched for the right button, no more impatient customers tossing their cards onto the counter in quiet frustration.
Janie had begun trusting me with more - small things at first, then gradually more responsibility. Helping with cashing up, recommending drinks to customers with oddly specific requests, even locking up one evening after everyone had left. She had known me for just over a week and already placed that kind of trust in me. That had to say something - about me, or about her.
Zariah, on the other hand, had respected my boundaries without question. She never shortened my name again, something I appreciated more than I let on. Her energy filled every corner of the café - bright, constant, impossible to ignore. I often wondered how she managed it alongside her schedule at Roosevelt, studying performing arts.
Elliott balanced her out in a way that made sense. Quieter, more observant. He noticed things but rarely commented on them unless it mattered. I had learned he was twenty-eight, working here part-time alongside his full-time job as a guitar tutor, saving up for a house with his partner, Rick. There was something steady about him, even in the chaos.
They knew pieces of me.
But not the important ones.
Whenever questions came up - about where I was from, what I used to do - I kept my answers vague, carefully constructed. I didn't want to become my past again. Not here. Not with people who were just beginning to feel… safe.
"Morning, gorgeous!"
Zariah's voice cut through my thoughts the second I stepped fully inside.
I gave her a small smile, a quiet greeting, before slipping past her toward the back to drop off my things. I still couldn't understand how she managed to be that cheerful at this hour.
Today it was just the three of us. Janie had taken the day off to spend time with her grandchildren while they were visiting, another quiet confirmation that she trusted me to handle things, even this early on.
The next fifteen minutes passed in a blur of preparation. We unpacked the morning delivery, restocked shelves, set everything in place while Zariah chatted easily about the latest guy she was seeing. I responded with the occasional hum or nod, enough to keep the conversation going without truly stepping into it.
Elliott arrived a few minutes past six, as usual.
"Sorry, traffic," he muttered, already halfway through the door.
Zariah didn't even look up. "Elliott, babe, you don't drive."
He disappeared into the back before responding, and she laughed under her breath, shaking her head.
The calm didn't last long.
By the time we opened, the café filled quickly, faster than I could properly register. Mornings here weren't just busy; they were relentless. There was no pause, no moment to catch your breath. Just a steady, unbroken stream of people moving with purpose.
I stayed on the register. My coffee-making skills still weren't quite where they needed to be, and this was the safest place for me, for now.
"Good morning, what can I get you?" became automatic, the words slipping out one after another without thought.
Across the street, the business district had already come alive. People poured in with phones pressed to their ears, voices low and urgent, conversations about deals and deadlines bleeding into the air around them. Everything moved fast here. Everything mattered.
Orders began to blur together.
Voices overlapped. The sharp hiss of the espresso machine cut through everything, constant and grounding at the same time. It was nothing like Burlington. There, people waited. Here, they expected.
"Two lattes, one cappuccino - wet!" Zariah called, sliding cups across the counter.
"Next, please," I said, forcing my focus back to the line.
The next customer barely acknowledged me, muttering his order while speaking into his phone. I rang it in quickly, sliding the cup toward Elliott without hesitation.
And then,
The rhythm shifted.
Not enough for anyone else to notice.
But I did.
When I looked up, he was already there.
Still. Quiet. Completely out of place without doing anything to stand out.
Dark hair. Green eyes that didn't wander, didn't flicker with distraction like everyone else's had all morning. While the rest of the room moved, impatient, restless - he simply waited.
Watching.
"Americano," he said before I could speak. "No room."
The words were precise. As if he had said them countless times before.
"Sure. That'll be $3.75."
He already had his card in hand before I finished.
The transaction was quick. Seamless. Over before it had properly begun.
"Thank you," I murmured, more out of habit than expectation.
He didn't respond.
He had already stepped aside, positioning himself between the counter and the door with quiet intention.
I moved on.
The line continued, the noise returned, the rhythm resumed.
But I was aware of him.
"Next please!" I force a smile towards the next customer and continue just the way I did before. I move on automatically, but I'm aware of him, even if I shouldn't be.
"Americano, no room!" Elliott calls out a few minutes later.
The man grabs his cup, gives a little head nod and heads out the door, without a further interaction, the bell above the door signalling to us he has left.
***
It wasn't until the rush began to ease that the tension in the room slowly unraveled, the noise softening into something more manageable as the line thinned and the urgency slipped out of the air. The café, which had felt almost overwhelming moments before, settled into a quieter rhythm, leaving behind only the low hum of conversation and the occasional clink of cups against saucers.
Zariah leaned back against the counter, dragging the back of her hand across her forehead as she let out a long breath. "Okay, who decided mornings were a good idea?"
"Capitalism," Elliott replied without even glancing up from what he was doing.
A quiet laugh passed between us, easy and shared, the kind that came naturally after surviving something mildly chaotic together.
I lingered by the register for a moment, my fingers resting lightly against the edge of it as my gaze dropped to the screen, though I wasn't really looking at anything. The question had been sitting at the back of my mind since earlier, persistent in a way I couldn't quite explain, and before I could convince myself to let it go, I found myself speaking.
"Does he come here often?"
They both looked at me at once, their expressions briefly puzzled.
"Who?" they asked almost in unison.
I hesitated only slightly before clarifying, trying to keep my tone neutral. "The guy, Americano, no room. Didn't say much."
Recognition settled over them almost immediately.
"Oh, him," Zariah said, straightening slightly. "Yeah. Every morning. Same time, same order."
She gave a small shake of her head, a faint smile pulling at her lips. "I don't think he's said more than five words to me since I've been working here."
"It's strange," Elliott added, his tone thoughtful in a quieter way, like he was following a line of thought he hadn't fully finished yet. "How you can see someone every day and still not know a single thing about them."
Zariah hummed softly in agreement, her attention already drifting back to the counter as she absentmindedly wiped it down.
"Customers, neighbors… it doesn't really matter," Elliott continued, giving a small shrug. "You can be around people all the time and still have no idea who they are." He paused briefly before adding, almost as an afterthought, "Families are worse, though. They keep secrets like it's a job."
Something in my chest tightened at that.
It wasn't sudden or sharp enough to draw attention, but it lingered in a way that made it impossible to ignore, settling somewhere deeper than it should have. His words echoed quietly in my mind, brushing up against thoughts I had been carefully avoiding ever since that night.
If you're reading more than one of these at a time…
The memory surfaced uninvited, clear and persistent, and with it came the same uneasy feeling I had tried to push aside before. I hadn't wanted to believe it then, hadn't wanted to consider the possibility that there were parts of my brother's life, of his thoughts that he had chosen to keep from me.
But he had written it himself.
And now, standing there with Elliott's words still hanging in the air, I found it harder to dismiss, harder to explain away as something harmless or insignificant.
Whether I liked it or not, the thought had taken hold.
And this time, I couldn't ignore it.
***
Katherine,
If you're reading this, then things have unfolded in a way I had hoped to avoid.
There are decisions your mother and I made that you were never meant to carry. Not because you weren't capable, but because you deserved a life untouched by them.
Your brother understood more than you think. Not everything, but enough.
If he chose not to tell you, it was intentional.
You need to understand this clearly: not everything that is hidden is meant to be uncovered.
Curiosity has a cost. It always has.
If something begins to feel out of place, if people, situations, or even your own instincts begin to contradict what you believe to be true - you are not to investigate.
You are to walk away.
Immediately.
There will be a part of you that resists that. That wants answers. That wants clarity.
Ignore it.
Some things do not resolve cleanly. Some things follow.
And once they do, they rarely stop.
This is not fear speaking.
It is experience.
Whatever you think you know about our lives, about the reasons behind certain choices, it is incomplete.
It was always meant to be.
Stay where it is safe.
Do not go looking for what was left behind.
— Dad
I remained seated long after I had reached the end of the page, my eyes tracing over the words as though they might rearrange themselves into something easier to understand if I looked at them for long enough. The handwriting was steady, unmistakably his, so familiar it almost felt like he was still here, like I could look up and find him somewhere in the room. But the comfort that should have come with that familiarity never arrived. Instead, there was something heavier beneath it, something that settled deep in my chest and refused to lift.
It wasn't the kind of message a parent leaves behind to reassure their child. There was no softness in it, no attempt to ease what I was feeling or to guide me gently forward. Every line felt deliberate, measured in a way that made it impossible to ignore the weight behind it. The more I read it over, the clearer it became that this hadn't been written to comfort me at all. It had been written to warn me.
And that realization sat uneasily with everything I thought I knew.
I found myself questioning things I had never once considered before, turning over memories that had always felt solid, now suddenly uncertain at the edges. What had they been trying to protect me from? Or maybe more importantly, what had they been trying to keep me away from? The thought that there had been something hidden, something deliberate in what I hadn't been told, made my stomach tighten in a way I couldn't quite shake.
And then there was my brother.
The words from his note came back to me without effort, as if they had been waiting just beneath the surface of my thoughts. He had known something, maybe not everything, but enough to make a choice. Enough to keep it from me. That alone felt impossible to reconcile with the version of him I had held onto for so long, the one who had always been open, always there, never keeping anything that mattered out of my reach.
Yet now, faced with both of their words laid out in front of me, I couldn't deny it anymore.
Something had been kept from me.
For the first time since I had stood at his grave, since I had tried to accept the quiet finality of it all, the emptiness I had been carrying began to shift into something else. It didn't disappear, it wasn't replaced, but it changed, edged with something sharper, something that refused to sit still. It moved beneath the surface, restless and insistent, growing into a need I couldn't ignore.
A need to understand.
By the time I finally forced myself to stand and make my way to bed, my thoughts felt tangled, looping endlessly back to the same questions without offering a single answer. I expected the night to stretch on the way it always had lately, hours of staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep that never really came.
But this time was different.
The moment my head met the pillow, the weight of it all seemed to pull me under before I could fight it. My body gave in where my mind hadn't, and sleep found me quickly, almost suddenly, as if it had been waiting for the moment I stopped resisting.
It wasn't peaceful, not in any way that mattered.
But it was deep enough to keep me there.