Miriam Jenkins, 66 years old and newly retired from her bank teller job that she held for 40 years, is ordering a cup of coffee light and sweet.
She is all the way across the country for the first time in her life and on her way to Alaska.
She is at the Barnett Marine Park Cafe, in Burnaby, British Columbia. That is just north of route 7A.
Her recently deceased husband never wanted to go anywhere more than 5 miles away from home, so upon his passing she bought herself an RV big enough for one person, and she has been in that camper for over a year now.
It's funny how sometimes the smallest things and smallest decisions can change your life forever.
She was about to turn to her right from the counter after she was handed her coffee, as she thought she might use the restroom which was on that side, and exit out the side door of the cafe.
But she thought about it and said to herself that she'd make it to the hotel in about 3 hours and so she turned to her left to exit through the door that was closest to her RV in the parking lot.
Sitting at a table by the door, was a 50-ish svelte strawberry blonde woman. She had a long gray streak in her hair on the left side of her head. She apparently wasn't the type to color her hair and Miriam thought that this became her well.
She had her head buried in a book and her face was partially obscured also by her hair hanging down.
Miriam passed by her and walked out to the parking lot. She suddenly had a feeling of déjà vu, the strongest that she ever felt.
She knew she had seen that woman before and the long shock of gray hair that she had reminded her of somebody, was it her Aunt Ruth? Yes it was her Aunt Ruth that had that same gray streak on the left side of her head that cut through her beautiful mane of strawberry blonde hair.
And all at once Miriam started to shake. She also started to hyperventilate. She dropped her coffee involuntarily and turned and ran back to that door of the coffee shop.
She didn't enter right away but she maneuvered herself around the side of the building where she could get a better look of that strawberry blonde woman with her head buried in a book.
She looked and looked and looked. There's been so many times in the past where she had made a fool of herself thinking that she had finally found her.
The strawberry blonde woman picked her head up for a minute just to ease the tension in her neck.
She twisted her head to the right and the left as people with a stiff neck often do and then her eyes locked on Miriam standing just a few feet away outside the coffee shop window.
She hadn't seen her mother in almost 30 years.
Miriam always believed that her daughter's disappearance had been staged and her going missing was her preference.
She had played this moment out in her mind many times but she thought it would be when her daughter showed up on her doorstep to apologize for what she had put her mother through.
Miriam slowly walked back to the coffee shop door and walked in and stood in front of her daughter for the first time in decades
Her daughter, Christine, said.
"I prefer things the way that I've made them. I am happy not having any contact with you. I am sorry for what I put you through as in retrospect I realize that you didn't deserve the level of torment and pain that you must still live with because of my selfish actions. I don't want to explain why and I don't want to explain how, as always I just want to be left alone. If one of my children ever did that to me I would quickly lose my will to live. But you seem to have handled it just fine."
“Sorry about dad passing away. The funeral was beautiful.”
Miriam had tears rolling down her face and her lips were quivering at the combination of total joy and renewed pain she was feeling at the same time.
Wait, how did she know her father had passed away? She was at the funeral? What? Had they been in contact all this time?
The pain of her daughter going missing had long subsided. It had the impact of nothing more than the memory of a rainy day.
Miriam quickly hugged her daughter and sobbed like a small child.
She said "I have grandchildren? Please, tell me all about them, please tell me everything."
It is one in a billion for a parent who loses a child to get them back.
Christine said "I prefer that you don't hug me. And I prefer to not tell you anything about my children. Please, I prefer to never see you or talk to you ever again. That was the whole point of this."
Now that pain that Miriam felt upon hearing that her daughter had gone missing 30 years ago erupted uncontrollably and Miriam collapsed unconscious on the floor.
When she came to, her strawberry blonde daughter with the gray streak in her hair just like Aunt Ruth had, and her book, were gone again, on purpose.
