They watch for Lauren in Gloria’s car across the street from Betty’s. When her car pulls in front of the restaurant, Miriam reaches for her door handle. Gloria catches her arm. “Let her get inside and find a table.”
“This wait is excruciating.”
“I’ve had butterflies in my stomach all morning. This meeting has been running through my mind since yesterday. I put a piece of burned toast on Marshall’s plate and called it breakfast. What would my mother think?”
Miriam looks at her watch. “It’s 12:02!”
“Let’s go!”
They lock arms and dart out to cross the road together, nearly getting themselves run over. A man honks and slams on his brakes as they laugh and hurry for the door. The restaurant is packed, the lunch crowd is in full swing, but they can see Lauren setting her things down at a corner table. They walk up behind her and Gloria puts her hand on her back. “Hi, Miss Glory!” Lauren says, hugging her.
“Hello, Kelly dear.”
Lauren’s smile fades and her eyes dart from Gloria to Miriam.
“We’re so happy you replied to our e-mail,” Miriam says.
“What?”
Gloria puts her hands on Lauren’s shoulders, looking at her. “I’m Mary Richards and this is my friend Laura Petrie.”
Tears spring to Lauren’s eyes and she covers her mouth. “I don’t…”
Gloria sits at the table and Miriam pulls a chair out for Lauren. “I saw your notice on Craigslist. I set out to answer you but someone thought I should be cautious.”
“The news is filled with crazy people,” Miriam says, slapping her hand on the table. “I thought I was responding to your ad in place of Gloria. I thought she had listened to me about not answering you but I should have known better. Since when has Gloria ever listened to me?”
Lauren places her fingers on each side of her head and shakes it. “You really are Mary Richards and Laura?”
Gloria nods. “Guilty as charged.”
“When I was delivering the box to Frank that day, I kept calling here and asking Holly for Mary Richards…”
“She didn’t see her,” Gloria says. “She only saw the regular crowd, which includes us.”
“And when I was supposed to meet my mom and Holly didn’t see two women she didn’t know…”
“Ta-da!” Miriam says.
“So you were here that night?” Gloria and Miriam nod. “Holly’s never going to believe this.”
“We were so glad that you decided to give us one more try,” Gloria says. “But you didn’t need to put an ad on Craigslist.” Lauren looks confused. “You have a family right here in Grandon.” She pats her hand. “You have me and Miriam and Dalton and Heddy and Holly and Stacy and that cute Travis Mabrey from the parks department.” Lauren smiles and a tear sneaks its way down her cheek.
“We are imperfect people,” Miriam says. She looks at Gloria. “Some are more imperfect than others, but we are closer to each other than we are to some of our own family. Dalton and Heddy are like siblings to me and Gloria is like a much older, dowdy aunt.”
Gloria and Lauren laugh as Lauren wipes her eyes. “From the very first day I felt like you accepted me here.”
“No,” Gloria says. “You accepted us. Do you know how many people walk around with wounds and scars from their past and keep people at arm’s length? Some people keep others at a distance their entire lives but you don’t do that. God led you here to witness an accident and that led you to coffee with Stacy, which led you to helping with our fund-raiser and creating the sing-a-thon! None of that was us. That was you. Despite your past you’ve kept your heart open.”
Lauren shakes her head.
“It’s true,” Miriam says. “It’s much easier for people to shut down and close themselves off. Your Craigslist posting told us that this was a young woman who hadn’t shut the world out yet. She was searching for what Christmas is all about.”
“There were so many times that I felt so stupid for putting that ad on Craigslist.”
Gloria hands Lauren a napkin. “Everybody wants to know why we’re here, so we search for that answer. We want to know who we belong to so we search for those people and all the while God is whispering, ‘Here I am.’”
“We search for something or somebody to believe in and for somebody to believe in us,” Miriam adds. “It’s what everybody wants.”
“You searched for a family and we were all here right from the beginning,” Gloria says. “Now all we have to do is get you to move here!”
Lauren laughs. “That won’t be hard! I’m so ready to get out of Whitall.”
Miriam thinks for a moment. “Who is Kelly, by the way?”
“My middle name. In case somebody I knew saw the posting on Craigslist.”
She looks at both of them. “Who exactly are Mary Richards and Laura Petrie?”
“Oh, my!” Gloria says. “We have so many classic TV episodes to share with you.”
“They’re TV characters?”
Miriam nods. “From The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Ironically, they’re both played by the same woman and I’m not quite sure what that says about me and Gloria.”
“It says that you think like me,” Gloria says, winking at Lauren.
Miriam is horrified. Her back stiffens. “No. That’s preposterous.”
“It also says that I was right about answering the Craigslist ad from the beginning.” Miriam’s face is stony but her lip lifts into a curl. “Go ahead. Say I was right.”
Miriam looks around the restaurant. “Who’s ready for some nice tea and lunch? My treat!”
Gloria laughs out loud, looking at Lauren. “I’m afraid this is what you’ll be dealing with in our family.”
“It’s okay. I’m kind of used to it already.” Gloria and Miriam lift their heads to the ceiling and laugh out loud again. “I do wish I’d known you longer,” Lauren says.
Gloria and Miriam put their hands on top of hers. “Families are built over time,” Gloria says. “And you came along at just the right time.”
The world is full of great sadness and loneliness, however here at this small Formica-topped table with its shiny metal napkin dispenser and sticky ketchup and mustard bottles, there is joy. Life can hurl a string of bad things our way and we can hurl a string of bad things at each other and ourselves, but home always calls to us. Tears of homecoming swim in their eyes as they laugh with the joy of being together. They are happy, in the sense of knowing that this happiness will be fleeting, as it always is, but that joy will live on long past this moment. The world can be cruel and offer good reason to give up hope but today proves that a corner spot at a coffee shop with unlikely family members can restore hope.