A Crow Flies Straight

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

            Andrea was on her way back from work. She didn’t mind the changed shifts. She was usually up until this point anyway. She liked to sleep in, but she could do without a lot of sleep. Besides, with working from the hours of late evening until eleven thirty gave Andrea time during the day and she liked that. She didn’t get the really busy caller time, but the meaning for the calls were the same. She worked as a 9-1-1 operator and no matter what hours she was on, she was always working and usually had the same type of calls every night. Car accidents, home or relationship abuse, the prank call or misdial…once in a while she would get something big, and even though she was trained how to handle those situations, it was always hard and always mentally demanding and it left Andrea in exhaustion, wanting to be in her comfy and safe bed that instant.

            From the way home she also usually stopped in at the corner diner to get some coffee for the road and a muffin or cookie or at least something sweet. The job had its tolls and sometimes there was a personal chord that could strike for Andrea, but she pulled through. It was something that her boss had originally worried about when hiring her, but Andrea had gone through every call. Though there were times she needed to take breaks afterward and calm herself down, but she would make it. She needed to.

            Going into the diner, Andrea saw the regular nightshift worker Danielle standing there. She gave Andrea a smile and asked her, “coffee, three sugars and two creams?”

            Andrea gave the blonde server a smile and she went to sit at her usual spot. She was about to call over to her and ask about what they had left for deserts, but Danielle was already telling me as she got the coffee maker going, “we have some blueberry pie left if you would like it. Or some ice cream for a strawberry sundae.”

            Andrea smiled back to her and answered, “I think I’ll take the pie.”

            Danielle nodded back to her and she went back to get the slice. Andrea looked around the old diner. There was almost no one here at this time of night except for maybe truckers who made their stops in the night. It was a lonely night. Andrea was the only one in and she liked it that way. She liked being alone, the calmness of it.

            Sitting down, Andrea went searching in her purse and she took out this week’s paper word game. She had gotten pretty good at them over the past couple of years. She tried to do one every week while she was here. Andrea was here practically every night just to take a calmed-down moment and eat something before going home to crash, but the word puzzles would work her mind and they would give her something to do. She always called them fun challenges.

            Andrea took the one that she cut out from this week’s paper and she looked the possibilities that she could answer. She figured that it was the simplest thing that she could do first before she would use the help of the letters to find the other words and fill the rest of the boxes.

            She wasn’t sitting very long, just writing down INK, a three letter word that you hold in a pen when Andrea heard a motorcycle coming to the dinner. She knew that he was going to come in because there were many times over the years that she would hear motorcycles pass. She knew the sound that they made when going past on the road. This sound was getting closer, coming to the doors of the diner.

            After the sound of the motorcycle was gone, it was only a couple of seconds later before Andrea saw in the corner of her eye and heard the clicking sound of the door of a man coming inside. She looked up a little bit, her curiosity getting the better of her to look at the new individual. Over the past couple of years, she would come almost every night around the same time and she recognized the people who came in as well, even the ones that only came once every six months. She had never seen him before.