“Ohhhh!” she cried. I turned to see her mouth open in amazed confusion and her arms outstretched, a cup in one hand. She’d selected a cup from the shelf for her morning tea. She didn’t expect it to shower her with coffee.
Her coral shirt, beautiful against her pale skin, was soaked. I grabbed a cloth from the sink. She went for the paper towels. My apologies were met with her assurances that the coffee wasn’t hot and there was no harm. Together we knelt silently to wipe the puddle on the tiled floor.
“I was trying to find the one with hearts on it,” she explained before I began my litany of I’m-so-sorrys. My shamed face kept a downward gaze as I sponged.
It was the morning of the third day of the retreat. I was on kitchen duty and had arrived cheerfully early for chores. I poured my java and without thought rested my cup—coffee on the inside and hearts on the outside—on the shelf that housed empty mugs.
There it sat, just waiting to douse the start of Debra’s day.
She headed to her room to change. Meanwhile, trying not to cry over spilt coffee, the lump in my throat stuck like a thick chunk of unchewed bread.
