On her usual Tuesday morning for the last twelve years, Michelle grabbed her jacket from the hook behind her apartment’s front door just in time to get to the newsstand, buy her coffee at 7:12, a newspaper at 7:18, and board the subway at 7:26. Her collection of routines carefully arranged to avoid any surprises. She also wanted to start the crossword puzzle before she got to work. Along with boarding the same car and sitting in the same seat, the crossword was the highlight of her day.
Michelle had just opened her newspaper to start the crossword when a middle-aged man sat across from her, his charcoal-colored trench coat skimming the floor. She studied the stranger for a few moments before she looked down at her crossword again.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Ma’am, excuse me.”
Michelle looked at the stranger. “Do you mind? You’re seriously disrupting my concentration.”
The stranger reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a picture, and gave it to her. “You dropped that yesterday.”
Michelle huffed and looked at the picture. It showed a little girl with brown hair, about eight years old, wearing a bright floral sundress and standing next to a carousel. It’s me, but I don’t remember anyone taking the picture. I’ve never seen this picture before now. She looked at the stranger.
“I thought you might want it back,” the stranger said.
Michelle stared at the picture. “I don’t remember. . .”
The subway stopped, and the stranger stood. “This is my stop.” He disembarked with a swish of his trench coat.
All that day at work, Michelle looked at the picture propped against her water bottle. How did that strange man get that picture? Why didn’t he explain the whole story? Why did he approach her on the subway?
After work, Michelle visited her mother who lived a few blocks away and showed her the picture and told her about the stranger.
“Oh, my goodness!” Her mother said, tapping the picture. “This amusement park burned down decades ago. Right after we brought you there to spend the day. No. . .
“No, what Mom?” Michelle asked.
“No pictures from that family trip survived. The flood water destroyed all our albums when our basement flooded last year. Who gave this to you?”
“I told you. Some guy on the subway.”
“Maybe you didn’t realize that you had it,” Michelle’s mother said.
“No, Mom, I never had that picture.”
Her mom smiled. “Yet, there you are. So cute and perfectly preserved. Can I keep it?”
Michelle sighed. “Sure. It belonged to you first.”
The next day, Michelle boarded the train, hoping the stranger would sit across from her. When he didn’t, she looked in the train car in front of her and behind her but didn’t see him. The same happened on Thursday and Friday. No stranger. She asked the other commuters if they saw the man, but they all said no or looked at her like she had gone crazy.
On Monday, Michelle bought her usual coffee and newspaper and boarded the train at 7:26.
The stranger sat across from her.
Michelle slid forward on her seat. “Oh! Where have you been?”
The stranger reached into his trench coat pocket and gave another photograph to Michelle.
Michelle looked at the picture. She never saw this picture before either, but the vivid memory flooded back. It showed her and Emily wearing bright conical hats and laughing while at their friend Linda’s 16th birthday party. Michelle’s heart cracked. The last day she spent with Emily before the deadly car crash. She gazed at the stranger. “Where are you getting these pictures?”
“A place where moments go when people lose them,” the stranger said.
“That makes no sense whatsoever. What kind of a scam artist are you?” Michelle said loudly.
The train stopped at the first stop, and the stranger got off.
“Okay, don’t answer me!” Michelle yelled to his retreating back. “What are you afraid of?”
The other passengers glared at her. Probably for disturbing them with her nonsense.
The next day, the stranger boarded the train again and sat across from Michelle. He held up his index finger, signaling Michelle not to speak. He pulled several photographs from his trench coat pocket and held them in his hand. When the train stopped at the first stop, the stranger stood, gave the photographs to Michelle, and exited the train.
Michelle scanned through the photographs. Her 12th birthday party when she blew out the candles on her cake. Her last dog, Star, drinking water from the hose. Her dance recital, concentrating on her steps. A snow day from school when her and Emily sledded in the park. Small moments that I barely remember.
Each moment hit her heart. Feelings she had long buried now being disinterred. The dirt was shaking loose, crumbling off, and taking her breath away. The sunlight exposing hidden joys. The woody smell of her grandfather’s workshop, Emily’s hardy laugh, the bright blue paint on the walls of her childhood bedroom. At work, she cried several times inside her cubicle.
On Wednesday morning, the stranger sat across from Michelle. He said nothing and gave her nothing. At the train’s first stop, Michelle followed the stranger from the train. She ran to keep up with him. “Where are you going?” She yelled at his back as she followed him through an unlocked door on the platform wall. They walked down three sets of stairs lit by yellow sconces on the wall. There was a landing, and then two more sets of stairs.
The stranger stopped on the huge, abandoned platform, hidden beneath the active train tracks.
“Oh, my Lord,” Michelle whispered when she turned in a full circle to look at the platform’s walls lined with thousands upon thousands of photographs. Full of ordinary human moments—family dinners in homes and restaurants, farewells in airports and trains stations, graduations from high schools and colleges, mothers holding their newborns, rainy afternoons spent in rain boots and puddles. “What is this place? Who are you?”
“I’m the Keeper of Forgotten Moments. Memories leave traces of humanity behind.”
“Why am I here?” Michelle asked.
“Because you’ve closed your heart for a very long time and have become robotic. To avoid the painful times in life, you buried all your emotions along with Emily.”
“She was the best friend ever,” Michelle said as a tear rolled down her cheek.
The stranger pulled another photograph from his coat pocket and gave it to Michelle. Another taken on the day Emily died. She and Emily were hugging and mugging for the camera. On the back it read: Friends forever in Emily’s handwriting.
“I loved her so. It was my fault, you know,” Michelle said as more tears stained her cheeks. “If I hadn’t asked her stay longer at Linda’s party, she wouldn’t have been in Cameron’s car.”
“Emily loved you too,” the stranger said. “Her death wasn’t your fault. It was the drunk driver’s fault. Don’t keep your heart buried, Michelle, otherwise, you’ll miss life’s joys too. Emily wants you to have the joy.”
Michelle, tasting the salt on her lips, wiped tears from her cheeks. “I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t have had a better friend than Emily.”
“You don’t try to make friends,” the stranger said. “It’s not that they’ll be better than Emily, just different.”
“I’ll try,” Michelle whispered. “I truly will try. For Emily.”
“I’ll be watching you,” the stranger said and disappeared.
Michelle stood on the platform alone for a few minutes, then climbed the stairs to the active platform. The door closed with a soft click and disappeared behind her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of metal on metal, dampness, colognes, and perfumes. When she boarded the train again, some of the other commuters on the platform smirked at her. They probably thought she had gone crazy, but she didn’t care. Her heart opened a little more. She rode to work feeling a little lighter and a little happier.
The next morning on the train, the seat across from Michelle stayed empty.
Days and weeks passed, and Michelle spent more time with her family and made new friends at work, and the seat across from her on the train still remained empty.
One evening when she left her mother’s house, Michelle tucked her hands into her jacket pockets. In the right-hand pocket, her fingers touched…something. She lifted out a photograph. It showed her riding on the train and looking out the window above the empty seat. On the back of the photograph, it read: Nothing important is ever lost. She looked at the sky. “Thank you, stranger. Thank you so much.”
The next morning, Michelle boarded the train at 7:26 and looked at all the people around her, making and carrying countless ordinary memories. She smiled at a stranger who was holding onto the pole in the middle of the train car. The stranger smiled back.