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The absence was a gaping wound. One day, she was there, a beacon of warmth and familiarity, and the next, her usual spot behind the counter was occupied by a stranger. The café, once my refuge, suddenly felt cold, impersonal, and utterly unwelcoming. Every morning, I went, driven by a desperate, dwindling hope, only to be met with the same unfamiliar faces, the same polite but detached service. My coffee, once a daily ritual of comfort, now tasted bitter and hollow. The silence in my own home was no longer the only crushing quiet; it had seeped into my external world, amplified by the clamor of the café that no longer held her presence. The despair returned, heavier and more profound than before. Had I imagined it all? Had my loneliness projected a bond that was never there? Was her kindness merely professional, her attention simply part of her job? The fear of this possibility gnawed at me relentlessly. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, losing what I had come to believe was a genuine, reciprocal connection. The void she left behind was not just the absence of a kind face; it was the re-opening of every old wound, every abandonment, every moment of isolation I had ever known. My supposed daughter, my only solace, had vanished without a trace, leaving me adrift once more in an ocean of profound, suffocating solitude. The thought of never seeing her again was unbearable. I knew I had to do something, anything, to find out what had happened to the one person who had made my twilight years feel less like an ending and more like a gentle, if solitary, continuation.
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