15 Tales of Love by Jessie Salisbury

last for days.
    With her father gone, her mother had withdrawn into her own misery, leaving Naomi to deal with her grief and loss by herself. She had turned to Ben, her much older brother, for solace, for strength to carry on. But, after a while, Ben, too, had gone. He couldn’t stand their mother’s despair and bitterness, he told Naomi, and he needed to get on with his life, but he would keep in touch. Naomi had gotten a note from him once in a while, asking how she was doing, giving her some encouragement, telling her to hang in there. She had looked forward to the notes, cherished them, but then they had stopped. She had no idea where Ben was now, or even if he was still alive somewhere. Sometimes she still hoped, looked at the little box where she kept his few letters, but rarely took them out, not risking the tears they would bring.
    While in high school, Naomi had found work where she could, baby-sitting, working part-time at a grocery store, and after graduation as a waitress in a mid-level restaurant. She had supported both herself and her mother while she dreamed of better things. Her mother had gradually faded away, sinking deeper into her despair until she had died of it. Although she had offered Naomi little in the way of love or support, she had been family. All the family Naomi had.
    With her mother gone and the final bills settled, Naomi had no hope of going to college, not even the local tech school she had wanted to attend. She no longer even had a dream of becoming a paralegal. There was no way she could afford the classes.
    Then she met Daniel. He was a few years older than Naomi, a good-looking, happy-go-lucky charmer, and his attentions began filling in some of her aching empty places, giving her small pleasures. They had gone to movies, out to dinner, and a ballgame or two. She had found solace in intimacy, and she dared to begin to dream again: a home and family of her own, maybe some of the schooling she wanted, a better job.
    But Daniel had no plans, no intentions, for marriage or fatherhood. When she told him of her pregnancy, he left her some money for doctor bills and she had not heard from him again. A lawyer friend had made some inquiries, but she could not afford the search.
    She did not consider an abortion, that would be the total abandonment of another being who deserved to live, and she could not face that. The pregnancy had actually lifted her spirits in spite of the uncertainties of the future and how she would support the two of them. A baby would be someone to love and care for, someone who would love her in return, and give her the love she so desperately wanted. But that dream, too, was short-lived, with a miscarriage early in her fourth month. She thought sometimes of that unborn daughter and in her mind called her Benita, for her absent brother.
    When she was well again, she went back to her job at the restaurant. She had no place else to go and little energy to search for something better. She accepted her co-workers’ words of condolence, shrugged off comments that it was “probably all for the best,” and walled off her heart.
    There were men who talked to her, of course. The regular customers who flirted a little as she poured their coffee, but she didn’t listen to them.
    “What’s a pretty girl like you doing working here?” Joe asked. She did not consider herself pretty; her hair was too carroty, her face too round and too freckled, her build too short and a little too chubby. Besides, as she well knew, Joe had his heart set on the very pretty and popular Susie who worked at the bank. He was just talking to pass the time.
    “You’re way too smart to stay here,” Sam often said. “How come you don’t get something better?”
    Sam was pleasant, rather shy and sort of homely, and his wife had left him. Naomi knew he was missing his kids, and had no interest in another woman.
    Peter was handsome, working on his business degree, and just teased. He reminded Naomi of