By the time the last train left, the rain had reached every corner of the platform. The station café kept a stand for borrowed umbrellas. Tomas had put his black one there at six. At seven, it was gone. At half past seven, it returned perfectly dry. “Someone went nowhere,” the café owner said. Tomas was not so certain.
There were only three people still inside: a delivery driver waiting for the rain to ease, a woman writing in a notebook, and a young man whose sleeves were wet. The young man admitted borrowing an umbrella but pointed to a blue one beside the door. The writer said she had not left her seat. The driver said he had been outside, but only beneath the loading canopy.
Tomas opened the black umbrella. A small paper tag fell onto the floor. It read “Handle repaired”. His own umbrella had a crack across the wooden handle; this one did not. The café owner went to the cupboard and brought out a second black umbrella, the one with the crack. “I put this away because it looked broken,” she said. “But how did the other one get here?”
The driver raised a hand. His delivery had been for the café owner: six repaired umbrellas, wrapped in brown paper. He had placed one in the stand while carrying the others through the kitchen. Tomas laughed, then offered the young man his cracked umbrella for the walk home. “It leaks a little,” he said. “Most things do tonight.” The mystery had contained no thief, only three people using the same small space for different purposes.
This is an original fictional story. Its characters and events are invented. Created with AI-assisted writing for Mystavora.