Jenny- A Tragedy

For the first month while my man was remodeling the apartment that we were to live in connected to the motel, I did not stay there. Instead I stopped by every couple days and brought food and just hung out when I had time. This is when I met Jenny. Mick(my boyfriends friend) had already informed me to "hang onto my man" because there was another girl trying to swoop in. I hadn't learned how to work the front desk yet, so when the front bell rang I just stayed in back and listened to what the customers would say. I heard a guttural low voiced woman flirting with my man, saying she had lotto tickets and snacks for them. I couldn't wait any longer so peeked around the corner and saw what I had already imagined which was a woman with scraggly looking mousey brown hair and weathered skin. She was painfully thin, I assumed from meth, and was quite cheerful for her disposition, which now I attribute to possibly being on meth at the time. Anyway, she went on like this for a couple weeks, when she had money she would get a room for a few days on end and always ask for "one on the end." Jenny always wore the same blue summer dress and sometimes shoes. One night she came in asking my boyfriend and Mick to hold her money for her, (around 100.00). I thought this was strange, lol after 6 months of working here, I am no longer surprised by that common question. They of course told her "no" which sent her into a spiral of emotions. She began to scream and cry and tell them , "They will take it from me down at the river of you don't hide it!" At the time I laughed from the back room where I was listening, but only because I do that when I am severely uncomfortable. Mick told her she could put it down for a couple days later on and we would keep it for that. Her tears quickly dried and she thanked the guys. Sadly, a month later after I had moved in, I saw an article in the newspaper about a woman being killed in a hit and run down the street. I looked at my man and said "What if it was Jenny?". In my mind I wasn't thinking that is actually was but said it anyway. Turns out when I checked the obituary a couple days later, there was her name, as plain as day. I checked our log in records just to make sure I wasn't confused, and the names matched. How sad, she was just walking down the street (probably up from the river where she stayed) and was struck so hard by an SUV that it killed her on the spot. Turns out the driver was driving on a suspended license and was later caught at her home. I couldn't imagine her family and the pain they must have felt, not only for the loss of her now, but for the probable loss of her long before she died. Sometimes I cry for people I don't know, the sadness overwhelms me, that day I cried for Jenny Smithson.