Girl Loses Her Beloved Cabbage Patch Doll, When She Finds It 20 Years Later She Can’t Believe Where It’s Been 

 “I think you have something that belongs to me.”

When Mary Ellis heard that line, voiced in a tense, tight tone, her head snapped up. She hadn’t even realized someone had approached her small corner table. She looked around the local coffee shop where she was working on her laptop; she was the only one there. 

Belongs To Me ©13SinghaStudio/Shutterstock.com

“Excuse me?” Mary asked the tall, dark-haired woman who was staring at her with an intense expression on her face. The woman glared and took a step forward.

The woman gestured to Mary, but it seemed as though she was lost for words. “Sorry?” Mary continued, “Did you leave something?” She looked under her table, beneath her seat. 

The two women stared at each other. Mary felt the eyes of the barista on the back of her neck, watching the situation closely. The woman’s hands were clenched tightly, and she looked like she was going to scream.

Nothing Came Out ©michaelheim/Shutterstock.com

But, when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.

Mary felt her cheeks growing red. What did she have? What was going on? The woman’s dark eyes were bright with what looked to be anger and, if Mary wasn’t mistaken, a bit of uncertainty. 

“It’s mine,” she hissed at Mary before turning on her heel and striding out of the coffee shop, slamming the door behind her with a decisive bang.

Vanessa Edmonds ©imnoom/Shutterstock.com

That was the first time Mary encountered Vanessa Edmonds. It would not be the last.

Mary Ellis was unremarkable; that was something she’d grown accustomed to. She prided herself on being ordinary. Ordinary apartment, ordinary job (data entry, management-level), ordinary life.

She had lived in one place since she was a little girl, and she had even had the same stuffed doll, a Cabbage Patch doll with a tuft of hair in the middle of its head, on her bed since she was ten.

Mary Ellis ©Dean Drobot/Shutterstock.com

Mary Ellis did not like change, not one bit. 

30-year-old Mary was shaken after the encounter at the coffee shop, and, suddenly, the taste of her green tea latte and cinnamon roll had become repulsive. She asked the bemused barista for a to-go container for both and left, walking quickly back to her apartment.

She fired up her laptop, trying to focus on the four or so hours left of work she had to do, but it was hard.

Thinking ©Dean Drobot/Shutterstock.com

All she kept picturing was that wild-eyed woman, who seemed to both hate and fear her for some reason. 

Picking at the coffee shop cinnamon roll while she sat at her desk, Mary replayed the woman’s words. You have something that belongs to me.  It’s mine.

Mary looked around her quaint apartment, at her books, plants, and chubby tabby cat sitting on the windowsill.

The Wrong Person ©Kateryna Artsybasheva/Shutterstock.com

“What could that be?” Mary asked. Her brain, eager to move past the unpleasant incident disrupting her ordinary life, came to the conclusion that this woman had the wrong person.

“If I see her again, I’ll let her know straight away that she had the wrong woman,” Mary muttered to herself as she did the dishes from that morning (last night, she’d had Thai takeout, sparing herself the chores). “An apology would be nice, but I won’t hold my breath.”

She kept up that train of thought as she swept her wooden floors and cleaned the windows. She tidied the cat’s litter box and made the bed, all the while comforting herself with the notion that it was all a big misunderstanding.

It Was Not ©Dikushin Dmitry/Shutterstock.com

Little did she know, it was not.  

That night, Mary Ellis slept uneasily. It was the woman’s demeanor, wasn’t it? How angry she’d been. It’s mine, with a hiss. Mary, a woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly and hadn’t had a confrontation with another person since her ex-boyfriend’s meek departure from her life, was not the type to get into a fight in a public coffee shop.

Try as she might, she couldn’t put the woman from her mind.

Follow Her ©UfaBizPhoto/Shutterstock.com

And, she wouldn’t be able to for some time, as Vanessa Edmonds began to follow her. 

When Mary Ellis woke up the next morning, she realized she’d knocked her Cabbage Patch doll, Mori, off the bed. She made her bed, put in a load of laundry with Mori in it, and popped into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal.

She walked to her window and looked out, surveying the quiet, sleepy town before her. She scanned the skyline before looking down at the road.

Saw Again ©See Nature at its best/Shutterstock.com

There, she saw the woman from the coffee shop.   

The woman locked eyes with her. How did she find where Mary lived? Why was she standing there? She was dressed in all black, as she had been the day before, wearing a coat two sizes too large.

Her dark eyes bore into Mary as she stared up. How long had she been there, waiting for Mary Ellis? Who was she?

Gotcha ©logoboom/Shutterstock.com

When the two locked eyes, the woman smiled. Gotcha, she mouthed. 

Mary’s heart seized in her chest, stomach acid flooding her gut. She was a woman who never corrected a wrong order at a restaurant, and intentionally overpaid her taxes … Now she had what? An enemy?

Mary jumped a foot in the air as something touched her arm. She let out a shriek before cutting it short. It was her cat, green eyes plaintive, wondering what was going on.

Bedroom ©Anna Hoychuk/Shutterstock.com

Mary drew the curtains and ran back into her bedroom.   

She grabbed her phone and held it, paralyzed. Who would she call? The police? And tell them that she saw the same angry-looking woman two days in a row?

That was laughable.

On Her Way ©Prostock-studio/Shutterstock.com

Instead, Mary shot her best friend, Elena, a quick text, asking her if she wanted to have a cup of coffee “ASAP.” That was their version of an S-O-S. True to form, Elena quickly replied that she was on her way.   

“The woman in black, you said?” Elena asked Mary about twenty minutes later. “Yeah, I saw her on the sidewalk. Why?”

Mary looked at her friend, curly hair awry, expression serious. Elena must have rushed over. She quickly told her the entire story.

Wrong Person ©Dikushin Dmitry/Shutterstock.com

Elena said, “Mary, that’s an easy fix. We should go out and talk to her, explain she has the wrong person.”    

“Well …” But of course, there was no reason not to do that.

The two headed downstairs, the strong-headed Elena, a fiery girl Mary had met on her first day of freshman year at university, leading the way.

Unsettling ©Photo Art Wall Decoration/Shutterstock.com

But, when they got outside, the woman was gone. Mary scanned the streets. Her black-haired “nemesis” had been waiting outside for her, but now she was gone. Perhaps she saw Elena at the window and realized she had someone with her. The thought was unsettling.