Shadows In The Mirror

He picked up the photo and studied it, and his eyes lingered there a bit too long. I swear I could hear him softly gasp. Then just as quickly, he recovered. When he brushed his curly hair out of his eyes, I wondered if I’d only imagined that flinch.

He bent his head so all of his hair fell forward into his eyes. As he spread out the edges of the photo with his fingers, I unwillingly found myself looking at his hands. I always think hands tell a lot about a man. His were strong and articulate. I could imagine him fiddling with camera settings, adjusting a shot until he got it just right, not being happy until it was.

Stop that, Marylee, I told myself. This guy dropped Johanna without so much as a how do you do. He’s someone you definitely want to steer clear of. So, why was I here, trusting him with one of the most important things in my life?

From underneath the counter he got a magnifying glass.

“This picture looks old,” he said. “The styles. These two look like hippies. It’s artistically done, though. Nice. Romantic.” And he looked at me and winked.

“I think it’s around thirty years old.” I kept my demeanor as businesslike as I could. “I understand you do forensic work for the police department.”

He shifted his position. “Sometimes.” He put the photo down and looked at me. “Okay, here’s what we can do. We can compare it to data banks of stock photos,” he said. “Although if it was in a magazine thirty years ago that might pose a challenge.”

“You said ‘we’?”

“My assistant, Mose, is a whiz at dating old photos. He might be able to help. I’m sure he’ll have some ideas, in any case.”

“I would also like information about certain parts of the photo.” I pointed out some duskiness along one side. “I’d always assumed these shadow things to be trees or some sort of bushes or building, but I don’t know.”

“It’s quite faint,” he said. “It could be just something in the photo itself, or on the paper.”

I nodded.

“We could digitize this, maybe enlarge these shadows, see what we can come up with.”

“By all means.” I handed him one of my Crafts and More business cards. “I’m Marylee Simson.” I tried to sound as professional as possible despite my bleary eyes, bad hair and shaking knees.

“I already know your name.” And he winked at me. “And I already know your shop. It’s nice to finally meet you officially.”

And all the way back to Crafts and More all I thought about was I can’t believe it. I cannot believe it! What am I going to tell Johanna? What on earth am I going to tell Johanna?

That afternoon Johanna called me at the shop between her classes, as I knew she would. I was dreading this. How to tell her? What to say?

“So?” she said.

“So?” I answered.

“So, did you take the picture to Evan?”

“I took the picture to Evan.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what? Isn’t he absolutely irresistible?”

“He’s…” This was going to be harder than I thought. “He’s, uh, he’s got the photo. He’s looking at it…”

“Well, duh, I figured that much,” she said.

I heard the bells chime at my door signifying a customer. “I gotta go. A customer arriveth!”

“You will come to my house tonight and tell me everything that happened.”

It was an order, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll bring my homemade pizza.”

When I hung up the phone I saw that I’d left my apartment key in the door. I pulled it out and pocketed it before heading back out to the store.

There is a back door to this place with stairs leading up to my apartment. I keep that door locked during the day. When you come in either the front door to the shop or the back door, you first have to unlock it with a key, and all the keys are different. Then you have to punch in the six-digit security code. When you get up the stairs to my apartment, there’s another lock, another key and another security-code pad.

All thanks to my paranoid aunt.

For the rest of the afternoon I chided myself. What kind of a friend keeps something like this from a best friend? I should have blurted it right out. Your Evan is the one who winks at me every morning! That’s the kind of guy he is. He breaks off an engagement and then goes out and drops someone after two dates with no explanation and then winks at someone else. What is he doing, just going down the line of available females?

I’d tell her all of this tonight. I started practicing ways to tell her.

We close at five on Wednesdays, so I had ample time to do up my special pizza from scratch. I’d make enough dough for two pizzas and put one in the freezer. As I was working on measuring the yeast and kneading the dough, it felt to me as if I were making a peace offering, something to make Johanna feel better when I broke the news. I’d add sliced tomatoes to the top because I know she likes fresh sliced tomatoes on her pizza.

I was just setting the dough to rise for a few minutes when I looked over at my balcony door and noticed something odd. The pull-across latch was pushed back. Had I unlocked this door? I couldn’t remember. It seemed unlikely, though. I stepped back, stared at it, thought of my key left in my door. Two key-related oddities in one day; I was turning into my aunt.

I opened the French doors and stepped onto my balcony and looked over the railing. My aunt would approve of this balcony. There was no way anyone could climb up here. No fire escape led to it. There weren’t even any balconies close by where you could jump across, if a person was so inclined. Theoretically, I should be able to leave it unlocked and be fine. You’d have to be Spider-Man to get up here. My wicker rocker was undisturbed. I sat in it for a few minutes before the chill evening air drove me back inside to where my crust was happily rising.

At seven sharp I was standing on the doorstep of Johanna’s cute house. She lives just north of the city on a little island on Malletts Bay. It’s only a few minutes from the downtown core where I live, but driving up Coates Island Road is like driving into another country. I drove past the marina on Malletts Bay, with its huge yachts, many of which were already shrink-wrapped in white. Soon, I was told, Lake Champlain would freeze so solid you could drive a truck across it.

Coates Island, where Johanna lives, is a private island of mostly summer cottages. Johanna lives here year-round in the last house, she says, before they quit plowing the road. It’s a place she could never afford on her professor’s salary, but it’s been in her family for many generations. The only downside is that her big family of brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts descends on her all summer long.

Johanna’s place is just like her—funky and cottagey and filled with mismatched dishes and chairs, all bought at garage sales. But instead of looking tacky, it looks as if each piece has been carefully chosen from high-end antique stores. She has this way of assembling a bunch of disparate pieces into a charming whole, and that includes the clothes she wears.

As soon as I entered her house, she came right over and hugged me.

“Evan,” she said. “You have to tell me about Evan! You have to tell me everything!” She looked so cute this evening. Her thick hair was caught up in a scrunchie on the top of her head, like a cockeyed waterspout.

I dropped my jacket on the back of a wooden kitchen chair. “You could do a whole lot better than Evan Baxter,” I told her.

She stopped a moment in her table setting and raised her eyebrows. “What? What happened? What do you mean by that?”

“I just think you could do better than Evan Baxter. That’s all.” I was careful not to meet her eyes.

“Marylee, tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out. Wasn’t he able to help you with your picture?”

“I need to talk to you about Evan.” I placed my pizza on the table. “This is really important. Evan? He’s the guy who winks at me in the coffee shop every morning. The very one.”

If I could have chosen all of the reactions on her part, I never would have chosen the one that she exhibited. Instead of looking horrified, her eyes opened wider and she leaned back against her counter and laughed. It was a gleeful, spontaneous laugh.

“Johanna?” I squinted at her over my glasses.

“Oh, Marylee!” She leaned forward and put her hand on my shoulder. “This is so funny, so totally funny. What a strange coincidence.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Now you know how cute he is.”

“Johanna, you’re not getting it. He’s irresponsible. He takes you out. Doesn’t call back. Winks at me, a total stranger.”

Her back was to me as she poured two Diet Cokes. “Let’s have the pizza,” she said.

She was hurt, I could tell. The laughter was just a cover-up, but I didn’t know what to do or say. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her. But, of course I had to. Friends don’t keep stuff like this from their friends. We took our slices and Cokes into her front room overlooking the water.

She took a bite of the pizza, proclaimed it wonderful and then said, “Did you hear that Barbara’s son Jared is home from Guatemala?”

I knew she was changing the subject on purpose, but I had no desire to bring the subject back to Evan, so I said, “That’s all I’ve been hearing about.”

I took a long drink of Coke. Through the trees, the gray water of Malletts Bay looked as solid as iron.

Barbara’s eldest son had taken a six-month leave of absence from his police job to work on a mission project in Guatemala. Barbara and her husband, Harold, had invited some of the people his age from church to a supper where he’d be talking about the trip and showing pictures.

“I know Jared,” Johanna said. “You haven’t met him, but you’d like him. He’d be perfect for you.”

Clever ploy, I thought. Get me interested in Jared so she wouldn’t have to worry about Evan and me. I leaned forward and touched my friend’s arm. “Johanna, you don’t have to worry. I am not interested in Evan.” I’m not interested in that type of guy anymore—all charm and no substance, I wanted to add, but didn’t. “And I’m not interested in Jared either. I’ve had enough of men for a while. All men.”

FOUR

For the next two days I studiously avoided Evan. I went for my coffee a whole hour earlier. I knew this wouldn’t last. He had my photo and would be calling. But maybe the few days would give me time to organize my thoughts, and maybe my emotions. My problem was I’d let a morning wink take over my life. I seriously wanted to believe what I had told Johanna last night, that Evan held no attraction for me whatsoever, that no man did. But, unfortunately, I found myself thinking about him more, not less.

On the second day of not seeing Evan, Marty and Dot came in to buy a paint-by-numbers set. “It’s for Dot’s granddaughter,” Marty said. “It’s her birthday tomorrow.”

“How nice,” I said.

“There’s going to be a big party,” Dot added.

“Have a wonderful time.” I put their purchase in a bag and looked at Marty. The other day something about him had seemed strangely familiar. Today that feeling was gone. Today he was just an ordinary nice-looking older gentleman, obviously in love with his lady friend.

One the third day, Evan Baxter came into my shop. I was in the back unpacking boxes of yarn when I recognized his voice.

“Is the lady of the shop in?”

I held my breath.

“Just a minute,” Barbara said. “And you are?”

“Evan. Evan Baxter.”

“Oh yes, of course!” she exclaimed. “My husband, Harold, bought a camera from you some time ago, and talked about your lovely photographs.”

“I remember him.”

“Marylee,” she singsonged. “Someone here to see you.”

I wiped my hands on my Crafts and More apron and went out to the front. As soon as I got there I wished I’d had time to run a brush through my hair. Still, today it didn’t quite look as bad as it had three days ago. At least I’d been up early enough this morning to blow-dry some life into it.

“Hey,” he said. Then he winked at me.

“Hello,” I said.

“I’ve missed you in the mornings.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy for a nonfat latte?”

“I’ve been getting to the shop earlier.” I ran my hands up and down my apron. All of the sentences I’d rehearsed for this occasion had flown completely out of my head. Plus, Barbara was observing this whole conversation with amusement. Since she’d come to work for me, she’d been like a mother hen, trying to hook me up with every available guy she knew, especially with Jared. I hadn’t quite confided in her that since I’d been trampled on and tramped over by Mark, I was interested in no one. Not even her eldest son Jared.

“So, did you find anything about the picture?” I asked him.

He nodded. “You have time for coffee?”

“Right now?” I glanced at my watch. “I’m working now. There’s a lot to do.” I looked around me. The shop was dead. We hadn’t had a customer in half an hour and new boxes of fabric supplies were mostly unpacked.

“You go,” Mother Barbara said, shooing me out. “Have a coffee.” Then to Evan she said, “This young woman is working way too hard. And not sleeping. Plus, there are men outside her door.”

“Barbara!” I shrieked at her.

“No, what I mean is, she sees people smoking down in the street in the middle of the night, so she can’t sleep at night. That would be enough to put anyone off their Wheaties.”

Why, I wondered, had I shared that little tidbit of my life with her?

Evan raised an eyebrow and a worried look crept across his face. “People? Outside your house?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “It was one night. A few nights ago when it was raining. Someone was in the bus shelter across the street smoking.”

“You said he? It was a man?” he said, looking worried.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. But it was nothing. It was someone stepping outside for a smoke in the middle of the night. What’s so odd about that? Most people don’t smoke in their houses anymore, so what do you do when you want a smoke in the middle of the night? That’s all it was. I don’t even know why I brought it up.”

At the time I’d been so sure the person, either man or woman, had been looking up at my apartment, at me, even. But the more I thought about it, the more fanciful that idea became. I needed to steel myself against becoming like my aunt.

Evan and I went next door to the coffee shop. He ordered a house dark roast black and without even asking got me a nonfat latte. He also brought a huge, drippy cinnamon bun to our table with two forks. The two-forks bit seemed a little too chummy to me.

He paid for the coffees, which made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. I had hired him, so I should be paying, right? What does one do in these situations?

“Your sales clerk is an interesting woman,” he told me.

“She’s great. Although she says exactly what’s on her mind. Very blunt, as you may have noticed.”

“That’s refreshing, though. You’ve got a nice shop there. You’ve fixed it up well.”

“Thank you,” I said. I looked at his hands again as they deftly cut the cinnamon bun in two with a plastic knife.

“I was halfway interested in it when it went up for sale,” he said. “I pay rent in the spot I’m in now. It would be nice to own something outright.”

“It wasn’t cheap.”

“I know. That’s why I stayed where I am.” He grinned and I wondered what I was doing here making small talk with Johanna’s soul mate. I had a niggling fear that Johanna would walk in and see us like this. The thought made me uneasy.

He asked me where I was from and all I said was out west. He drank his coffee and said he’d grown up here in Burlington. I thought about the little note of surprise in his eyes when he’d seen the picture for the first time. Even though there was a part of me that still wondered if the picture was my parents, I needed a starting point. Were the couple in the picture connected to me? And why had my aunt lied to me—if she had?

I looked across at Evan and tried to guess his age. He couldn’t be much older than me. Would he remember the accident that supposedly took my parents’ lives? Should I ask him? I shook off that thought. I was beginning to realize just how big the city of Burlington was. I had no idea if I was even looking in the right section of town. Maybe I needed to be in Colchester, or Winooski, or Essex Junction.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them with an edge of the paper napkin. I watched him do that, wondering why his every little motion held such interest for me. I asked, “You said you have information about the picture?”

“I do.”

I waited while he put his glasses back on and placed the manila envelope with the photograph on the table. I reached for it at the same time he did and our hands touched. I pulled mine away quickly. For an awkward moment, neither of us said anything. I cleared my throat, and finally said, “So what did you find out?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a composite.”

“Come again?”

“A composite. I’m thinking that the two people may have been superimposed on the backdrop of the lake. That was how they manipulated photos twenty-five years ago. Now, we have computer programs which do the same thing.”

“So, this might not be Lake Champlain? It might not be here at all?”

“It might not be.”

“How do you know that?”

He pointed. “I’ve enlarged this part of it. Do you see this bush in the foreground? Do you see the shadow it casts? It’s very subtle.”

I looked. “A bit,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Have a look at the couple. They cast no shadow. A computer-generated photo manipulation would have taken care of that. Or a good photo manipulator could manually add a very faint shadow here.” He pointed.

“But…But it looks okay to me. I mean they could be there, couldn’t they? By Lake Champlain?”

He put one finger in the air. “There’s more. Look at their bare feet. If they were standing on the stones like that, the feet of the man, of the woman, too, for that matter, would be making more of an impression on the ground beneath them. Plus, I can’t see people standing on stones with bare feet anyway. Can you?”

“But people could, couldn’t they?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“So, this is a fake?”

“Oh no, it’s not a fake. It’s a real photograph. It’s not some sort of a painting or reproduction, if that’s what you mean.”

That’s not what I meant, but I didn’t tell him what I meant because I wasn’t sure myself.

“What about these shadows along the side?” I asked.

“To me they look like some sort of building. I couldn’t figure it out, but Mose is still working on that.”

I took a drink of my latte. “I have to ask you something. When you first looked at this picture it was like you’d seen it before. Had you?”

He looked down at his coffee and shook his head.

“Then why did you flinch when you looked at it? I know I saw you do that.”

He looked at me. I hadn’t noticed before how blue his eyes were. “I didn’t flinch. I thought it was familiar when I first looked at it, but then I realized I was mistaken.”

“Familiar, how?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Were the people familiar? Did you think you recognized them?” My hands were clasped so tightly around my paper coffee cup that I was in danger of squishing the cup and spilling coffee all over us. I let up on my grip and repeated my question. “Do you know these people?”

He looked me square in the eyes. “No, Marylee. I don’t know who they are.”

I repeated my question. “Then why did you flinch?”

He shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

I looked away from him. Unbidden tears threatened at the edges of my eyes. Finally, I turned back and said, “You mentioned stock photos the last time we talked.”

“Mose hasn’t found anything yet.”

I nodded.

“This photo must mean a lot to you.”

I didn’t answer him. Instead I took a sip of my coffee. “This photo is connected to Burlington and to me. And I need to find out what the connection is between these people and me.”

“I’ll continue to look into it. It’ll be my number-one priority.” His voice was gentle when he told me this.

“I would like that. Thank you very much.”

We drank our coffees in silence for the next few minutes. He cut another piece of cinnamon bun and said, “I was wondering about something else, Marylee. Would you ever consider going to dinner with me?”

I blinked. Had I heard him correctly?

“I…” I looked at my hands. “No. I don’t know. I’m sorry. Things are sort of, well, complicated right now, Evan. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, really, I’m sorry.”

“Well then. Have the rest of the cinnamon bun.”

Suddenly I wanted to be away from here. I made a point of looking at my watch. “I have to get back to my store,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

I got up, grabbed my picture and fled.

Back at the store, I realized I had my picture. I’d told him to keep working on the picture, and here I’d walked off with it. This meant I’d have to somehow come face-to-face with him again if I wanted him to continue looking into where it came from.

And then there was the little matter of paying him for his services. He’d done all this work for me. What should I do? Here I was a supposedly savvy businesswoman who’d managed to come up with enough money to purchase outright a prime piece of real estate, set up a business and do comparatively well, yet I was standing in the middle of my store feeling whimpery. And, if I admitted it to myself, just the teensiest bit afraid. I was getting closer to my parents and I was afraid, just a little, of what I might find when I got there.

“Hey, while you were gone, I…” Barbara began. At the same time the door jangled signifying an incoming customer and for one horrid moment I thought it was Evan. I clasped my hand to my mouth, but the thin little man who entered was nothing like Evan. Barbara recognized him from her knitting club and introduced us. They wandered over to the yarn supplies and I made my way to the back room, the picture of my parents in my hand. I shoved it inside the phone book. I took two deep breaths and came out into my store again.

While Barbara rang up yarn and needles for her knitting compatriot, I waited on two customers, a mother and daughter who inquired about crocheting classes and ended up buying bits and pieces of ribbon and some paper and glue for a scrapbook they were making about their dog.

I waited on customers, straightened shelves and listened to Barbara talk about her sons, all the while looking at the door. Wondering if Evan would come back.

“Hey,” I could hear him say. “You left and took the picture.”

“I know, I know,” I would say. “I’m sorry about running off. Let me get the photo for you.” And I would, and then we’d end up going to dinner. And getting married and living happily ever after.

No. Not going to happen.

When I finally ascended the stairs to my apartment, my phone message light was blinking. Three messages. I pressed the button.

“Marylee? Evan here…” I sat down on my kitchen chair and caught my breath. “I’m sorry if something I said upset you when we were having coffee earlier. I certainly didn’t mean to.”

The second was also from him. “Sorry about the second phone call here, but if you still want me to help with the photo, I will. I would be happy to even if we don’t have dinner. If you want to come by with the photo again, I’ll take another look at it.”

The third message was from my security company. I called the number they left and through a series of voice-mail prompts, I ended up having to plug in my current security password code. I thought that was a bit odd, but complied. This was the second time they’d called wanting this information. I’d given it the first time. But I trusted them. They were a good security company and came highly recommended.