Shadows In The Mirror

After I erased the messages, I decided I needed to talk with Johanna. She was my best friend and deserved to know that Evan had asked me to dinner. It was only fair, right? I called her, and breathed with relief when she didn’t answer. I hung up without leaving a message.

FIVE

Something loud and irritating was blasting through my dreams. My alarm clock? I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and glanced at the red lights of the digital readout beside me: 2:31 a.m. No, not my alarm clock, but someone’s car methodically honking, the sound that happens if you suddenly press the honk button on your car’s remote instead of Unlock Door. I knew that sound. I’d embarrassingly done exactly that in parking lots more times that I cared to admit. Whoever owned the car in the alley better hurry up and realize that their horn was honking and waking up every sleeping neighbor within a half-mile radius.

And then I sat upright and flicked on my bedside lamp as I came to realize that my car was the only car in the alley. Quickly I fumbled out of bed, entangling myself in the sheets, falling on the floor, then righting myself, locating the light switch and finding my way blearily into my kitchen and to my balcony doors. All the while the car was honking, honking, honking. Yes, my little Saturn was making all that racket.

I’d been told there are only three times when this happens: when you push the horn button, when someone is trying to get in your car, or when it’s a defect in the car itself. My ex-fiancé had had a car that kept doing this in rainy weather, and it had ended up being due to moisture between the car door and the frame. But his was an old car and mine was brand-new! I scrambled around my apartment looking for my car keys.

I finally found them in a dish on my kitchen counter and grabbed them. Did this mean I was going to have to go down the back stairs and outside? I looked out at the rainy skies and groaned at the thought. I would try something else.

I opened the French doors, stepped out onto the cold balcony and, leaning over as far as I could, I aimed my remote at the car and pressed the horn button. Mercifully, it stopped. It was only when I got back into bed that the shivering wouldn’t stop. A few moments later I got up and checked that the bolt was firmly across the French doors, even though I had just done this.

As I lay in bed, finally, with the light still on, I realized just how like my aunt I was becoming: single, alone, frightened. When I was a teenager I had vowed that I would never be like her. I remember coming upon her in the middle of the night drinking tea in the kitchen after a middle-of-the-night wrong number.

“Who could it be?” she’d asked. “Calling innocent people in the middle of the night. It has to be something, don’t you think? Some prowler. I’m going to call the police.”

I’d screamed at her, “It’s just a stupid wrong number! Don’t go postal!”

I slept fitfully for the rest of the night, waking every hour to glance at the digital readout: 3:32, 4:46, 6:02. Thankfully I didn’t dream about the mirrors. I couldn’t have. I didn’t sleep long enough.

Evan was in the coffee shop when I got there the following morning. He winked but I left before he had a chance to come over and talk to me.

Midway through the afternoon, Barbara came out to where I was arranging scrapbook supplies on a top shelf. I thought she was going to remind me for the umpteenth time about the supper meeting at her house in two days with Jared in attendance, but she said, “A box came. It’s not inventory. It’s personal from Portland. I opened it by mistake.”

I hurried to the back. The shoe box was from my aunt’s lawyer and contained a series of sealed envelopes. There was a letter on the top addressed to me:

Dear Marylee Simson,

We are moving from our office and I found this box amongst some papers. A long time ago your aunt, Rose Carlson, gave it to me for safekeeping. I have been remiss in not sending it to you sooner.

Regards, R. E. Hoffman, Attorney at Law

The four envelopes were labeled: First 6 Months, Months 6-12, First House, and Other Misc. Underneath the envelopes was what looked like an old ledger book, faded and worn. I opened to the first page. It looked like a store accounts book, of the kind that I might keep for Crafts and More if everything wasn’t all on computer now. I wiped some of the dried grunge from it with a paper towel. There was no name on the front, but I knew without even looking at it that it belonged to the craft store my aunt had worked at for all of my growing-up years. At some point it might be fun to compare prices and stock with my own store. I put it aside because I wanted to see what was in the envelopes. Eagerly I opened the First 6 Months one. It contained four photos. All were of my aunt and me when I was a small girl. In one of the pictures I was wearing a lavender coat, purple ribbons in my hair and black patent leather shoes, as if dressed for Sunday school. I remembered those shoes. I would have worn them all week if I could. Aunt Rose would make me change into sneakers for outdoor play while I fought and fought to wear what I called my “fancy shoes.”

The second picture was of me on Santa’s lap. I remembered how frightened I’d been of this big bearded man. The two others were of me and Aunt Rose beside a snowman. I quickly figured out that these photos were of the first six months we’d lived in Portland, Oregon.

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