The Mirror That Answered Too Late
The silence inside the car seemed to thicken with every mile, pressing against my chest until even breathing felt like work. Mark drove with his gaze fixed ahead and both hands set firmly on the wheel. To anyone watching, he might have looked like a devoted husband taking his shaken wife home after a terrible morning. I knew better. Something tense and shadowed clung to him, and I couldn’t make myself believe it was only worry.
I lowered my eyes toward the space beneath his seat. Leo’s blue stuffed dinosaur lay there, its little button eyes pointed blankly at my shoes.
It belonged to Leo. He never went anywhere without it. That morning, I had put the dinosaur into his superhero backpack myself before he climbed onto the school bus. I remembered the soft toy in my hands. I remembered pushing it down beside his lunch. So how had it ended up hidden beneath Mark’s seat?
And why had the strange man in the mirror been holding it? The same man who had tried to take Leo from school had appeared in that awful vision with my son’s toy clutched in his hands.
“What are you thinking about?” Mark asked. His voice cut through the quiet so suddenly that I flinched. I looked up fast, but he kept facing the road. In the rearview mirror, though, I caught his eyes trained on me.
“I’m just… scared,” I said, putting care into each word so he wouldn’t hear it tremble. “If the school hadn’t called me—if they’d let that man leave with Leo…”
“They didn’t.” Mark’s reply came evenly, without a flicker of feeling. “Leo’s safe. We’re going home, and he’ll be back in a few hours. You should take a sedative and get some rest, Sarah. You’ve been acting strangely ever since we moved into your grandmother’s house.”
There it was again, that familiar refrain. My grandmother had died a month earlier and left me her old Victorian home. Since then, Mark had repeatedly hinted that something was wrong with me. At first, I’d taken it as concern. Sorting through the house’s dusty keepsakes, breathing in the scent of aging wood, and waking to the darkness of those enormous rooms had left me exhausted.
Then there had been the hallway mirror.
The first time I noticed the delay, I assumed my eyes were playing tricks on me. I raised one hand. Three seconds passed before the woman in the glass followed. I panicked and reached for a cloth, wanting to cover it before it could happen again.
Mark had talked me down. Lack of sleep, he said, or old glass that bent the image. He’d given me a gentle smile and kissed my forehead. You’ve been working too hard, darling.
Now, when I remembered that kiss, I felt something like heat searing across my skin.
The car rolled onto the gravel drive before our gray, three-story house. It stood there like some old stronghold, its worn boards dark beneath a tangle of ivy. The vines crawled around the windows, thin and curled like bony fingers.
As soon as I stepped inside, the familiar chill of the ground floor settled over me. Mark slipped off his coat and tossed it across the back of the sofa. “I need to go upstairs and make a few work calls,” he said, not looking my way. “Make yourself some tea. Try to calm down. We’ll pick up Leo together later.”
“All right,” I murmured.
I waited until I heard his footsteps climb the stairs. Then came the sound of his office door closing, followed by the small, sharp click of the lock. Mark always locked that door. I’d never thought much of it before. Now, even the simplest thing he did seemed to carry a threat I couldn’t name.
Once I was sure he couldn’t see me, I hurried into the hallway.
The antique mirror stood at the far end, its dark mahogany frame crowded with elaborate carvings. Age had clouded the glass and left small, mottled stains across its surface. I stopped in front of it, my heart beating so hard I felt each pulse in my throat.
I drew a slow breath and looked directly at my own reflection.
The woman in the glass wore the same pale pink shirt and black trousers I did. My hair had come loose and fallen into disarray. Fear showed plainly in my eyes. I lifted my right hand and touched my cheek.
One second. Then two. Then three.
Only then did the woman in the mirror slowly raise her own hand to her cheek. I had seen the delay again. The reflection hadn’t followed me when I moved; it had waited, as if the mirror were answering late. My fingers were still against my skin when hers finally arrived.
