* * * * *
"Mal?”
Mitchell set his shimmering wine glass upon the table and leaned towards Mallory.
"Mal? Are you there? She's waiting on your order."
The young waitress nervously cleared her throat. "I can return in a few minutes if you need a bit more time."
Mitchell clasped Mallory's wrist. Her skin felt cold. Her arms looked pale. He tried to gauge whatever emotion was churning behind Mallory's eyes, but his wife raised her menu in front of her face before he could discern the reason for her unease.
"I had it just a minute ago," Mallory bit at her lower lip. "It's only slipped my mind. Could you repeat the specials?"
Mitchell sipped his wine and scanned the dining room as their server repeated the long list of nightly specials. He had hoped that a fine dinner at a fine restaurant perched upon another northern lake would, finally, soothe Mallory's agitation. He was disappointed that the view had failed. Tall and polished windows stretched upon three of the dining room's walls, providing the wonderful vista of one of the chain's largest lakes as its waves swayed to the pull of the rising moon. Golden boat lights drifted across the window glass in the falling daylight, floating into the dining room where they bounced and sparkled along tables crowded with fine silverware and crystal glass. Mitchell thought the ambience lovely, and he hated to think that his marriage with Mallory had strayed into such tepid waters that they could no longer share whatever romance might still be discovered in those woods.
Mallory quickly blurted before the server reached the end of her list of specials. "I'll take the stuffed chicken breast."
The server scratched across her notepad. "Potatoes or vegetables?"
Mallory's eyes drifted through the room. "Uh, potatoes."
"Mash? Baked? Sweet potatoes? Or french fries?"
"I don't know," Mallory stammered. "French fries."
"Steak or shoestring?"
"For goodness sake," Mitchell growled, "just bring my wife some french fries!"
The startled server stared at Mitchell for a second before regathering her composure and hurrying towards the kitchen. Mitchell exhaled a breath while the neighbors at the surrounding tables peeked quickly, sheepishly, in his direction.
"I know, Mal," Mitchell fidgeted with his cloth napkin, "I shouldn't have been short with the server. I know I promised to be more patient, especially on his trip."
Mallory betrayed no indication she payed attention to her husband. Her eyes continued to wander about the room, and Mitchell watched them widen in an expression he thought much like panic. Mallory reached a trembling hand towards her wine glass before, upon seeming to gaze a moment upon its reflection, she pulled away from the crystal as if she nearly grasped a venomous thing.
"Mal?" Mitchell smiled and nodded at an elderly woman beyond his wife's shoulder who shifted in her chair to gain a better view of the Howards' table. "What is it? You look ready to faint."
Mallory suddenly lifted her hands to her face, smothering her eyes behind her palms.
"You'll never forgive me," Mallory sobbed. "I've gone mad. It's all too much."
"What is too much?"
The trip should have freed Mallory from her stifling anxiety. The trip was supposed to bring them closer together. Their escape along those roadways meandering through the northern forests was supposed to at least provide a respite from the hurt and dissatisfaction that simmered just below their skin.
Instead, the vacation seemed to bring the crisis to the fore.
"What is it, Mal? What is it you keep holding from me? That you keep holding against me?"
Mitchell leaned across the table. He didn't care what the old couples surrounding them in that dining room thought. He didn't care what those dyed wigs and wide ties thought of the man who clasped his wife's hands and yanked them away from her face."
What is it, Mal? How have we changed? What have we become?"
Something was not right about Mallory's face. When had Mallory's hair frayed into curls? When had her lips faded from a plush crimson to cold, bloodless hue? When had so many shadows gathered beneath his wife's eyes? Mitchell stared into Mallory's eyes and gasped.
"Mallory, what's happened to your eyes?"
Mallory pushed herself away from the table, shaking her head frantically as the servers rushed from the room to find help. Mallory trembled and pointed to one of the room's tall windows.
"It's not me ,Mitchell! It's not me!"
Frustrated and broken-hearted, Mitchell turned to gaze upon that glass.
And looking into that reflection, he too trembled.
Mitchell failed to recognize the woman who sat opposite of him in that reflection, but he knew that she was not Mallory.
That woman reflected in the glass looked nothing like his wife. She wore Mallory's clothes, but the woman's figure stretched the fabric, her shape many sizes too large for Mallory's attire. The face in the reflection bore the furrows and wrinkles of decades. The stranger within the glass sported a tight, gray beehive of a perm, nothing like the locks that streamed beyond Mallory's shoulders. It was an alien nose, a foreign mouth, that shaped that woman's face. And the eyes were the most terrible difference - gray eyes, dull eyes in the glass that held none of the green Mitchell so loved in Mallory's.
"You see her too!"
Mallory stumbled into the table behind her. Her composure was rattled. She was lost. She was trapped, and she could not remember the direction of the door.
Mitchell squinted. "It's got to be some trick of the light. It's just the angles in the dining room. The reflections of so many people are just blending into one."
Mallory slammed her hands upon the table and glared at her husband.
"She's everywhere!"
Mitchell followed Mallory's sweeping arm, and his heart lodged in his throat.
That old woman resided in every reflection, wearing his wife's clothing, mimicking her expression, aping Mallory's stance, impersonating the fear that made his wife tremble. That stranger twinkled in each wine glass set upon the tables. Her reflection leered from the polish of every clean, porcelain plate. Her alien face shook in each piece of silverware. Everywhere there was a polished reflection, there was a face of that stranger where Mallory should have been.
"It's a trick!" Mitchell hissed. "Some cruel, terrible, trick!"
Mitchell grabbed Mallory's wrist and pulled her out of the dining room before anyone could voice a protest, throwing down a stack of crisp bills to cover the cost of their order and commotion.
Mallory trembled in the car, her hands raised to shroud her eyes as she sobbed into her palms. Mitchell urged the vehicle through the curves as fast as his courage dared, desperate to put miles beneath their wheels as they roared along the road, terrified to peek into that rearview mirror, lest he catch a glimpse of a strange, unknown, old woman sitting in the passenger seat next to him where Mallory should have been.
Shaken, his heart racing while Mallory sobbed, Mitchell drove through the night, determined to escape those crowding trees of the northern forest.