I saw her drop something when she exited the car and rushed into the office building. The vehicle sped off, twirling what looked like an envelope into the busy street.
I hesitated, should I dash out
... [+]
Ria Hill is a queer, Jewish writer and librarian who lives in Toronto. Their work is primarily horror, with fiction appearing in several print anthologies and online magazines. They can be found online at riahill.weebly.com and on various social media platforms @riawritten. "Pinhole" is in Short Circuit #15, Short Édition's quarterly review.
Hattie didn't mind the children. They were about the only people on earth she didn't mind. She heard the parents telling them to leave her alone, but her seemingly bottomless tin of cookies, which she kept beside her seat on the front porch, always seemed to win out.
She baked them herself. Not every day, but nearly. Chocolate chip. Snickerdoodles. Sugar cookies.
Never peanut butter, though. Dana from across the street had an allergy.
Dana was kind, bringing over school projects to show off every weekday and interesting rocks and bugs over the weekends. It was a Thursday when she brought the pinhole camera.
"You have to sit very still for one to two seconds," Dana told her.
She wanted to photograph Hattie, of all people, for her middle school science project. She managed to pull her down from her porch into the sun, somewhere she never went unless she was making her weekly excursion to the grocery store.
Dana had set a folding chair on the lawn and was standing in front of it with her camera, made out of a cylinder that once held oatmeal.
Hattie sat as still as she could for what felt like a lot longer than a second or two, then Dana flashed a huge grin.
"Was that alright?" Hattie asked.
"Perfect!" Dana said.
She promised to have the picture developed by the following day, and Hattie smiled and patted her head, but she had no real desire to see the picture.
She had only one mirror in her home. Didn't bother much with appearances. Never took pictures really.
It wasn't something that interested her.
But the following day, there was Dana, one hand open for cookies and another clutching an envelope.
"It came out really nice," she said. "I got an A!"
"Good girl," Hattie said. She took the envelope and listened as Dana chattered about her day. She wanted to avoid looking at the picture for as long as possible. When she finally did look, she studied it at great length.
There was her heart-shaped face. With wizened cheeks and wisps of white hair. Her smile was vague and distracted. Her eyes were brightly blue.
"Thank you," she said. "If you'll excuse me, I have to step inside."
Dana and Hattie said their goodbyes, and Hattie walked into her house as quickly as she dared.
Her heart was pounding as she walked into the guest bathroom, the one place where a mirror still existed. It took her a long moment of staring at the sheet that covered it before she could bring herself to tear it aside and compare what she saw there to the photo and her own memory.
In her reflection, she saw a smooth face, freckles, and red hair. Blue eyes. The same face she had seen in the mirror the last time she had looked.
When was that?
On her birthday. She had gone out on her birthday. So that would make it December third.
Not so long ago, then. It was only April.
She turned back to the photo. It was her facial structure. What was wrong with the camera?
It made her look so old.
She set the photo down and walked back to the front window. The spring sun was setting over her neighborhood.
She walked to the phone and dialed out, something she had hardly ever done since she had moved into this house several years ago.
A woman's voice answered. "Hello?"
"Hello, Mrs. Klausen, is Dana there?" Hattie asked, trying to sound as calm as she could. "I think she left something at my house."
"Hattie, is that you?" the woman said.
"Yes," she said. She listened to the silence on the other end of the phone for a long moment. "Mrs. Klausen?"
"Do you mind if I come by?"
Hattie was startled. To her knowledge, she had never even met Mrs. Klausen.
"Please," Hattie said. It wasn't desire to see the woman, but fear of turning her down that made her acquiesce.
Mrs. Klausen was over in minutes, purse held tightly in her hands, looking just like Dana but thirty years older.
She was very pretty, but she looked sad.
"Hi, Hattie," she said.
"Can I offer you some tea?"
"Hattie, are you alright?" Mrs. Klausen asked.
"I'm fine," Hattie said. "Why do you ask?"
"Rose said you were acting a little oddly today," she said. "And then I got that call from you, so I got a bit worried."
"Rose?" Hattie asked.
"My daughter," she said.
"Your daughter?" Hattie asked.
"She came to drop off the picture she took yesterday."
Hattie blinked. "You mean Dana?"
"Hattie," the woman said. "I'm Dana."
"What?"
The woman, Dana, reached into her purse and pulled out a crinkled photograph.
"Please look at this," she said.
Hattie took the photo and looked.
There she was, as she knew herself. Heart-shaped face, red hair, blue eyes.
"What happened to it?" she asked. "Did it go through the wash?"
"It's been sitting in my photo album for thirty years," Dana said. "Rose wanted to take your photo for a school project, take the two in together and show them to her class. You talked to her about it, said it was fine."
"No," Hattie said. "That's impossible."
"Hattie," the woman said. "What year is this?"
"It's . . ." She stopped and looked past Dana's face, out the front window.
There were cars there that were familiar in spite of their too-modern sheen. There were yard signs for politicians whose names she didn't recognize, one of which was posted on her own lawn.
"Hattie?" A warm hand touched her shoulder and she tugged her eyes back to her guest. "Are you alright?"
"Dana . . ." Hattie murmured, touching the wrinkles on her own cheek with tentative fingertips.
"Yes?"
"She's coming to take my picture today."