The Third Mirror

I noticed it the first time I tried on a new coat in the fitting room: the two side mirrors moved with me instantly, but the middle mirror lagged a fraction of a second before catching up.

I thought I'd imagined it. I tried again, moving faster this time. For one moment, my reflection in the middle mirror stayed standing in its previous position, before it finally caught up with me, in a quick motion that was almost unnoticeable.

I didn't buy the coat. When I asked the shop assistant about the mirror, she just smiled and said, "A lot of people notice that. Just an old mirror." I never went back to that store again.

I tried to forget about it, but the store's name stayed lodged in my head, until I found myself, weeks later, searching for it online anyway, telling myself it was just to settle the question. I found exactly one old review, from another customer, posted years earlier, describing the exact same experience, the delay, the smile, almost the same sentence from the assistant.

In a single comment below that review, a third customer had written that she'd deliberately gone back to the store a month after her first visit, just to test something: she stood in front of the middle mirror for a long time, motionless, watching her reflection without moving herself.

She said her reflection moved first.

I read that comment at night, alone, and closed my phone immediately. I couldn't sleep without checking every mirror in my apartment twice, watching each one a few extra seconds before turning away from it.

About two weeks later, I happened to pass that same store, on the opposite side of the street. The fitting room was partly visible through the glass front, the middle mirror clearly in view from where I stood.

There was no one in the room.

But the reflection inside the middle mirror was still moving, very slowly, as if finishing the motion of someone who had left the room only moments before.

I didn't stop to make sure. I crossed the street faster than I meant to, and kept walking without looking back once.