A Second Chance Wish

Margaret Spenser settled back on the love seat and watching Callie Ricci drive away. She sighed. She liked the young woman who had become a dear friend in the years since they had met when Callie had done a history project on the Jacob’s House and the legend of the mirror. Now she worried about the young woman, that she was making the same mistakes Margaret had made when she was her age.
Margaret picked up her rapidly cooling tea and sipped it. She glanced at the mirror and was shocked to see movement in the reflection. A figure where there shouldn’t be one. She got up and walked to the mirror, and it faded as quickly as it came.
Disappointed flared in her. After all these years of hoping and praying to see something, of hosting Midwinter festivals and helping other young women find their soulmates in the mirror, she had been denied. She couldn’t help but believe she was being punished for her hubris, for rejecting the mate the mirror had shown her.
In her defense, she hadn’t known who the mirror was showing her at the time. Like Callie, she had only seen a shape, a figure. Year after year. His back was to her most of the time, moving away, until that last year when he was distant, almost unable to be seen.
That was the year Bill had come home with another woman on his arm. Someone to introduce to his family as a prospective fiancee. The news had been shocking and devastating, though she shouldn’t have been surprised. She had been rejecting him all those years, keeping him in what the kids today called the friend-zone.
She had been like many young women in the seventies, rebelling against her parent’s dictates, not wanting to go along with what they wanted for her. They, along with her grandparents, had been best friends with the Henschals and she had grown up with Bill. It had been everyone’s fondest hope that she and Bill would marry. But Margaret had dragged her feet, looking for passion, for adventure, for love.
She heard her own voice in Callie’s hopes and dreams. She feared Callie would realize too late, just like Margaret, that the greatest love could be in the quietest of places.
She had rejected Bill one too many times, and he moved on. He found someone else at law school, proposed and married her. He moved to New York City, had three kids, and appeared to have a happy life. She saw him occasionally when he came home for visits, when their eyes would lock across a crowded room, or they’d meet on the street in front of their houses. It was always awkward and uncomfortable until his parents moved away and she didn’t have to face him again.
Though that was just as hard. She’d dated in the intervening years, attempting to find someone else to fill the void. It worked for a time, but she never quite found the right person. And the mirror never showed her anything ever again until a few nights ago when she swore she saw a shadow. And now today.
What was different now?