The school run was a rush that morning. I mean, when isn't it? There was something about that morning, though.
The door shut with a swing of energy that shook the car. I watched her running down the path, in the wing mirror that was still shaking slightly from her efforts.
I took a deep breath. The morning needed one, but the day ahead needed it too. I opened my eyes as the breath came to an end, and noticed that the car parked directly ahead of me was facing in my direction. It was out of the ordinary, so it caught my attention. Generally all cars dropping off and picking us face in the same direction and you see a boot and not a bonnet.
My mind got slightly sidetracked by this change. I started thinking about how Americans call them 'hoods' and 'trunks', and how language shifts over distance and time, and then I looked up and realised someone was now in the car.
In the drivers seat, a lone woman. She hadn't clocked me. She was moving unconsciously. I watched her move the rear view mirror so she could see her face better. I was about to switch on my engine but I stopped. I froze.
Her actions were swift and fluid, and they made my stomach curl. It wasn't so much what she did, but the way my mind translated those actions. It put put meaning to them before I even knew what was happening. I could see behind them, without really looking.
It was her eyes, and the way the skin curled around them. The expression, the depth. The curl around her lips. It wasn't the edge of a smoke. The way she touched her cheekbone, stroking it ever so gently. Twice. All whilst watching herself in the rear view mirror.
It felt like this series of innately innocent movements, made by a stranger, had generated so much deeply personal knowledge that I was not supposed to have. I still can't explain it.
How the unplanned timing of me witnessing the way she gently ran a finger over her cheekbone, under one soul revealing eye, meant I now knew something about her she would not want me know. I simultaneously felt her pain and my guilt.
She quickly re-applied a little concealer, how apt the description, and set the car in to motion. She had gone, but left me changed.
My mind started to tell me that my over active imagination had created a scenario that did not really exist. The spirit in my core was telling me I saw what I saw.
I felt like something had shifted in me. I was changed by realisation.
Haven't we all been that woman? In one way or another? The thing we are trying to cover might look different, but haven't we all been that woman?
Copyright @highcroftwriting 2023
#nanowrimo23 rough draft piece portion.