My smile had completely vanished by now, replaced by a cold, prickling sensation at the base of my neck. I looked at the dark-haired figure in the drawings. She was always there, observing him with a stillness that felt heavy. “She’s not familiar to me at all,” I whispered, my heart beginning to thud against my ribs.
Mrs. Gable took a deep breath and slid one final drawing across the table. This one was different from the others. It wasn’t a wide shot of a landscape; it was a close-up. In this sketch, Ethan had drawn himself standing on the sidewalk, and he was reaching up to hold the hand of the mysterious woman.
Above the two figures, Ethan had used a black marker to write in careful, shaky kindergarten letters: “She always waits for me after school.” The simplicity of the sentence felt like a physical blow to my chest, stealing the air from my lungs.
My heart seemed to stop as I stared at the page. The woman in the drawing had no features, just a void where a face should be, framed by that long, hauntingly dark hair. I looked up at Mrs. Gable, and for a moment, neither of us spoke. The silence in the classroom was deafening, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock.
“Rachel,” the teacher finally said, her voice soft but carrying the weight of a terrifying question. “If that isn’t you… and it isn’t a relative… then who is she? And where is Ethan seeing her?”
I couldn’t answer. A rush of memories flooded back—all the times Ethan had waved at an empty corner of the yard, or the moments he had looked toward the school gates before I had even pulled into the parking lot. I had dismissed them as the quirks of a young, imaginative mind.
I gathered the drawings with trembling hands, the wax of the crayons feeling strangely slick against my skin. I needed to go. I needed to find my son, who was currently waiting in the after-school care program just down the hallway. I thanked Mrs. Gable, though my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
As I walked down the corridor, the fluorescent lights seemed to flicker. I found Ethan sitting at a small table, his head bent low over yet another piece of paper. He was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t hear me approach. I stood behind him, my breath catching in my throat.
He was drawing the school gates. He had already finished the fence and the trees. Now, he was carefully sketching a tall, slender figure in a grey dress, standing exactly where I usually parked my car. He was giving her long, flowing hair that trailed down her back.
“Ethan?” I said, my voice barely a whisper. He jumped slightly and turned around, a bright, innocent smile lighting up his face. “Hi, Mommy! Look, I’m drawing the lady who helps me wait for you. She says you’re almost here.”
I looked at the empty space behind him, then back at the drawing. There was no one there, yet the conviction in his eyes was absolute. A wave of maternal protectiveness crashed over me, mixed with a primal, unexplainable fear that I couldn’t shake.
We walked to the car in silence, his hand gripped tightly in mine. As I buckled him into his seat, I glanced back at the school gates one last time. For a split second, I thought I saw a shimmer in the air, a shadow that didn’t belong to any tree or building. But when I blinked, it was gone, leaving me with nothing but my son’s drawings and a question that would haunt my sleep for weeks to come.