Vanished Passenger

               

                Last fall my family was in our Honda Pilot making our way up to Lake Erie for the weekend when I noticed a woman driving a little green car beside us who seemed to be talking a lot to her passenger in her car.

          The woman sitting beside the female driver looked just like her, however 20 years older. I thought it must be her mother and they were clearly on a road trip. How fun!

          The lady in the passengers’ seat sat smiling and listening to the driver as she spoke and the driver seemed happy and deep into conversation with her, or so it seemed each time she passed us or I; her, in the heavy road traffic we were experiencing on the highway.

          However, the fourth time the little green car passed, I noticed something quite alarming.  Looking into the little green car next to me, on my left, while driving; I NOW SAW THAT THE WOMAN’S PASSENGER SEAT WAS EMPTY!!

          That’s right, EMPTY! 

          I only saw the female driver I had been seeing the whole trip, but now she was alone. Her passenger had suddenly vanished.

           I was shock. I soon remembered how I thought the driver was talking to the passenger most of her trip and with my mouth gaping open, I tapped my husband quickly, who sat next to me in our car.

           “Look into that car!” I exclaimed still driving up I-75 next to the little vehicle.

           “Yeah,” he said looking confused.

          “Do you see an older woman in the passengers’ seat next to the driver?” I asked.

          “No,” he replied and looked at me strangely. I told him I had seen a woman in the passenger’s seat each time we had passed until now and described the lady I had seen. “Now she is gone!”  I said as I looked at him totally freaked out.

          My husband told me he hadn’t seen anyone in the passengers’ seat when we had passed her before. I was completely stunned, yet the situation got even more surprising!

           I told him I had seen the woman driving and talking to the passenger this whole trip, how could she be gone?  That is when he pointed to the little car and said, “See…” my husband said as he pointed into the car driving next to us. “The woman is probably talking into her phone, and it’s on speaker.”

          He was right. I looked over and into the car.  I thought the woman driving the car was talking to the passenger this whole time, however now I noticed her phone hanging in the middle of her windshield, inside her car, from a cell phone holder. She must have been speaking into her phone this whole time and I thought she was talking to the person next to her.

          It’s important for readers to know that neither I nor the female driver in the little green car had stopped or pulled off the road during the hour drive our family drove on the same road, close to her car in heavy traffic.  

          So how did the older passenger in the little green car vanish into thin air?  It’s simple; she was the driver’s deceased mother paying her daughter a visit!

 

©Rosella C. Rowe