Chương 2
Ethan rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“She was trying to call the conductor.”
“That’s generally what people do on trains.”
“She was trying to get off.”
Lena stared at him.
“At a station.”
“It wasn’t a station. It was a maintenance platform in a tunnel.”
“I saw lights and a door.”
“You couldn’t even see the ground.”
“So you grabbed me.”
“I stopped you from opening the exterior door while the train was moving.”
“You locked me in afterward.”
Ethan looked at Richard as though he expected some recognition of reasonable behavior between men who understood emergencies.
Richard gave him none.
Martha removed her coat slowly.
“You locked her in a compartment?”
“For eight minutes.”
Lena laughed once.
It was not amusement.
“Good. We’ve reached the part where duration makes it better.”
Ethan flinched.
The train continued vibrating even while stopped, the locomotive idling far ahead. Rain hammered the roof. Low strings from the lounge sound system had stopped with the emergency power switch, leaving the mechanical sounds of the carriage exposed.
Richard looked toward the locked conductor’s cabinet built into the walnut wall.
“Where are the documents?”
Ethan’s face changed again.
Lena saw that too.
“What documents?”
Richard turned toward him.
“You told me you brought Evelyn’s papers.”
Lena looked from one man to the other.
“Evelyn.”
Nobody answered quickly enough.
“Who is Evelyn?”
Martha lowered herself into the chair beside the door.
Richard’s attention remained on Ethan.
“My wife.”
Lena looked at the bracelet.
“Dead wife.”
Richard nodded once.
The correction seemed to cost him.
“My wife who died twenty years ago.”
Lena’s gaze shifted to Ethan.
“You told me the bracelet belonged to someone named Evelyn.”
“I did.”
“You did not tell me Evelyn was Richard’s wife.”
Ethan’s voice was nearly a whisper.
“She was my mother.”
Rain rattled against the glass.
Lena sat very still.
Richard had helped raise Ethan. She knew that. Ethan had told her his biological father disappeared when he was young and that Richard had been “around afterward,” a phrase Lena had always heard as evidence of an ordinary, difficult blended family.
She had never heard Evelyn’s name.
Not once in five years.
“You buried your mother with that bracelet.”
Richard answered.
“I buried my wife with it.”
Lena looked at Ethan.
“And you took it out.”
He said nothing.
Martha closed her eyes.
Lena’s cut finger had begun bleeding again. A thin line reached her knuckle.
She picked up the bracelet for the first time since slamming it down.
The engraved plate was warm from the lights.
LENA.
Nothing else.
No date.
No surname.
No explanation.
She put it in her palm and curled her fingers around it.
“Open the cabinet.”
Ethan shook his head.
“The conductor has the key.”
“You put something in there.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
He glanced at Richard.
That was enough.
Lena stood.
Ethan instinctively stepped back.
The movement was small, but everybody noticed it.
“Don’t come near me,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking it.”
Despite everything, Martha made a soft sound that might have been a laugh if the room had belonged to different people.
Ethan looked at her.
Martha wiped water from her cheek with the side of her hand.
“Sorry,” she said. “Bad habit. I laugh when rooms become unbearable.”
Richard turned toward her.
“You knew she would be here.”
Martha looked at him for several seconds.
“Yes.”
Lena felt the bracelet edges pressing into her palm.
“Who invited you?”
Martha did not look at Ethan.
That told Lena before she answered.
“He did.”
Ethan leaned both hands against the back of an empty chair.
“I was going to tell everyone tonight.”
Lena stared at him.
He added, “Before dinner.”
“You ordered champagne.”
“I know.”
“You arranged flowers in our compartment.”
“I know.”
“You told me this was an anniversary trip.”
“It is our anniversary.”
“Please stop making things worse.”
He nodded and looked down.
That obedience somehow frightened her more than an argument would have.
A knock sounded at the carriage door.
A uniformed attendant entered with a flashlight and a first-aid case. She was in her forties, with short black hair and the efficient expression of someone whose evening had already contained several unrelated emergencies.
“Everyone okay in here?”
Her eyes took in the tipped silver pot, Martha’s wet clothes, Lena’s bare feet, Richard’s uniform, Ethan’s face, and the blood.
Then they stopped on Lena’s wrist.
The attendant’s expression did not change, but her voice did.
“Ma’am, are you injured?”
Lena looked at Ethan.
He looked away.
“Yes.”
The attendant set down the case.
“Do you feel safe staying in this car?”
Ethan straightened.
Lena answered before he could.
“Not if my husband stays here.”
The word husband landed differently now.
The attendant nodded.
“Understood.”
Richard said, “I can accompany—”
The attendant lifted one hand.
“With respect, sir, I asked her.”
Richard stopped.
Lena liked the woman immediately.
She also disliked that she liked anyone at all at that moment. It felt irresponsible, as if having one uncomplicated opinion might make the rest of the night less serious.
“I want to stay here,” Lena said. “He can go.”
Ethan’s face tightened.
“Lena.”
“You said you wouldn’t come near me.”
“I’m not.”
“Then go somewhere else.”
The attendant looked at Ethan.
“Sir.”
Ethan took a breath through his nose.
“Fine.”
He reached into his pocket.
Lena stiffened.
He slowly removed a brass key tag and set it on the table.
“Compartment seven. Your phone’s inside.”
She did not touch it.
The attendant picked it up instead.
“I’ll have somebody retrieve your belongings.”
May you like
Ethan looked at Lena one more time.
She had spent five years learning his expressions. The tiny crease above his nose when he thought somebody was being unfair. The little shift of his jaw before he apologized for something he still believed he had been right to do. The way his left thumb rubbed against the side of his index finger when he was afraid.
