Fifteen

I mulled over the weirdness of what had just happened all the way to the other end of the viewing car, which took approximately seven minutes to reach. I stood near the door for three more minutes as Mrs. Berns signed us up on the Valentine Train activities board that had appeared since we’d gone to dinner. My stomach’s wobbles grew more acrobatic as I noted what she was enlisting us for—a makeover, a Hunt for Love event, a Music Mixer, a painting class, an aerobics class, a scavenger hunt, and a geology lesson in the viewing car as we passed through the Rocky Mountains.

“Everything is more fun on a train!”

I nodded. She was turning my words against me. But I knew that attending these events with her was a small price to pay for a train ride that would bring me to Johnny, even if only for a few days.

“Hey,” I asked, changing the subject as we wrestled our way out of the viewing car. We stood for a moment in the quiet bubble that separates cars, a tiny shifting room encased in a rubber accordion with a sliding door on each side. I liked to pretend that it was a foyer on the Star Trek Enterprise. Don’t judge. “Over dinner, you guessed that Terry was traveling to Portland. How’d you know?”

The door in front of us slid open to Car 8 with a pneumatic hiss, and she lowered her voice out of respect to the quieter feel of this car. “Lucky guess. It’s the final stop on the train, and who gets off in Montana or Idaho?”

“Hmm.”

We passed Jed on our way to the rear of the car. Like the rest of the inhabitants, he was asleep, a fuzzy blanket pulled tight up to his neck. Mrs. Berns softly kissed his cheek before heading back. I smiled, grateful to have such wonderful people in my life, even if both of them sometimes got on my nerves.

The remaining cars were also quiet, packed full of people sprawled in various stages of sleep, reading, or playing on mobile devices, or engaging in soft conversations. Even so, it was a relief to reach Sleeper Car 11—no mass of carbon-dioxide producing bodies, no one to accidentally trip into as the train unexpectedly rocked left or right, bright lighting.

“It’s nice to live large,” Mrs. Bern said, echoing my thoughts.

I nodded in agreement. “Do you think it’s weird that our doors don’t have locks on the outside? Like, you can’t lock your room unless you’re in it.”

She slid open our door. Our tiny room appeared just as we’d left it. “I suppose they don’t want to deal with keys, what with people getting on and off every stop and forgetting their keys or whatever. Besides, who’s going to commit a crime on a train? They’d be stuck there. It’s like peeing in your own bed.”

The hiss of the door to my left caught my attention. I glanced over, and my heart jumped. It was Noel, or the girl I’d come to think of as Noel. Just like that, I was brought back to that big silver car and Noel’s wide, terrified eyes before the door closed and that man drove off with her. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I tried to steady myself so I didn’t come across as a creeper. This girl was not Noel, even if I’d connected the two in my mind and subsequently developed an affinity for her.

“Hey,” I said to her mom. If possible, the woman looked even more tired than she had back in the viewing car. “You guys get your warm milk?”

What little color she had drained from her face. I wasn’t doing a bang-up job of not being weird.

“Sorry. I was in the viewing car when you guys ordered it,” I added.

The little girl held up her milk carton, a sleepy grin on her face. Her hair was snarly, as if she’d been sleeping earlier.

I smiled back and held out my hand. “My name is Mira.”

She tucked her rabbit under the arm holding the milk and offered me her left hand as I held out my right. I ended up giving her a strange, upside down shake so our hands fit, and both of us giggled.

“How do you like the train?”

“Good,” she said shyly.

“Me too. Are you guys in one of the sleepers?”

She pointed to the door she was standing in front of, Cabin 1.

“I’m right here!” I pointed to my open door. “We’re neighbors. You guys going to Portland too?”

She nodded. “We’re from New York. That’s where I live.”

She ran forward then and hugged me. It was unexpected, and one of the sweetest things I’ve ever experienced. My heart warmed, and I was leaning forward to put an arm around here when the door to Cabin 1 slid open.

A man loomed in the doorway, his hair black and curly, his eyes scared. He was slender, wiry, around my age. He appeared to be Hispanic. “Aimee?” he asked the little girl, his alarmed glance shooting down the hall. He relaxed slightly when he spotted Aimee’s mom next to us.

“Hi,” I said, extending my left hand because Aimee was still holding my right with a child’s lack of self-consciousness. He took my palm. A wedding ring glinted on his ring finger. His fingers were long and smooth, his hands surprisingly soft. A quick shake, and he released me.

He reached forward and gently pried Aimee off of me. “Sorry if she’s bothering you. She’s friendly. She shouldn’t be out this late”—here he flashed the woman a pained expression—“but she couldn’t fall asleep, and her mom thought some exercise and warm milk would help.”

“I hope it does.”

He nodded, pushed Aimee gently into the cabin, then stepped aside so her mom could enter. He gave me one last look before sliding the door closed and locking it from the inside. Aimee pulled aside the curtain over the door’s window to peek out at me and wave before the cloth was forcibly pushed back and she disappeared from view.

The door of Cabin 3 slid open. It was a busy night on the bridge of the Enterprise.

“Hello, Ms. Wrenshall,” I said even before she poked her head out.

I could almost feel the pause, and then only her head appeared. “I heard a noise out here.”

In our cabin, out of view, Mrs. Berns made the “cuckoo” rolling finger motion before disappearing into our tiny bathroom.

“Sorry,” I said. “It was me talking. I’ll be quieter.”

“I certainly hope so. I mean it. I hope you’re not going to be loud.”

I thought I caught a faint whiff of tobacco. If she was smoking in her cabin, she was going to get in troooouuuble. “I think we’re all going to bed.”

“So you won’t be loud?”

I felt like I had been patient and generous up to this point. I also felt like she was pushing it too far by making me assure her using her exact words: we won’t be loud. I don’t play that game. In fact, it was a hill I was willing to die on. “Pretty sure we’re going to bed.”

She scrunched up her face. “So, loud. You won’t be that?”

“I’m a quiet sleeper.”

She stepped a little farther into the hall. “You’re saying that you won’t be loud, then?”

I could play this all night. There should be awards for this. They’d be called The Pettys, and I’d win them. “I sleep deeply.”

“Not loudly?”

“I bet I’ll sleep even more intensely on a train. It’s like a big rocking baby bed.”

“You won’t be—”

“Oh, for Chrissakes!” Mrs. Berns yelled from inside our bathroom. “We won’t be loud!”

Note to self: bathrooms on trains are poorly sound-proofed.

Ms. Wrenshall’s lips pursed before she scuttled back into her room, slamming the door behind her. I did the same, minus the slam. Mrs. Berns finished up in the bathroom, and when she came out, she surprised me by tossing our luggage to the floor and choosing the top bunk.

“Less stuff will fall on me if the train crashes,” she said.

Made sense to me.

I finished my evening toiletries and crawled into bed. True to my prediction, I fell asleep immediately. It had been a long day. Forget that—it had been a long year. My subconscious reveled in the rhythm of the train, the muffled clackety-clack of the rails underneath us, the metallic shiver as the cars shifted. It was like traveling deep in the belly of a dragon, only safer. I would have happily slept through the night, and thought I had until I was awoken suddenly.

“Hunh?”

Darkness. Random flashes of light outside. The digital clock read 2:34 AM.

I blinked, shapes coming into focus. I’m in a train car.

Once I had myself placed, I backtracked to figure out what woke me. I sat up, the top of my head grazing Mrs. Berns’s bunk. She was snoring softly. Everything else was quiet except for the rumble rumble click, rumble rumble click of the train sliding through the night.

But there it came again, making me jump. A noise like a door being slammed, but not quite that. It was both tighter and more hollow. The sound turned my blood icy.

A gunshot?

It still was February, after all, even if we were on a train.

I was past due to uncover a corpse.