A woman trying to board gives me a wary look, and I smile, shifting to the side so she can get on the train. “Happy holidays.”
“Okay,” she says stiffly, and I start to ask myself who the hell responds to “happy holidays” like that until I remember that Katherine responds that way.
Katherine, who I will strangle if she ever shows up . . .
My phone buzzes, and in my haste to see if it’s from Katherine, I almost drop it.
Not Katherine. Lo.
Hey Babe! Elbow-deep in flour making Christmas cookies with the fam! Wish you were here!
She sends me a selfie of her and my sister. Lo’s hair is pulled into a high, perfect ponytail, and sure enough, there’s flour everywhere. Her smile is bright, Meredith’s just slightly less so, which tells me whose idea the selfie was.
I can’t . . . I can’t deal with any of that right now. Right now, my focus needs to be on getting to Lolo.
To end this nightmare.
I slip my phone back in my pocket and start to reclaim my post with one foot on the train, one off, when an Amtrak employee beats me to it. “You need a hand with your bag? We’re about to depart.”
“No, I’m good. It’s just . . . can you give me two minutes? My friend . . .”
He walks away before I can finish the asinine request, and I sigh. Yeah, that’s fair.
“Damn it, Katherine,” I mutter as I scan the platform once more, but there is, of course, no sign of an aggravating tall brunette, either with a purse or without.
The conductor’s voice comes on over the intercom. “Next stop, Cleveland.”
The picture of Lolo’s face in my messages looms brightly, like a beacon calling me home.
Sorry, Katherine. I did my best, but this is as far as we go.
With one last backward glance, I board the train. Alone.
TWENTY-TWO
KATHERINE
December 23, 9:48 p.m.
You know in cheesy action movies, where they do something fancy with the sound so all you can hear is the sound of the hero’s heavy breathing during a vital plot moment?
It’s like that.
All I can hear is my panting breath and the pounding of my heart as I hurl myself toward platform eleven as fast as my stilettos will carry me.
Oh yeah, and purse flaps at my side, my phone clasped where it belongs, firmly in my palm. Because apparently, Christmas miracles happen even to the Grinch, and the departing train was held up, and my new friends on the quiet car obligingly dangled my bag out the window for me.
Tom was wrong. I can’t wait to tell him.
Finally, I make it to my destination, and for a second, I think I’m still in the movie sound warp because I hear nothing but my thudding heart.
After a moment, I realize I’m not hearing anything because . . .
There’s nothing to hear.
No people. No trains. The platform is completely deserted.
I suck in gasping breaths, trying to get my breathing under control. When I do, I finally register another sound. A soft, brushing swish. I follow the noise to the other side of a large concrete pillar, where a bored-looking janitor is sweeping up crumbs at the base of a trash can.
“Hello,” I say. “Where’s the train?”
He pauses his sweeping but only stares at me.
“Um . . .” I fish a wrinkled ticket out of my pocket. “Cleveland. Train eighty-one. Did they change the platform?”
The janitor resumes his sweeping. “Left.”
I point to my left. “That way?”
He shakes his head. “The train left.”
“Left? It can’t have left!”
Yeah, yeah. I hear the diva, but after the day I’ve had, I really thought there was a decent chance of the universe throwing me a bone.
He shrugs and goes back to his sweeping.
I have an almost uncontrollable urge to burst into tears, something I didn’t do even as a child.
But then, as a child, I didn’t have to endure a day like this one, where I’ve had my head bashed, my bra cut off, my back stitched up, all of which forced me to reunite with my ex-husband due to faulty paperwork.
Oh yeah, and as a child, I wasn’t kicked off a plane or ditched in a Buffalo train station in the middle of a blizzard.
The real kicker? It’s all my fault. Every last drop of horrible that’s happened today? All on me.
I glance down at the phone in my hand, and for the first time in my life, I really, truly ask myself:
Is it worth it?
This obsessive fixation on making partner . . . where has it gotten me, exactly?
And can I even still claim I’m doing it for Dad? Yes, the goal started as a way of honoring his last wish, but somewhere along the way, I’m afraid I crossed a line into far, far more selfish territory.
“You haven’t by chance seen a man lurking around, have you?” I ask the janitor in last-ditch desperation as I slip my phone into the outer pocket of my purse. “Tall, dark-haired? Good-looking, though not as much as he imagines himself to be? Smells a bit like ego and ham?”
The janitor shakes his head, then walks away, clearly having reached his limit with my nonsense.
Just like Tom, apparently.
I feel . . . I don’t know what I feel.
I can’t blame Tom. I don’t blame him. He told me he would leave without me, and he had every right to. I’ve already made him miss a plane; to think he’d give up his last chance of getting home for me a second time is, well . . . unfathomable.
And unfair that I’d even expect it of him.
But knowing all of this, understanding the situation from the logical, rational place that is usually my sweet spot . . .
It doesn’t stop the pain from rolling over me. Pain that has nothing to do with my concussion or the stitches on my back, which I’m pretty sure I ripped loose in my futile attempt to catch the train to Cleveland.
But my aching head and the searing pain in my back don’t hold a candle to the ache in my chest.
With an agonized sigh, I drop heavily onto a hard bench. My purse slips off my shoulder and drops to the ground, my phone slipping out of the exterior pocket and skidding a good foot across the concrete.
I don’t move a muscle to retrieve it. I’ve just risked everything for that damn thing, and yet somehow, now I can’t seem to muster the motivation to pick it up.
Instead I sit there. Aching from the inside out. Glaring at my phone.
Hating it.
Hating myself.
I lift my chin upward, wishing I could see the sky instead of concrete. Wishing I could see my dad. Talk to him. Have him remind me that it’ll all be worth it once I make partner.
It’s what I always do when I get discouraged with the course of my life, when loneliness nips at my heels. I remember Dad and how proud he’d be—will be, from wherever he is—once I fulfill that deathbed vision.
But now, whether it’s because I can’t see the heavens or because of all that’s happened today, I find myself wondering:
Would Dad have wanted this?
Would he want me to be sitting here alone on a bench in a blizzard? Would he want me to be thirty-six and divorced? Would he want me to dread every moment of the Christmas season?
I wish I could ask him if it will be worth it. All the hard work. The sacrifices and losses.
Just the one loss, mostly.
I feel an unfamiliar burning sensation in my eyes, a tingling, prickling feeling I hate. I quickly slam them shut before the tears can escape.