“All tickets, please!” called the conductor. Daisy handed over her ticket, which the conductor scanned with some kind of chirping electronic device that looked like a phaser from Star Trek. It gave Daisy a pang, remembering how the conductors used to use a hole punch, leaving the car littered with tiny circles of paper. She had half a dozen paperbacks with old Amtrak tickets as bookmarks, relics of the trips she’d made to the city with her husband and her daughter. That made her feel even worse, realizing that she was now one of those annoying women, prattling on about how much better things used to be.
I’m getting old, she thought, and settled back with a sigh. She had a book, Alice Hoffman’s latest, and there was always her phone, with its games and social media apps and the entirety of the world’s collected knowledge. She could sort through her photos, which she’d been meaning to do forever; she could email the school’s decorating committee, which she had recently joined, to see if anyone had any great ideas for giving Melville’s all-purpose room the feel of a glamorous destination （their theme was “A Night at the Opera.” Hal’s single, non-helpful suggestion had been hiring a fat lady to sing）。
But she didn’t want to read, or scroll through Facebook, and see all the other happy families, the other moms and dads and kids posing on their spring-break vacations. When she’d told Hal about her plans, he’d given her a distracted nod, and barely seemed to be listening. He’d been in a mood ever since their return trip from Emlen, and she wasn’t sure whether it had to do with his only child getting kicked out of the prep school he’d attended or if this was lingering sorrow over his classmate’s death.
Daisy shifted in her seat as the train rounded a curve. The night before she’d asked, one more time, if Beatrice wanted to come with her. She’d found her daughter sitting in the corner, in one of her long, drab dresses, knitting by the light of a candle on her dresser. She looked, Daisy thought, like an eighteenth-century consumptive.
“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” she’d asked.
“No, thanks,” Beatrice replied, shaking her head. She was murmuring knit one, purl two under her breath, and Daisy could tell she was annoyed at the interruption. The electric kettle they’d ordered her at school was steaming on her dresser, next to a biscuit tin and a box of PG Tips teabags. A tiny swashbuckling mouse was posed on Beatrice’s desk. It had a little silvery sword in its hand, clever black boots on its feet, and a black mask over its eyes.
“This is so realistic!” Daisy had marveled, picking it up for a closer look. “Is this real fur?”
“Well, yeah, it’s real fur. It’s a real mouse.”
Daisy, who’d assumed she’d been handling something made of wool, had screamed, and dropped the thing. Well, maybe she’d actually （unintentionally!） thrown it a little. And then she’d had to wrestle it away from Lester, who’d tried to eat it.
“Hey, I made that!” Beatrice said indignantly.
“Sorry,” Daisy said. Her voice sounded faint. “Are you… did it…”
“It’s from a pet store.”
“Was it…” She couldn’t think of how to ask if the mouse was dead or alive when Beatrice obtained it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“Don’t worry. I’m being very sanitary.” Daisy looked down at her daughter’s desk. Once, there’d been a stack of vintage Nancy Drew books there, a collection Daisy had painstakingly assembled a book or two at a time. There’d been a pair of lamps with pink polka-dotted shades and a jewelry box that had once been Daisy’s, with a ballerina who spun to “The Blue Danube Waltz” when you lifted the lid. Now there were bags of cotton batting and cotton balls, loops of fine-gauge wire, scissors and pliers and scalpels, all lined up neatly in a row, along with a box of rubber gloves, and a small dish of tiny beaded eyes.
“So you’re doing taxidermy?”
“Yep.”
“No more needle-felting?”
“No, I’m doing that, too. I’ve actually got two commissions to do this week. A goldendoodle and a Great Dane.”
“Well, I left you and Dad the Indian chicken you both like. You just need to—”
“Put it in a saucepan, heat it on a low flame for twenty minutes.”
“Okay, well, have a good day at school.”
“Bye,” Beatrice said, without looking up from her knitting.