Chapter 7 - THE UNKNOWN PASSENGER
The train from Philadelphia to Altoona smelled of stale upholstery, damp wool, and the bitter diner coffee Clara had bought from a vending machine in the station at Harrisburg.
She sat by the window in the second car, her fingers curled around her daughter’s small, warm hand while the child slept with her head pillowed against Clara’s wool coat. On Sophie’s lap, clutched in both arms like a life jacket, was the gray plush rabbit with the yellow-threaded belly.
Through the double-paned glass, the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania slid past in a blur of autumn gold and dying scrub oak. The sky was the color of lead, heavy with the promise of early snow before the week was out.
"Are we going to see Mr. Dominic?" the little girl murmured without opening her eyes, her voice small and sleep-thickened against the rattle of the rail joints.
Clara didn't answer right away. She looked down at the child’s crooked pigtails, then out at the empty fields where fence posts flicked past like picket lines in a forgotten war.
"No, Sophie," Clara said softly, her fingers tightening slightly around the child's small knuckles. "Mr. Dominic is busy with his books today."
"Did he like his picture?"
"He liked it very much," Clara lied, her voice steady, though her throat felt tight as dry parchment. "He put it right where he could see it from his desk."
At the front of the carriage, the ticket conductor—a middle-aged man with a blue cap pushed back on his forehead and a stub of a pencil behind his left ear—punched a yellow slip of paper and slid it into the metal rack above their heads without looking down.
Clara reached into her pocket and touched the envelope Marco had given her before he put them on the southbound bus at three in the morning—a plain manila envelope containing three thousand dollars in old, circulated bills and a train ticket that didn't have her real name on it.
There was no note inside from Marco. There was only a small receipt from a hardware store in Media, Pennsylvania, for two yards of yellow thread and a box of steel needles.
May you like
She turned her face back to the window. In the glass, her own reflection stared back at her—tired eyes, dark circles under her lashes, and the faint, permanent shadow of a woman who had lived too long in a house built on secrets. But behind her, in the seat across the aisle, a man in a gray trench coat lowered his newspaper just enough to watch the reflection in the glass before turning back to the financial pages.
Marco hadn't taken the northbound train after all.
