Page 27

Nineteen

Anna stands in the middle of the observation car, the box of rat poison at her feet.

She shifts nervously from one leg to the other as, in the preceding three cars, Seamus rouses everyone from their rooms. Not that anyone requires rousing.

As the others file into the observation car, Anna sees they’re all dressed in the same clothes they wore in the lounge.

No one, it seems, is willing to risk falling asleep.

“Why are we here?” Lapsford grumbles as he enters the observation car.

The reason Anna chose this and not the lounge is because bringing the poison into the same car where a man died from ingesting it struck her as being in poor taste. The observation car, with its row of seats that circle the entire room, is the next-best gathering spot.

But that’s not what Lapsford is asking, Anna knows. She waits until everyone else has arrived before answering it.

“I found this in the galley,” she says.

“ We found it,” Dante adds.

Anna wishes he hadn’t, because it prompts Seamus to ask, “Why were you in the galley with him?”

“We weren’t together,” Anna adds.

Dante nods. “I was making a sandwich.”

“And I was looking for this.” She nudges the rat poison with her foot. “The murder weapon. Now, who’s been in the galley tonight?”

“We all were,” Sal says. “All of us passed through it on our way to the locomotive and back.”

“Did anyone linger there?”

“Not on the way there,” Seamus says. “I was in the back of the pack, so if someone did, I would have seen it.”

“And we took up the rear on the way back,” Dante says.

They’re right, much to Anna’s disappointment. That narrows it down to before everyone gathered in the lounge.

“Was anyone in the galley between seven and eight?” she asks.

“I was not,” Edith says.

Herb chimes in with “Me neither.”

“Nor me,” Sal says.

“If I was,” Lapsford says, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

Anna crosses her arms. “So that’s a yes?”

“It’s a definite no,” Lapsford says. “For me and for everyone else. The only people who were on this train before us were you and your thug.”

Seamus shoots him an angry look from across the car. “Watch the name-calling. There’s a few choice words I could use about you.”

“What about him?” Sal says, pointing to Reggie Davis. “He could have spent hours in there and no one would have been any wiser.”

“Me?” Reggie looks around, his eyes wider than those of an animal about to become roadkill. “I was in the lavatory most of the time.”

“Mr. Davis has nothing to do with this,” Anna says, even though she’s still not entirely sure about that.

While she doesn’t think he poisoned Judd, there remains something slightly suspect about his presence.

Ever since he stumbled into the lounge, she’s sensed that he’s more interested in what’s happening than he lets on.

Lapsford turns and lumbers toward the door. “I’ve had enough of this. You’ve already searched us. None of us had any poison. I’m going back to my room.”

“As am I,” Sal says, trailing him out the door.

The others do the same, leaving just Seamus and Anna. Before she can ask, he sighs and says, “I’ll follow them to make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be.”

Anna remains in the observation car, feeling stupid for thinking this would go anywhere. What did she expect? A confession? As Judd’s death already proved, those on this train who confess get killed.

Now alone in the observation car, she looks through the curved window to the receding length of track they’ve already traveled, cleared of snow by the train’s wheels.

The parallel rails narrow before vanishing over the dark horizon.

All those miles. All those events that brought her to this car, on this night, at this moment.

Looking backward, Anna imagines her entire life stretching behind the train.

As if it were possible to hop off and start the long journey into her past, reversing time.

And that if she walked long enough and far enough, she’d eventually reach the place where her family was still alive and she was still happy and nothing about her current life existed.

It’s a lovely thought. Foolish, too. Because Anna knows that life, just like the train she’s on, can only surge forward.

The things Edith said about her parents earlier stick in her mind like a bad memory.

If they could see her, right this very minute, what would they think?

Anna hopes they’d understand that she’s doing this for them and for Tommy and for all those other people lost that dreadful day.

She hopes they’d approve of her relentless determination.

Yet a small part of her suspects Edith is right.

That her parents and Tommy would indeed weep at what she’s turned into.

That instead of shutting herself away with Aunt Retta, they would have wanted her to meet someone, fall in love, get married.

More than anything, she thinks they’d all want her to be happy.

Something Anna hasn’t been in a very long time.

She drops into one of the observation car chairs. Like the ones in the first-class rooms, they swivel to face the windows. Her father’s innovation. He was so proud of it that he spent most of the Phoenix’s maiden voyage in the chair where she now sits.

Anna remembers finding him here in the wee hours of the morning.

Eleven at the time and too excited by the festivities to sleep, she left the room still dressed in her pajamas.

After padding through the rest of first class, she joined her father in the observation car.

Like Anna, he was too buzzed by the night’s activity to sleep.

But he also wasn’t completely awake. To Anna, it seemed like he was dreaming with his eyes open and a smile on his face.

“Hey, Annie,” he said. “Come sit next to me a while.”

They sat in silence for a long time, her father eventually breaking it to say, “Do you know what we’re on, Annie?”

Anna had rolled her eyes. Of course she knew. “A train.”

“Yes, but it’s more than that.” Her father paused, still wearing that far-off look.

“You know how sometimes you travel in your dreams? You fall asleep and are whisked someplace far away? That’s what this train is.

A dream on wheels. But in this dream, people really do travel.

They board the Phoenix, have a nice conversation, maybe something from the club car, and then, after some time looking out the window and watching the miles fly by, they fall asleep.

And in the morning, they’re somewhere else. Somewhere exciting.”

He held out his hand then and said, “Do you want to dream with me, Annie?”

The sound of the train’s whistle echoes through the night, tugging Anna from her reverie. Sitting up, she looks around, half expecting to see her father beside her, fast asleep.

Instead, she sees Tommy.

He occupies the seat next to her, more skeleton than flesh and blood.

Skin drips from his bones like wet paper and a massive hole sits in the center of his chest. Inside that dark hollow, Anna can see the curve of his ribs and his still-beating heart.

She looks away, to his face, which has melted into a bloody ooze.

A sick, gurgling sound emerges when he opens what used to be his mouth.

“Take care of Mom and Dad for me,” he says.

Anna wakes up, this time for real, snapping out of the nightmare with a full-body spasm. Frantic, she checks the seat next to her. Not that she thinks Tommy will still be there. Not looking like that. More of him exists in her nightmares than what was left after he died.

Still, she’s relieved to see the seat empty. It tells her she’s awake. How long she was asleep, she has no idea. Five minutes? Ten? It was at least long enough for the storm outside to gain intensity, the flakes now bigger and faster.

In that blur of snow, she notices something else. Reflected in the window’s curved glass is the silhouette of someone entering the observation car. Startled, Anna spins the chair around to see who it is.

Edith Gerhardt.

Anna immediately tenses but says nothing. What can she say to the woman who was supposed to take care of her? Who had given her so much comfort yet also caused so much pain?

“I’m glad you’re still here,” Edith says, absently touching her neck.

A silent reminder of what Anna had done little more than an hour ago.

If Edith intends the gesture to make her feel bad, it does, although not because she’s sorry she caused the woman pain.

Anna only feels bad that she lost control, however briefly.

She vows not to let it happen again, even as her blood begins to boil at the unexpected sight of Edith.

“I’m not,” she says.

Edith ignores the jab. “I saw someone exiting the galley. I didn’t want to mention it in front of the others.

I didn’t want anyone to think I was making accusations.

But not long after the train left the station, I went to the dining car, hoping to get a cup of tea.

Finding no one there, I left. But as I was heading back to my room, I spotted someone else leaving the dining car.

Since he wasn’t in there when I peeked in, I can only assume he came from the galley. ”

“Who was it?”

“The lieutenant colonel.”

Lapsford. So he lied about not being there before everyone gathered in the lounge. Anna stands, eager to confront him about it. In order to leave, though, she must squeeze by Edith, who reaches out as she passes, uttering a beseeching “Schatzi.”

Anna evades the touch and makes it to the door, but not before thinking of something else she can say to Edith. Something she needs to say, even though she knows what she should be doing is running away as fast as she can.

“Was any of it real?” she asks, unable to keep her voice from cracking with pain. “The hugs. The comforting. The love and care and devotion for me and Tommy. Did you mean any of it? Or was that all just an act?”