Part 4
She saw him before he could say her name.
Her free hand closed over the coins. For a heartbeat she stood so still that he thought she might not recognize him. Then she lifted the boy off the ground, turned, and hurried toward the far exit.
Grant set off after her.
“Nora!”
People moved between them. He went around a man wrestling with a suitcase and nearly collided with a woman stepping off the train. Ahead, the child’s hat had slipped sideways. Nora held him against her chest and kept moving.
Grant reached her near a bench where the platform narrowed. His hand rose toward her shoulder, then stopped short.
“Wait. Please.”
She turned with her back close to the bench. The boy had begun to cry, not loudly, but with the frightened breathlessness of a child who didn’t know what he was escaping.
Grant took one look at Nora’s face and stepped back.
There were shadows beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were too hollow. The coat that had looked merely shabby at a distance was frayed along the fastening, and one of her shoes had separated slightly at the toe.
“Move,” she said.
He realized he was standing between her and the exit. He moved at once.
“You can walk away. I’m not stopping you.” His own breathing sounded harsh to him. “But let me hear you first.”
She adjusted the boy higher on her hip. “You’ve got a train.”
“It can leave.”
“Grant.”
“I called you. I called your house. I thought—” He stopped, hearing how much accusation still lived in his voice. “My mother said you were having Dean’s baby. She said there were pictures.”
Nora’s shoulders jerked at Dean’s name.
Grant noticed. He had spent years learning the small movements people made before they could control them. He kept his hands down where she could see them.
A conductor called from behind him. “We need you aboard, sir.”
Nora looked past his shoulder. “Go.”
He shook his head.
The conductor approached far enough to be heard without shouting. “Your duffel’s at the door. Are you continuing with us?”
Grant turned. “No. I’m staying here. Could you set it down?”
She followed his glance to Nora and the child, then went back for the bag. Her face made clear that he had complicated her afternoon, but she lowered it onto the platform.
“Make sure you’ve got everything.”
He thanked her without checking.
The warning sounded. Doors closed along the train. Nora stood beside the bench, watching him as though she expected him to change his mind at the last second.
He didn’t.
When the train had pulled out, Grant retrieved his bag. Nora lowered the boy to the ground, and the child leaned against her legs, looking up at this stranger who had caused so much trouble.
“Can we get away from everyone staring?” Grant asked.
She glanced around. A few people were still watching them. After a moment, she nodded toward the station exit.
They found a small public square behind the building. Rain had collected along the slats of the benches. Nora wiped one with her sleeve before sitting, then drew the boy into her lap.
Somewhere behind them a bus hissed at the curb and pulled away. The boy watched it go, one hand fisted in his mother’s collar, then turned back to study the stranger in uniform.
Grant stayed on his feet until she shifted slightly, leaving room at the other end.
A bus knelt at the curb with a sigh of brakes. Someone across the street was dragging a stack of plastic crates inside a shop. Grant rested his duffel beside his foot and tried to find a question that wouldn’t sound like another charge against her.
“Is somebody hurting you?”
Nora looked at him sharply.
“I need to know whether you’re safe.”
“We manage.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s what I can tell you.”
The boy hid his face inside her collar. She rubbed his back with the flat of her hand. Her knuckles were split, and there was a fine tremor in the fingers spread against his coat.
Grant lowered his voice. “I don’t want another person’s account of your life. I want yours.”
“You had mine once.”
He looked down at his hands.
“My mother said things I couldn’t get past.”
“And you let that be the end of it.”
He could have described the calls that wouldn’t connect, the hospital, the days afterward. Sitting beside her worn shoes, none of it sounded like an answer.
“I stayed away,” he said.
Nora kept rubbing the boy’s back.
“I should’ve come and looked for you.”
She lifted her eyes. “I kept thinking you would.”
Grant’s fingers tightened together. He forced them apart and laid them on his knees.
The boy turned his head. He had stopped crying and was studying Grant now, his gaze solemn beneath the displaced hat. His curls were a lighter brown than Nora’s hair. His chin had a stubborn set Grant recognized with an uncomfortable tug of memory.
“How old is he?”
“Three.”
Grant tried to do the arithmetic and lost his place halfway through it.
The boy looked at the bag by his boot, then at the name on his uniform. Nora straightened his hat and tucked one small ear beneath it.
Grant waited until she had finished.
“What do you call him?”
For the first time, she seemed unable to look at either of them. She swallowed, then met Grant’s eyes.
“Grant Thomas. He goes by G.T…”
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