“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “That’s not what—”
“No, you’re right.” He kicks at a gray stone on the ground, watching it skip over the pavement. The train is loud beside them, a sound like the rush of waves at the beach yesterday. Beyond the tracks are a rusty water tower and a distant construction site, but otherwise the landscape is flat and gray and muted, nothing to see for miles around. All that emptiness stirs something in Hugo, and he lets the thought float up again like a brightly colored balloon: I don’t want to go back.
“Really,” she says, putting a hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know,” he says, because he does. It’s not her. It’s just the wall she puts up sometimes. But he’s managed to knock enough bricks out by now that he can see through it anyway.
He can see her.
“The truth is,” she says, not quite able to meet his eyes, “you probably know me better than a lot of people in my life do. Which is a weird thing to say, when it’s only been a few days.”
“It’s not, actually,” Hugo says with a smile. “It’s not weird at all.”
She nods, and so does he, and then the whistle sounds, and the conductor—who has been standing nearby—shouts to the passengers still lingering on the platform: “All aboard!”
Above them, the sun is starting to burn through the clouds. The train is louder now, hissing and popping and giving off a hazy heat as they begin to make their way along the length of it. Halfway down, Hugo bends to pick up the gray stone. He slips it into his pocket. Then Mae reaches for his hand and they walk the rest of the way together.
Mae nearly walks straight into a metal post as she gets off the train in Denver, but she’s saved by Hugo, who uses her backpack to steer her around it. She’s busy texting Pop, and then Dad, and then both of them for good measure. She’s written to Nana several times, too, though Mae knows her grandmother is probably sleeping.
All she wants is to talk to one of them. Any of them. It’s been forty minutes since she got reception back, and after eight phone calls and over a dozen texts, she still hasn’t heard a thing, which only deepens the gnawing in her stomach.
“Do you not find it a bit odd,” Hugo asks, “that this is called Union Station too?”
She gives him a blank look.
“Same as Chicago. Do you think Denver copied Chicago, or the other way around? Or maybe there was a bloke named Union who really loved rail stations, and he built—”
“Hugo?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you be offended if I did my own thing this afternoon?”
He tips his head to one side. “Is it because of my theory about Union Station?”
“No,” she says, smiling in spite of herself.
“Then I completely understand.”
At the hotel, which has a life-sized cow sculpture in the lobby, they check in at the front desk. “It’s under Margaret Campbell,” Mae says, once again trying not to think too hard about this. It didn’t bother her at the beginning. After all, it’s her name too. But now, each time they get on the train or give their information at the end of a meal service, she’s reminded again that Hugo is supposed to be traveling with his ex, and she wishes it didn’t bother her as much as it does.
“Any mail for Hugo Wilkinson?” he asks, looking on hopefully as the clerk checks a stack of envelopes. But there’s nothing. “Guess I’m still skint.”
Mae pulls out her wallet. “It’s okay. You can borrow some more.”
“How do you know I’m good for it?”
“I don’t,” she says with a shrug.
He digs in his pocket and hands her a blue button that matches the ones on his jacket. “Collateral.”
“Thank you,” she says, accepting it solemnly. “But you do know we could also just use an app, right?”
“Right,” he says. “Though it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as safe or reliable as a button.”
She nods. “That’s true.”
They drop their backpacks in the room, then walk back downstairs, past the giant cow sculpture, and out the revolving doors. The sky is a bright, cloudless blue, and Hugo takes a deep breath. “What’s that smell?” he asks, and Mae laughs.
“I think it’s fresh air.”
He takes another whiff, looking satisfied by this, then turns to her. “Look, this is a bit awkward, but I’m going to need some space now.”
Mae’s heart swells inexplicably, and she smiles at him. “Is that so?”
“It is,” he says. “I’m not sure if anyone’s told you this before, but you can be bit clingy, and I think—”
“Okay,” she says, laughing. “I’m going. You’ll be all right?”
He puts a hand on his chest. “Me? I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about. I give it three minutes before you start missing me desperately.”
“Three?”
“Maybe even only two.”
“Hey,” she says, and his expression becomes more serious. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he says. “Just ring if you need anything, yeah?”
“I will.”
Once they’ve parted ways—Mae heading in one random direction, Hugo in another—she tries phoning her dads yet again, but the calls go straight to voice mail. She sends another text to Nana, then waits for a second, hoping for a response. But still nothing.
In the distance, the Rocky Mountains are stacked up against the horizon, white capped and imposing. Mae stares at them for a moment, feeling very small, and then she shoves the phone into the back pocket of her jeans and begins to walk in the other direction.
As she waits for a light to change, she notices how spacious it is here, the streets all wide and breezy beneath the sprawling blue sky. It’s so unlike the cramped and busy sidewalks of New York, which is the only city where she’s spent any real time.
“You know what I miss most about Manhattan?” Nana once said when she was staying with them, and Dad—who can never resist an opportunity to tease her—was the first to chime in.
“The rats?” he suggested, which made her groan. Unlike Pop, who grew up there, Dad only lived in the city for a few years after college, and he’s much happier in the Hudson Valley, where there are more trees than people.
“The way you’re never alone,” Nana said dreamily.
“Exactly,” Dad said with a grin. “Because of all the rats.”
Mae knows he doesn’t hate it. Not really. It’s where he met Pop, where they brought Mae home from the hospital, where his whole life began. He might grumble about the smell of the city and the crowds on the subway and the heat in the summer. But mostly, he’s just giving Nana an excuse to defend the place she loves, a small kindness dressed up like something else.
That’s what Mae is thinking about now as she walks the streets of Denver, and about a thousand other memories of Nana too. But when she realizes what she’s doing, she shakes her head, trying to scatter the thoughts. Because this isn’t a memorial. Nana will be fine. She always is.
There’s a bookshop called the Tattered Cover on the opposite corner, and she heads toward it, eager for the distraction. Inside, it’s warm and inviting, with huge wooden beams and rows upon rows of shelves. Mae takes a deep breath, inhaling that particular perfume of paper and glue. By the time her phone rings, she’s on her second loop of the store, deep in the autobiography section. When she sees that it’s Pop, she hurries back out onto the street before picking up, her heart in her throat.
“How is she?” she says instead of hello. “Where have you been? Is everything okay?”
“It’s okay,” he says, his voice gruff. “We’re at the hospital.”
“How’s Nana?”
“She’s doing fine. It was a mild stroke, but they’ve run a lot of tests, and the doctors think she’ll be totally fine.”
“Was it because of the chemo?”
“They’re not sure,” he says. “She’s been through a lot this year. It could’ve been anything. But we all know a measly stroke is no match for your nana. Neither are the nurses, as it turns out. I’m pretty sure she made at least one of them cry over a poker hand.”
Mae loosens her grip on the phone. “Can I talk to her?”