He pauses his sweeping but only stares at me.
“Um . . .” I fish a wrinkled ticket out of my pocket. “Cleveland. Train eighty-one. Did they change the platform?”
The janitor resumes his sweeping. “Left.”
I point to my left. “That way?”
He shakes his head. “The train left.”
“Left? It can’t have left!”
Yeah, yeah. I hear the diva, but after the day I’ve had, I really thought there was a decent chance of the universe throwing me a bone.
He shrugs and goes back to his sweeping.
I have an almost uncontrollable urge to burst into tears, something I didn’t do even as a child.
But then, as a child, I didn’t have to endure a day like this one, where I’ve had my head bashed, my bra cut off, my back stitched up, all of which forced me to reunite with my ex-husband due to faulty paperwork.
Oh yeah, and as a child, I wasn’t kicked off a plane or ditched in a Buffalo train station in the middle of a blizzard.
The real kicker? It’s all my fault. Every last drop of horrible that’s happened today? All on me.
I glance down at the phone in my hand, and for the first time in my life, I really, truly ask myself:
Is it worth it?
This obsessive fixation on making partner . . . where has it gotten me, exactly?
And can I even still claim I’m doing it for Dad? Yes, the goal started as a way of honoring his last wish, but somewhere along the way, I’m afraid I crossed a line into far, far more selfish territory.
“You haven’t by chance seen a man lurking around, have you?” I ask the janitor in last-ditch desperation as I slip my phone into the outer pocket of my purse. “Tall, dark-haired? Good-looking, though not as much as he imagines himself to be? Smells a bit like ego and ham?”
The janitor shakes his head, then walks away, clearly having reached his limit with my nonsense.
Just like Tom, apparently.
I feel . . . I don’t know what I feel.
I can’t blame Tom. I don’t blame him. He told me he would leave without me, and he had every right to. I’ve already made him miss a plane; to think he’d give up his last chance of getting home for me a second time is, well . . . unfathomable.
And unfair that I’d even expect it of him.
But knowing all of this, understanding the situation from the logical, rational place that is usually my sweet spot . . .
It doesn’t stop the pain from rolling over me. Pain that has nothing to do with my concussion or the stitches on my back, which I’m pretty sure I ripped loose in my futile attempt to catch the train to Cleveland.
But my aching head and the searing pain in my back don’t hold a candle to the ache in my chest.
With an agonized sigh, I drop heavily onto a hard bench. My purse slips off my shoulder and drops to the ground, my phone slipping out of the exterior pocket and skidding a good foot across the concrete.
I don’t move a muscle to retrieve it. I’ve just risked everything for that damn thing, and yet somehow, now I can’t seem to muster the motivation to pick it up.
Instead I sit there. Aching from the inside out. Glaring at my phone.
Hating it.
Hating myself.
I lift my chin upward, wishing I could see the sky instead of concrete. Wishing I could see my dad. Talk to him. Have him remind me that it’ll all be worth it once I make partner.
It’s what I always do when I get discouraged with the course of my life, when loneliness nips at my heels. I remember Dad and how proud he’d be—will be, from wherever he is—once I fulfill that deathbed vision.
But now, whether it’s because I can’t see the heavens or because of all that’s happened today, I find myself wondering:
Would Dad have wanted this?
Would he want me to be sitting here alone on a bench in a blizzard? Would he want me to be thirty-six and divorced? Would he want me to dread every moment of the Christmas season?
I wish I could ask him if it will be worth it. All the hard work. The sacrifices and losses.
Just the one loss, mostly.
I feel an unfamiliar burning sensation in my eyes, a tingling, prickling feeling I hate. I quickly slam them shut before the tears can escape.
“It would serve you right, you know,” a low voice says from behind me. “If you were to fall asleep here, with no one to wake you up.”
My eyes pop back open again, and though my vision is blurry with the unshed tears, I know the voice. That horrible, wonderful voice.
I lift my face toward Tom as he comes around the bench to glare down at me. His expression is frustrated and stormy, understandingly so. Though when my eyes make it all the way to his, he blinks in surprise at what he sees.
I know he knows how close I’ve just come to crying, and that he doesn’t mention it is the kindest thing he’s done all day. Considering what he’s sacrificed, that’s saying something.
“I thought you’d left,” I whisper.
He runs a hand through his hair. “Thought about it. Changed my mind, for some unfounded reason. Then damn near broke my neck jumping off a moving train.”
For me. He doesn’t add it, but I feel it. Know it. Tom jumped off a train. For me. Just like he came to the hospital for me. Got off a plane. For me.
Because he’s St. Tom?
Or because of something else?
I so desperately want to ask, but I quickly wipe away my tears and say the expected thing instead.
“It’s a bummer you bungled it. The neck breaking, I mean.” I frown. “Wait. I’m not your emergency contact, am I?”
He lets out a genuine laugh. “No. God, no.”
I smile. “Yeah. Then bummer you bungled it.”
Tom lets out a defeated sigh and drops down onto the bench beside me. His shoulder presses against mine, but he makes no effort to move away.
Neither do I.
“Katherine?”
“Yeah.”
“I hate you,” he says without heat.
I smile a little and can’t resist saying, “And yet, you jumped out of a train for me.”
I await his comeback, but when he gives none, I glance over at him, surprised to see his expression serious, though no longer angry.
“Well, here’s the thing, Kates,” he says after a moment, still not looking at me.
I quickly turn my head away and face forward, the old nickname leaving me a little vulnerable. A bit yearning. “Katie” he uses because he knows I don’t like it. “Kates” is a different thing entirely. A name only he ever called me, a name that I’m not even sure he’s fully aware of, but that simply slips out when his guard is down.
“What’s the thing?” I nudge when he doesn’t continue.
This time it’s him who turns toward me. He waits patiently until I turn to look back at him. When I do, when our eyes meet, something shifts, the moment suddenly filled with memories, but something else too. Something trickier.
“The thing is,” he says softly, “I wanted to leave you. I meant to leave you. But then I realized how well I know you. And I know that if I left you here to die of your stubbornness, you’d commit yourself fully to haunting me for the rest of my days.”