Then he picked up her suitcase — he would not let the porter take it, not this once — and walked her to Car Seven himself, up the steps and down the corridor, past the roomettes with their doors open to the evening, to her roomette, and set the suitcase inside, and stepped back into the corridor. "The car's in good hands," he said. "Mr. Avery's on the roster." Martha felt something turn over in her chest, quietly, like a page. "By the roster's ordinary chance?" she asked, and Mr. Pruett's mouth did something it had probably not done often in thirty years on the run — it almost smiled. "The roster," he said, "does not know what it is doing half the time, ma'am. This time it knew." He touched his cap, and went forward to his duties, and Martha stood in the doorway of her roomette in Car Seven, one year later to the day, and laughed, once, out loud, alone, because she could not help it.
Thomas Avery came down the corridor ten minutes later with his whisk broom, and stopped when he saw her, and the professional composure of twenty-seven years in service held for exactly one second before his face changed. "Mrs. Ellison," he said. "Ma'am." Martha said, "Mr. Avery," and then, because the corridor was empty and they were neither of them on duty to anyone at that moment, she held out her hand, and he took it, and they shook hands like two people who had been through something together, which they had. "I got your note," she said. "Folded inside Mr. Dillard's letter." Thomas nodded. "I hoped you would not mind it," he said. "I minded nothing about it," Martha said. "It was four lines long and it weighed more than the whole railroad." Thomas looked down at his whisk broom, and then up again, and said, "The berth will be made up at ten, ma'am. I will knock." Martha said, "I know you will, Mr. Avery," and he went on down the corridor, and Martha went into her roomette and sat down, and put her handbag on the seat beside her, and looked out the window at Sacramento going past, and thought that some circles close so quietly you only hear them afterward.
Dot Marchetti was in the sections at the end of the car — Martha saw her in the corridor before dinner, and knew her at once, though she was changed the way young mothers are changed, thinner in the face and fuller in the eyes, with a baby on her hip, a solemn dark-eyed baby of about a year, wrapped in a yellow blanket. "Mrs. Ellison!" Dot cried, and came forward, and the baby regarded Martha with the grave attention of the very young, and Martha, who had taught fifty-six children and was not afraid of babies, took the small warm weight into her arms for a moment while Dot talked all in a rush — married a year and a half now, Paul working steady, this was little Paul, named for his father, and they were going home to show him to her mother, and wasn't it the strangest thing, the three of them on this car again, on this very car. "Not strange," Martha said, handing the baby back, which set him to considering her solemnly once more. "Ordinary. The railroad runs where it runs." Dot laughed, and said Paul was in the club car and would want to shake her hand, and Martha said she would like that, and Dot went back to her section with the baby, and the corridor was quiet again.
At the club car door, a little later, a young man in a good suit came out smiling and stopped when he saw her, and Martha knew him at once — not from any photograph, for she had never seen one, but because Dot had described him a dozen times on the train a year ago, talking to fill the silences. "Mrs. Ellison," Paul Marchetti said, and shook her hand with both of his. "Dot told me. I never got to thank you — not you, exactly, but —" He stopped, embarrassed. "For what happened after," Martha said gently. "For the statements." Paul nodded. "She was scared to give hers," he said. "She said you looked at her, that night in the car, and nodded. She said it was like being given permission by somebody who knew." Martha did not remember nodding at Dot Marchetti. She remembered the temperature of the car changing, and Dot crying two berths away. But she said, "I am glad she spoke," which was true, and Paul said, "So am I," and went back inside, and Martha stood in the corridor a moment longer, thinking about how little of what saves us we ever get to see.