"Good evening."
Back in her roomette she changed for dinner, pinning up her hair the way Clara had taught her, and looked at herself in the mirror. A widow of forty-seven, traveling alone to a new life, with one suitcase and a library book and a teaching certificate in her handbag. She had been afraid, that morning in Dayton, that she would feel like a woman running away. Instead she felt like a woman going somewhere on purpose, which was a different thing entirely.
At a quarter to six she put on her coat and stepped into the corridor, and Car Seven was settling into its evening order — doors closing, the murmur of dressing, Avery moving down the corridor with an armful of fresh towels. The train was climbing now; she could feel the grade in the engine's labor, and through the windows the light was going amber over country that had begun to lift and wrinkle into foothills. The Rockies were ahead, somewhere in the dark to come.
She did not know, walking toward the dining car with the other early diners, that this would be the last ordinary evening of the journey. She did not know that a jewel case would be gone before the second seating ended, or that a brooch would be found where no brooch had any business being, or that by midnight the train would stop at a town she had never heard of and leave her standing on its platform. She knew only that the air smelled faintly of pine now, and that dinner was waiting, and that for the first time in three years she was hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food.
She took her seat in the diner as the steward came around with the menus, and the train leaned into the grade, and the light went down gold over the foothills of Colorado. She folded her napkin beside her plate, and thought of Clara waiting in Sacramento, and of the classroom with her name not yet on the door, and was glad — simply and completely glad — to be going.
Dinner was roast chicken, and the dining car rocked gently on the grade, and Martha ate with the appetite of a woman who had walked the length of the train and back. The steward — Henry, said the pin on his jacket, a man of forty-three with a steward's memory for faces — set down her plate with a small flourish. "Roast chicken travels well, ma'am," he said. "Better than the passengers do on this grade." Two tables away, a well-dressed man of about thirty-eight dined alone behind a folded newspaper, neat as a pin. The Hendersons were at the next table, deep in the dessert list again, and Grace caught Martha's eye and pointed at the pie on Martha's plate and nodded with the solemnity of a woman whose advice had been vindicated. Martha laughed, and the train leaned into a curve, and the coffee in her cup trembled but did not spill. The Hendersons were at the next table, deep in consultation with the steward over the dessert list, and Grace Henderson caught her eye and mouthed something that was either "pie" or "try." Martha chose the pie. Outside the windows the foothills had given way to darker shapes, pine-covered slopes rising on both sides, and now and then the headlight of the train caught a cut of rock and threw it white across the glass.
She lingered over coffee until Henry began clearing for the second seating, then walked back slowly through the swaying cars — the club car with its card players, the coaches with families spread across the seats — and was back in Car Seven a little after seven. The car had the hush of people dressing for the evening or settling in with books. From the open sections at the far end came the murmur of the young couple, the Marchettis — Dot and Paul, she had learned at lunch, married four months, going to her mother's in San Francisco. Dot was brushing her hair in the little mirror, and Paul was reading a newspaper folded into quarters. The drawing room door was closed. Avery passed with a tray of ice for the Vances' water pitcher, and nodded to her.
"Second seating's filling up, ma'am. Car'll be quiet till nine."
Martha changed into her nightgown and robe — the roomette was warm — and sat with her library book, listening to the train climb. The rhythm had changed; the engine worked harder and the curves came more often, and once, on a long bend, she saw the headlight beam sweep across a mountainside and pick out a stand of aspen, gold leaves shaking in the wind of the train's passing. She read three pages and then simply sat, the book in her lap, watching the dark. From the sections came Dot Marchetti's laugh, bright and young, and Paul's lower answer, and then the rustle of the curtains as they settled for the night. Somewhere down the corridor a man coughed, and a door closed softly, and the train's rhythm took them all up like a hand.