"Of what?"
"Of you. Of the woman who photographs beginnings and dresses like a snowstorm and corrects strangers' grammar mid-disaster." He exhaled. The compartment suddenly seemed to have less air. "Sorry. That was forward. We've known each other for the length of a bad movie."
"It was accurate," she said softly. "Accuracy is allowed. Especially after merry train. And for what it's worth, this is a better movie than most of the ones playing at the multiplex. Worse special effects. Better dialogue."
Somewhere past Albany the snow thickened into a white blindness that erased the distinction between sky and field. The train slowed, then slowed further, then settled into a patient crawl that suggested the rails themselves were negotiating. An announcement crackled through the speakers: weather delay, tracks being cleared outside Saratoga, please remain patient, complimentary cookies in the lounge that had been baked in a previous administration. Claire and Samuel looked at each other and, without discussion, began to laugh again—not the startled burst of the platform, but something lower, shared, the laugh of two people who had already accepted that the night would not follow any plan filed in triplicate at any reservation desk in Manhattan.
"Stuck," she said, still wearing his camel coat like a borrowed future.
"Stuck," he agreed. "With powdered-milk chocolate and a double-booked destiny and cookies that predate this decade."