Years afterward—though that is another story, and this one ends nearer the beginning—there would be a walnut table in a different kitchen, not his mother's, theirs, with rings from coffee cups and a scratch from a dropped pan and the particular shine of furniture that has been used rather than admired. There would be a Polaroid on a mantel of two hands almost touching, faded at the edges the way all artifacts of that decade fade, becoming more precious as the chemicals surrender. There would be a gold handbag retired to a closet like a relic of a white Christmas, brought out sometimes when Claire told the story to friends who had not been on the train and who still laughed at merry train as if they had been. There would be arguments about dishes and forgiveness about silences and the ordinary weather of love—school events, if children came; shop inventories; the question of whether to repaint the bedroom. There would be a cassette Walkman that eventually stopped working and was kept anyway. There would be no pocket computers in the beginning of any of it, no glowing screens to search each other before the risk, only landlines and paper and the nerve to show up.
But on that train in 1986, in a wood-paneled compartment that smelled of lemon oil and wool, all of that was still unwritten, still snow falling on a blank page. What existed was enough: a man of about thirty with a buzzcut and light stubble and calloused hands, camel overcoat and cream cable-knit and brown leather gloves; a woman of about twenty-five with long straight middle-parted platinum blonde hair and glamorous makeup—arched brows, black winged eyeliner, heavy lashes, soft pink blush, dark pink liner and lighter pink lips—wearing an oversized white faux fur coat, white high-neck top, white pants, white gloves, small gold handbag; and the soft, persistent click of wheels carrying them toward the courage they had borrowed from each other for one snow-bright night.
Claire, hanging up the phone that first evening in Burlington, stood in her aunt's hallway and touched her own mouth, remembering. The winged liner had survived the day; the lighter pink had not survived the kiss entirely, and she was glad. Samuel, hanging up in Rutland, looked at the table he had made—honest walnut, steady legs, a surface ready for casseroles and elbows and the empty chair that might, someday, be filled by someone who had once worn too much white on a train—and thought of places to put things down—grief, fear, the old year—and places to pick things up. Neither of them slept easily that night. Both of them slept better than they had in months.
In the morning of the day after that first call, Claire walked Burlington's snowy streets without the full white armor, charcoal coat buttoned, gold handbag still in attendance like a loyal minor character. She bought a postcard of the lake in winter and wrote nothing on it yet. Samuel, in Rutland, sanded a small unevenness on the table's underside that only he would ever know was there, because some corrections are private, and some loves begin that way too—with the quiet fixing of what only you can feel with your hands.
Long after Meg had gone to bed on the night of Samuel's visit, Claire stood in the guest room of the Victorian and unpacked the white coat from its travel bag. She hung it in the closet beside her charcoal and her blacks. It looked like a season she had survived and also like a flag she might raise again on anniversaries. She placed the gold handbag on the dresser. From it she took the Polaroids and stood them against the mirror: Samuel in the compartment; two hands almost touching. Between them she set the punched paper ticket with his number. The mirror reflected a woman with platinum hair and softer makeup and eyes that looked, finally, like they belonged to someone who had stopped auditioning for other people's enough.