The train lurched, then smoothed into motion. The amber lampposts slid backward into memory. Claire peeled off her white gloves with deliberate care and laid them across her lap like two polite ghosts. Samuel set his brown leather ones on the seat beside him and rubbed a hand over his buzzcut, a habit that betrayed nerves. His camel overcoat settled around him with the tired grace of a garment that had known many winters. Beneath it, the cream cable-knit sweater looked handmade, or at least handmade-adjacent—thick, honest, the kind of knit that held warmth the way good stories held meaning.
"Vermont?" he asked, nodding at the destination stamped on her ticket's edge, which he had glimpsed when she flourished it.
"Burlington. My aunt's house. Victorian, drafty, full of porcelain angels and opinions." She studied him with the frank appraisal of someone whose job was to notice how people assembled themselves. "You?"
"Rutland. My mother's. First Christmas without my father." He said it simply, without fishing for sympathy, the way a man mentions weather. "He died in March. Heart. Quick, which people keep telling me is a mercy, as if speed were the same as kindness."
Claire's expression shifted—not into pity, which he would have hated, but into a quieter attention. The winged eyeliner did not soften; the look behind it did. "I'm sorry. Really."
"Thank you." He glanced at the darkening glass, where their reflections sat beside each other already, as if the window had decided ahead of them. "She asked me to come early. Bring the table I was building for her. It's in the baggage car, wrapped like a hostage. Walnut. He always said walnut was honest wood."