The train had already disappeared beyond the mountains, yet the woman remained standing on the platform.
For several minutes after the final passenger had climbed into a wagon and disappeared down the dusty road, Anna Miller still faced the tracks as though the locomotive might suddenly reverse itself and return for her.
It did not.
The rails stretched west beneath the fading evening light, two dark lines disappearing between low hills and distant mountains. Black smoke from the train drifted above the valley, thinned by the cold wind, then vanished into an orange sky.
Around Anna, Willow Creek station was becoming quiet.
A porter rolled an empty baggage cart beneath the wooden awning.
The ticket clerk closed one of the windows.
Somewhere behind the depot, a horse stamped impatiently against packed earth.
A dog barked from the direction of town.
Then even those sounds began to fade.
Anna looked down at the battered brown suitcase beside her boots.
One latch was broken.
The leather at the corners had been worn almost white.
Inside were two dresses, one nightgown, a wool shawl, a worn Bible that had belonged to her mother, a small sewing kit, and a bundle of letters tied with faded blue thread.
Those things represented nearly everything she still owned.
The house where she had grown up was gone.
Her father's farm was gone.
Her mother had been dead for six years.
Her father for eleven months.
The man who had once promised to marry her had changed his mind almost immediately after learning there would be no land and no inheritance attached to the Miller name.
And now the distant cousin who had promised Anna a room and honest work in Willow Creek was gone too.
Anna slowly unfolded the letter in her hands.
The paper had become soft at the creases because she had opened and closed it so many times during the afternoon.
Mrs. Harper, the woman who had once owned the Willow Creek boarding house, had given it to her shortly after Anna arrived.
It had been written by Anna's cousin Clara nearly four months earlier.
Anna had apparently been traveling west while the letter had been traveling east.
Dear Anna,
I am sorry this news will reach you late. The boarding house failed after Mr. Harper became ill, and I could no longer remain in Willow Creek. I have gone north with the Benton family and hope to find work near Helena. I wish I could offer you a place, but I cannot promise shelter when I have none myself. Please forgive me. I pray you have not already begun the journey.
Clara.
Anna had read those lines while standing in the doorway of the abandoned boarding house.
The windows had been boarded.
The sign hung crooked from a rusted chain.
Her cousin was gone.
The promised room did not exist.
The promised kitchen work did not exist.
And Anna had twelve cents in her purse.
She had spent the afternoon asking whether anyone in Willow Creek needed help.
The general store owner listened politely before shaking his head.
The hotel already employed two women.
The laundry had no room.
The dressmaker said winter had been too slow to hire another seamstress.
A widow near the church needed assistance but could offer meals only, not a bed.
The innkeeper wanted fifty cents in advance.
Even the stationmaster had been kind only in the practical way of a man who had seen stranded travelers before.
"You might be better taking tomorrow's eastbound train."
Anna had almost laughed.
With what money?
And more importantly, east to what?
There was no home waiting east.
No parent.
No fiancé.
No room where anyone had saved a place for her.
There were simply towns where people remembered her father's debts and whispered about the strange collapse of her engagement.
Anna sat on the edge of a wooden bench beneath the station lamp.
The evening air had become colder.
She pulled her coat tighter.
Her fingers were numb, but she barely noticed.
For months she had survived by telling herself that Willow Creek represented a beginning.
She had endured crowded railway cars, sleepless nights, stale food, smoke, delays, rude travelers, and the humiliation of calculating every penny because she believed there would be something waiting at the end.
A room.
Work.
A person who knew her name.
Now even that small hope had disappeared.
Anna pressed Clara's letter against her chest and closed her eyes.
"There is nowhere left for me to go."
She had not meant to say the words aloud.
But once spoken, they seemed to settle around her like the night itself.
A few yards away, Thomas Reed was tightening a leather strap on a sack of supplies in the back of his wagon.
His eight-year-old daughter stood beside him.
Lily Reed was supposed to be holding a small parcel from the general store.
Instead she was staring across the platform.
Thomas pulled the strap tight.
"Lily."
No answer.
"Lily."
The girl pointed.
"Daddy."
Thomas straightened.
"What?"
"That lady."
He followed his daughter's gaze.
At first he saw nothing unusual.
A woman perhaps thirty years old sat beneath the station lamp with one suitcase beside her.
Brown hair pinned simply at the back of her head.
Dark traveling dress.
Coat too thin for a Wyoming spring evening.
Then he noticed the letter in her lap.
And the way she was trying to wipe tears from her face before anyone saw them.
"Don't stare," Thomas said quietly.
"I'm not staring."
"You are."
Lily looked at him with the solemn expression she used whenever she believed adults were being unreasonable.
"She looks like she's waiting for someone who isn't coming."