Chapter 7
The handkerchief in Maria's pocket was nearly soaked through, and she'd only been on the train since Boston.
She hadn't expected the goodbye to undo her the way it had.
She'd pictured it a dozen times in the weeks before, a brave sort of parting, tears perhaps but composed ones, her father proud and steady on the platform.
Instead he'd held onto her so long the conductor had to call twice, and when he finally let go, he hadn't said any of the things she'd imagined he might say.
He'd only touched her cheek and told her to write the moment she arrived. She’d climbed the steps of the train with her whole chest aching, and she hadn't stopped crying properly until somewhere past Springfield.
She was crying again now, quietly, turned toward the window so the car wouldn't see, when the woman across from her spoke.
"There's no shame in it, dear. I cried the better part of two days when I left my mother."
Maria wiped her eyes and looked up, embarrassed to have been caught. The woman was perhaps fifty, plainly but neatly dressed, with the kind of face that looked like it smiled often.
"I'm sorry," Maria said. "I didn't mean to make a spectacle."
"You haven't. I've seen worse on this line, believe me." The woman shifted to sit a little closer, angling herself so they could speak without raising their voices over the wheels. "I'm Mrs. Carrow. Going out to see my daughter in Flagstaff."
"Maria Burns." She managed a small smile. "I'm going to Arizona too. A town called Mason's Clear."
"Well, isn't that something. We'll be neighbors of a sort, near enough as distances go out there." Mrs. Carrow studied her a moment, kindly. "You're not visiting family, though, are you? You've got the look of someone starting something, not someone going home to it."
"Is it that plain?"
"It's plain enough to somebody who's done the same thing herself, once.
" Mrs. Carrow settled back. "I came out this way twenty-two years ago now.
Newly married, my husband three months ahead of me setting up our claim in a town near Ponderosa.
I remember sitting on a train just like this one, crying into my glove because I didn't own a proper handkerchief yet, and thinking I'd made the worst mistake of my life. "
"What changed?"
"Nothing changed, not right away. I was homesick for the better part of a year.
But I found my feet, the way most folks do, and one day I looked up and realized the homesickness had gone quiet without my noticing it leave.
" Mrs. Carrow's eyes had gone a little distant, remembering.
"And I'll tell you something else nobody tells you before you go.
The world gets smaller once you've crossed it once.
It doesn't feel so very far the second time, or the third.
My mother came out to visit us twice before she passed, complained the whole train ride both times, and loved every minute of it. "
"Do you think my father might do the same?"
"If he loves you the way you're describing, and it sounds to me like he does, he'll find his way onto a train sooner than you'd guess. Fathers usually do, once they've had a season or two to miss their daughters properly."
Maria felt something in her chest loosen, just slightly, at the thought of her father stepping down onto some dusty platform, complaining about the coffee the whole way, same as Mrs. Carrow's mother had. It didn't erase the ache of the goodbye, but it made it feel less final.
"Can I ask you something," Maria said, "that might sound foolish?”
"Foolish questions are usually the only kind worth asking."
"I'm going out to meet a man. Properly meet him, I mean.
We've written for months, but I've never laid eyes on him, and I'm to see if we might suit, and marry.
" She twisted the handkerchief in her hands.
"I keep asking myself if it's madness. Arranging your whole future around a stack of letters and a stranger's good character, or what you hope is his good character. "
Mrs. Carrow considered this with more seriousness than Maria expected.
"It's a gamble," she said finally. "I won't insult you and tell you it isn't. I've known it to go poorly for some women, and I won't pretend otherwise, because you deserve honesty more than comfort right now. There was a town in Colorado years ago called Lost Creek, where a lot of women met wonderful men. Places like that give the whole arrangement a better reputation, and rightly so. But they’re not the whole story.”
Maria's stomach tightened.
“To be fair," Mrs. Carrow went on, "I've known it to go well for a good many.
More than go well, even. Some of the happiest marriages I know out there started exactly the way yours is starting.
A man writes an honest letter, a woman reads it careful enough to know an honest man when she hears from one, and the rest gets built the same way any marriage gets built, which is slowly, and with some effort, whether you started out strangers or sweethearts. "
"I want to believe that."
"Then believe it, and keep your eyes open besides. Those two things aren't opposites, whatever anybody tells you." Mrs. Carrow patted her hand. "What's he like, this man of yours, on paper at least?"
"Kind," Maria said, and found herself smiling despite everything, the way she always did when she thought of Samson's letters.
"Steady. He worries over his children more than he worries over himself, which I think says something good about a person.
He doesn't try to make himself sound grander than he is. "
"That's a fine sign. The ones who try to sound grand than they are usually the ones you want to worry about." Mrs. Carrow smiled. "Sounds to me like you've already half fallen for a man you've never met."
Maria laughed, surprised into it. "Perhaps I have."
"There's nothing shameful in that either.
" Mrs. Carrow looked out at the country going by, wide and gold and endless.
"I only wish there was a way to have it all without the cost of it.
The new life, and the old one too, both at once, nobody left behind and nobody's heart aching on a train platform. "
"I wish that too," Maria admitted. "