Chapter 18. Maggie
MAGGIE
“Maybe we got the time wrong,” Maggie said. She and Isabel were the only two people standing on the platform at the Port Haven station, and there was no train in sight. “They probably have a holiday schedule.”
“Well, they just sold me a ticket,” Isabel said. “So I’m sure the—”
Maggie’s throat tightened as Isabel grabbed her bag. She no longer cared that Isabel had revealed their fight to her whole family. She just wanted her to stay. Even after she’d parked the car, Maggie did not believe Isabel would go through with it.
The snow fell harder, and Isabel stepped closer to the platform’s yellow-bordered edge as the train slowed to a halt. Maggie held Isabel’s elbow. “Don’t go,” she said.
Isabel’s eyes were teary, and her nose was red—from the cold or crying, Maggie wasn’t sure.
As awful as it had been to leave the house, the expression on Isabel’s face now, a sort of stony resignation, was even worse.
The train settled, the doors opened, and Isabel stepped inside without saying a word.
Through the fogged-up, streaked windows, Maggie watched her slump into a seat in the back of the car.
A shot of panic charged through Maggie’s body, and as the doors were closing, she jumped inside the train. She stood in the corridor to get her bearings. When the train lurched forward, she nearly lost her balance and had to hold on to the backs of the seats as she strode down the aisle.
Isabel startled when she found Maggie standing beside her seat.
The only other passenger in the car—a teenager dressed in all black sitting near the rank-smelling bathroom—looked up from his phone.
“Why are you here?” Isabel asked.
Maggie didn’t know exactly. She hadn’t planned on doing this.
All she knew was she didn’t want to be away from Isabel; if they separated now, that would be the end.
And so here she was, fairly certain Isabel would insist she get off at the next stop and that she looked like a complete fool to someone who’d already decided, perhaps accurately, that she was no longer worth the effort.
When she opened her mouth, nothing came out.
Isabel turned toward the window, but she moved her bag off the seat next to her, and Maggie was relieved at the small gesture. As she sat, she felt the green caboose that she’d taken from Augustus and James earlier in her pocket.
The train pulled away from the station. They faced backward, and within minutes, she’d be motion sick, but she didn’t dare move. She deserved to be ill.
“I’m going to ride with you to Penn,” she said. She wished she’d worn a jacket. The heat didn’t seem to be working in the car, and she could see her breath as she spoke. “Just to make sure you get there okay. If that’s all right?”
Isabel nodded, then returned to the window to watch the snow-covered rooftops and trees passing by backward.
“Actually, that’s not true,” Maggie said, and Isabel turned to face her. “I’m here because I don’t want to let you go. That’s the real reason.”
Isabel drew her knees to her chest. After a moment, she said, “What did you expect would happen?”
“That you’d tell me to get off the train.”
Isabel looked at her, annoyed, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, exposing her long, elegant neck. “I meant, when you went to her house,” she said. “What did you think would happen?”
Maggie sensed Isabel was giving her another opening, an opportunity to explain, and she was desperate to get it right. “I guess I was hoping for some resolution,” she said.
“So you weren’t over her yet.”
Maggie sat up. “No,” she said. “That’s not it.” How could she explain? “Things ended so suddenly it was disorienting. She was the person I spoke to every day, all day, and then without a warning, she was completely out of my life.”
There had been so much shame about the relationship—everything hidden—that Maggie rarely talked about it with anyone.
Sharing this with Isabel now was edifying, and she wished she’d done so earlier and in different circumstances.
For the first time in the last hour, Isabel didn’t seem upset. Curious, maybe.
“It fucked me up,” Maggie continued. “By the time I met you, I had no interest in getting back together with her. It was a pretty shitty relationship, to be honest. Like every relationship I’ve had besides you.
But the whole thing still felt unresolved.
When she invited me over, I thought—well, I never had the chance to look her in the eyes and say—I don’t even know.
Goodbye? Nice knowing you? I hope it’s not awkward when I see you at Oliver’s graduation? That’s all I was looking for.”
Isabel grimaced. “But instead you kissed her.”
“She kissed me—”
“See, that’s the problem.” Isabel crossed her arms. “That’s why I left your parents’ house. You won’t take any responsibility. Kisses don’t just happen . There’s generally a lead-up.”
She was right, but Maggie figured it was safer not to say anything at all.
Isabel turned to her again. “You know, it’s not like I haven’t been in my own messy situations.”
“Like what?” Isabel’s dating history had always struck Maggie as almost irritatingly healthy and upright—no infidelity or toxicity. It was one of the reasons Maggie hadn’t shared details of her own muddled past. Now she was wildly curious.
“I’ll tell you another time,” Isabel said. “The point is, you can’t just say sorry and make it all go away. Your experiences, your life—you have to deal with things. I mean, no offense, but she doesn’t sound like she was all that great. Why were you even with her?”
The answer to this question was easy. “I was lonely,” Maggie said. Maybe that sounded lame, but she had been, profoundly so, and she had a feeling she would be again very soon.
Isabel sighed, as if the answer didn’t quite satisfy, and stretched her legs out on the seat in front of her.
Maggie tried again. “It’s always been easy for me to be with people who wanted to keep me a secret. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
“You can’t just blame other people,” Isabel said, but her face softened. “You’ve done that to yourself, too. You’ve kept yourself a secret here with me. You’ve withheld so much.”
Maggie did not want this to be true, but she knew it was, so she nodded.
The interior train doors opened, and the conductor entered the car. “Tickets! Have your tickets ready!”
Fuck.
Isabel handed the conductor her ticket, and as he punched the holes, Maggie said, “I’m so sorry, sir. I don’t have a ticket. I caught the train last minute and—”
“It’s three dollars more if you didn’t buy ahead.”
Finally, a problem she could solve. “Sure. Of course.” It was then she realized she’d left her bag in the car. She turned to Isabel. “I don’t have my wallet.”
Isabel paid for Maggie’s ticket, and the conductor made his way toward the teenager.
“I’ll pay you back,” Maggie said.
Isabel waved her hand and slid her wallet into her bag.
After a moment, Maggie said, “I wish there was a way I could show you that what happened—it wasn’t about us.”
“Actually, you’re not the one who gets to decide that,” Isabel said. “It was about us. Look at how it’s impacted us. Look at where we are now.” She paused, then continued. “You’ve never even talked to me about your relationship with Sarah. You just mentioned it offhandedly when we first met.”
“I know.”
Isabel seemed to think of something. “Can I see a picture of her?”
Maggie wasn’t expecting this. She took her phone out of her back pocket, relieved there wasn’t another text from Sarah, and scrolled through her pictures for the first photo she could find that was just Sarah and not the two of them together.
She finally found one from a year ago. A dinner at a restaurant in Amherst. They’d shared a plate of gnocchi and a bottle of pinot noir as they sketched different layout options for Maggie’s new cabin on the back of the menu.
A different life. She handed the phone to Isabel and watched her study the photo.
She wasn’t sure if this disclosure would make things better or worse.
Sarah was objectively beautiful, but she wasn’t someone Maggie could ever imagine Isabel finding attractive.
“She just seems so…” Isabel said, then stopped.
“So?”
“Like a mom from Grove.”
“Well, she is.”
Isabel let out a laugh, and Maggie smiled a little. She didn’t want Isabel to think she was making light of it all.
“She couldn’t be more different from me.” Isabel handed the phone back to Maggie.
Maggie sat on the edge of her seat. “She couldn’t.
Everything is different with you. And that’s the point.
I want you .” She reached for Isabel’s hand again and entangled their fingers.
It might as well have been their entire bodies reconnecting, and her chest tightened as desire coursed through her. “You’re the one I want to be with.”
Isabel pulled her hand away and turned back to the window. “I wish you had known that last weekend.”
“I did know.” Maggie scooted closer. “That’s never been in question.”
She was trying to be as honest as possible, but she’d already obliterated Isabel’s trust, and when Isabel didn’t respond, she worried it was too late.
The storm was quickening, and the train swayed with the wind. They rode along in silence.
Then Isabel turned back to face Maggie. “What about the other texts? When I scrolled, there weren’t others—”
“I erased them,” Maggie blurted out before she lost her nerve.
Isabel nodded, as though this confirmed something for her that was troubling. Maggie imagined her thinking she and Sarah had been sending flirty texts since that night in Boston, perhaps before then.
“I hadn’t talked to Sarah since you and I met,” Maggie said, “and I didn’t talk to her after I left her house. When I got her message on Wednesday, I panicked and erased the whole thread.”
“That’s convenient.”
Nothing about any of this felt convenient.
“And, you know, this isn’t just about us,” Isabel said. “A student’s parent? Who’s married to a board member?”
“About that.”
Isabel looked up.
“Cunningham asked me to come to his office on Monday. I’m worried it has to do with what happened.”
Isabel shook her head. “I just can’t believe you were so reckless. It’s not like you. Even with your job—which you love so much.”
And you, Maggie thought. I love you. She wished she could say the words—she’d known this for some time, but she feared it would only come off as desperate to say it now.
Instead, she said, “It didn’t feel reckless at the time. Obviously I see it that way now. But then—I was in a sort of haze.”
The train was slowly pulling into the first station when it jerked to a stop.
Maggie and Isabel looked at each other. The power switched off, and they could hear the thump, thump of the teenager’s music blaring from his headphones in the silence.
Then the power returned and a voice over the loudspeaker reported that they’d suspended service on the line due to frozen tracks.
The conductor came through to let them know a van would be arriving soon to transport riders to a bus terminal in a nearby town, where they could use their tickets for a ride to Penn Station.
The teenager stormed out of the car.
The lights flickered again, and the conductor emerged through the back doors. “Let’s go, ladies. Your chariot awaits.”
Maggie stood and carried Isabel’s bag. They followed the conductor onto the snowy platform, where Maggie called Kyle to ask for a ride.
As reliable as always, her brother-in-law was the most likely to be sober and the least likely to demand anything more than small talk.
They waited in silence, and Maggie hoped Isabel would agree to go with her, so she might have another chance to make things if not right, then at least better.