Page 7 of Past Lives
When she pulls her hand away, she almost blushes. I can’t tell if it’s from the handshake or because she’s noticed something about me she can’t ignore.’re both New Yorkers,” she says. “Both travelers. Both today’s only company.” She stacks her hands, flattening them, then looks back at me. “I don’t mean to be forward so early in the journey, but I have one question.”
She waits for me to give her the go-ahead.
I nod, sensing the edge coming.
“Were you following me?”
I consider lying. The smart move would be to change the subject and let her think it was all chance. But I want her to see me, and I want her to know I want to see her too.
“What if I was?” I say.
She raises an eyebrow, a quiet dare. “Then I’d want to know why.”
I lean forward, folding my hands in front of me, and say, “You got under my skin last week. You looked at me like you were looking through me. I’ve spent most of my life being the one who does that, not the one it’s done to. I saw you on the BBC yesterday and heard you were traveling to Scotland. Coincidentally, so was I. I changed my plans to leave today because I wanted to see if you were real.”
She stares at me, and in that instant, I can see her recalibrating. The very edges of her mouth crease downward, soft and a little suspicious.
“Blair would say that’s classic New York narcissism,” she says, but her tone is softer now.
“Who’s Blair?”
“My best friend, who cares way too much about my love life.” She grins, making fun of herself, as if she thinks that might scare me off. “She’d have a field day with you.”
She laughs, takes a pack of gum from her bag, and offers me a piece. “That’s the trouble with trains. Nowhere to go when the weirdos show up.”
I accept a piece, the slide of foil against skin briefly electrifying.
“I could move to another car,” I offer, deadpan.
“You’d lose your shot at total transparency,” she fires back. “You might even have to revert to being mysterious, which I’m guessing isn’t your strong suit.”
I let that settle. She’s not wrong. I don’t do mysterious. I’m an open book, with pages dog-eared and smudged by every analyst or investor who’s taken the time to read. I watch her consider the possibilities—danger, seduction, companionship, or something less legible—and decide I’m worth the gamble.
We ride in tandem like that for fifty more miles, trading observations, confessions, the occasional dig. She tells me about the dead weight of deadlines, the artificial cheer demanded by editors who want hot takes on cold towns. She tells me about falling out of a perfectly good airplane over New Zealand, getting lost in Tangier, and getting found in Tangier by an elderly couple who fed her lentils seasoned with cinnamon and stories. She talks about Dublin and Dubrovnik, about a night in Reykjavik where she lost three hours and woke up in a stranger’s parka. “No regrets,” she says, “except maybe the parka.”
I tell her about business deals, the year I spent in Mumbai, and the summer in Berlin when I survived on cigarettes and currywurst while working through endless spreadsheets. I talk about my mother, who taught me to find flaws, and my father, who taught me to always be ready for bad news. We both act like we don’t notice how bare our stories sound, sitting here as the train rattles into another country.
Lunch arrives: smoked salmon, a lukewarm salad, and tart apple cider that burns as I swallow. We eat like soldiers in a foxhole, aware of every bite and every sound of our forks.
By noon, she leans her head against the window. Her eyelashes cast pale shadows on her skin. The train rocks gently, and I imagine us both leaving parts of ourselves behind as we travel. There’s a German word for missing a place you’ve never seen. Whatever it is, it hangs between us, heavy and uncertain.
When she finally speaks again, her voice is so soft it nearly disappears under the sound of the train. “Are you going to follow me to Galloway?”
Two weeks ago, I would have said no without thinking. But after looking into her pale blue eyes and seeing so much there, I feel like I could follow her anywhere. “Yeah, I think I will.”
Chapter 5
Galloway, Scotland 1898
Halden Crichton has never beenafraid of the sea, but tonight the waves seem to stand tall, two dark shapes in the night. The surf sounds sharp, almost like a voice calling his name.
He wakes before sunrise. At this hour, the world looks like cold iron. The air smells of salt, and mist drifts over red rocks and peat. The North Channel churns below the cliffs, wild with waves. Gulls cry sharply. There’s enough wind for the sails, and the cargo is ready: casks of paraffin, sacks of flour, dented tins of waterglass. Halden walks down the shingle path, his boots gritty with salt, eyes fixed on the horizon. He never glances at the faces watching him from the sea houses.
A woman waits at the slip. Not a woman, exactly—a girl, but something about her makes the word feel smaller than she is. Moira Blythe stands in her morning dress, a shawl clamped about her narrow shoulders, hair freckled with spray, and if she is frightened for him, she shows nothing. Her hands are occupied with the lighthouse keeper’s ledgers. She is always giving herself to work—she’s a Blythe, after all. “You’ll mind the squall east of Donaghadee?” she asks, not as a question.
He nods, but their eyes meet, held by the silent weight of her worry. He can almost sense the tremor in her wrist, the way she holds back every plea, her calmness hiding her fear.
“I’ve bundled your father’s boots,” Halden says. “Left them under your porch.” He doesn’t tell her she’ll need them soon, when the rocks freeze and her father’s knees give out. “Tell him I’ll return before St. Andrew’s, if the run is quick—three days, four if the coastguard is nosing.” Even as he says this, he knows it isn’t true. There is never a quick run when the tides are dangerous.
