Angels in the Snow (25 page)

The child at least was properly dressed in corduroy slacks, some sort of puffy blue jacket, and a matching blue-and-white muffler and stocking cap. She was a pretty little thing with straight blond bangs hanging over striking blue eyes. She didn't look very happy, though.

“Where to? Ma'am? Where to?”

“Oh.” Eva looked up with a start. “Am I next?”

“Yes, ma'am.” The ticket seller raised his brows, then returned his attention to his computer screen. “Where to?”

“Let's see.” She pulled out the slip of paper with the town's name on it. Not that she needed it to remember the name of her own hometown. Still, every now and again she got these annoying little lapses of memory. Better to be safe than sorry.

“Ma'am?”

“Yes, yes. I want a ticket to Ennis. If you please.”

“Ennis.” He stared at his screen, a faint frown on his face. Then he smiled. “Here it is. Ennis, Iowa. Right?”

Eva faltered. Ennis was in Germany, not Iowa. She looked around her, at a loss suddenly for where she was. “Ennis,” she repeated, tightening her grip on the handle of her carpetbag. “I want to go to Ennis.”

“Okay, okay,” the man said. “Ennis it is. Will that be a round trip?”

“No.” Eva smiled at him, restored by overwhelming joy at the thought of her hometown. “No,” she repeated, beaming pure happiness at the ticket seller. “I only need a one-way ticket.”

“One way it is.” He glanced up at her. “Looks like you're pretty happy to be going.”

“
Ach
, so I am.”

“That'll be one hundred forty-eight dollars. Cash or credit?”

Eva lifted her chin. “I deal only in cash, young man. Buying on credit gets a person into trouble.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he agreed, taking the eight twenty-dollar bills she slid into the tray beneath the glass partition. “But, ma'am,” he added, leaning nearer and lowering his voice. “Don't say too much about carrying only cash, okay? There's people who'd love to fleece a nice lady like you. You know what I mean?”

Eva nodded, taking the change he slid back to her and folding it into her purse. “I will be very careful.” She patted her purse and as added precaution hooked the long strap over her head and shoulder. “But I thank you for your concern.”

“You're boarding at three fifteen on platform seven. Merry Christmas and have a good trip.”

“Thank you, and a merry Christmas to you, too.”

As Eva turned away she nearly collided with the cigarette-scented woman in the revealing sweater. “Oh, my. Excuse me.”

“No problem,” the woman muttered, giving her a hard stare.

Eva nodded and headed toward the gates to the loading platform. It was too cold to wait outside, so she found a seat near the arched doors. Not long now. In less than an hour she would be on her way home at last.

Smiling, she settled her purse and her carpetbag on her lap and folded her hands over them. This would be the happiest Christmas ever.

A
NNA hung back as her mother bought the train ticket. She'd heard her on the phone last night, cursing out the person who'd told her a child of ten wasn't allowed to travel on the train without an adult.

“It's costing me an extra forty-four dollars for a regular ticket, all because of their stupid rules,” she'd raged. “Forty-four damn dollars for nothing. And then I have to find somebody who'll sit with you.”

But now as Anna listened, her mother turned on her legendary charm. “One way to Ennis, Iowa,” she said, smiling at the ticket man.

“Ennis. Pretty popular destination today.”

“I'm hoping for a white Christmas. Wouldn't that be nice?”

“You may get your wish, according to what I saw on the Weather Channel,” he said as he ran her credit card through his machine.

“I sure hope so,” Anna's mother said, signing the slip and taking the ticket. “Have a merry Christmas.”

“You, too, miss. Next.”

Anna's mother strolled off without a glance her way. As she'd been ordered, Anna waited until her mother sat down, then followed her and sat in the same row but several seats away. Her mother had taken a seat next to an old woman in a long gray coat with colorful embroidery around the cuffs and up and down the front. “Care for a mint?” Anna heard her mother ask the lady.

The old woman tightened her arms over her bags. “No, thank you.”

Trying not to stare too blatantly, Anna studied the woman, her mother's obvious mark. She was old, even older than Nana Rose. She had soft white hair under her velvet beret. Anna knew about velvets and silks, and wools and cottons, too. Nana Rose had taught her all about fabrics and yarns. She'd taught Anna how to cut patterns and sew, and the difference between knitting and crochet. That's how Anna knew the old lady's navy beret was real velvet and that her unusual overcoat was made from felted wool and was probably hand-embroidered. Tears stung her eyes but she blinked them back and stared down at the fringed end of her blue-and-white-striped scarf. Her mother hated it when she got sad about Nana Rose. If only her Nana Rose could have lived forever. Anna wouldn't be sitting in this cold train station being sent away to live with her father if Nana Rose hadn't gotten pneumonia and died.

“You going to Ennis?” she heard her mother ask.

The old lady hesitated, then nodded. “To see my family,” she finally said. It was obvious from her stiff posture that she didn't want to get sucked into a conversation with some strange woman. But Anna's mother never cared what other people wanted.

“Oh, your children. And grandchildren, too, I bet.”

“No, my brother and—”

“My girl's going to Ennis, too,” Anna's mother broke in.

Anna wrinkled her nose. Her mother never listened to people either. She just pushed and pushed and pushed until people either ran away as fast as they could, or else gave in from pure exhaustion. Anna wondered what this woman would do. She slid her gaze back to the lady, so neat and folded up just so with her ankles crossed and tucked beneath the plastic seat, and her gloved hands resting protectively across her pretty embroidered suitcase.

Her mother went on. “She's going to her father.”

The bastard
, Anna inserted. That was her mother's name for him, her father the bastard. As if he were any worse a parent than she was. He'd dumped Anna on her mother, and her mother had dumped her on Nana Rose.

“It's so important for a girl to know her father, don't you think?” Carrie went on, smiling earnestly at the old woman.

The old lady's gaze shifted and collided unexpectedly with Anna's, startling her so that she couldn't look away. “Yes,” the woman said. To Anna, not to her mother. She smiled, a mere ghost of a smile, but Anna could feel the warmth in it. “Every girl needs to know the love of her father.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Anna's mother nodded her head exuberantly. “Only I can't make the trip with her. Other obligations, you know?” She pulled out her cigarettes and tapped the hard pack against her wrist. “So I was wondering. Do you think you could keep an eye on her? You know, sit with her and make sure she gets off at the right stop? At Ennis. With you. Her father will be there,” she added. “Don't worry about that. He's expecting her.”

Anna held her breath. If the woman said no, what would her mother do? Apparently the conductors didn't let children get on the train by themselves, which was good because Anna didn't want to go live with her father. He was a complete stranger to her. She'd never even seen a picture of him. All she knew was his name, Tom Thurston.

But she hated it here, too, living with her mother.

At first Carrie had seemed okay living with Anna in Nana Rose's house in an old neighborhood in Texarkana. But once she'd collected Nana Rose's life-insurance money and sold the little house to the next-door neighbors for their son, she was ready to get back to her own life with her boyfriend, Eddie. She had big plans for her money, and obviously Anna didn't fit into those plans. That's when her mother had come up with the idea to send Anna to live with her father.

The fact was, her mother hated being stuck with Anna again after all these years. Anna could tell. She didn't like being a mother. Anna cramped her style, she'd said. One way or another her mother meant to get rid of her. If the old woman said yes, Anna would be put on the train, sent like a returned package back to someone else who didn't want her.

Neither her mother nor her father had ever wanted her.

But Nana Rose had.

Anna didn't mean to cry. She hardly ever cried, especially on account of her pitiful excuse for a mother. But she was definitely leaking tears. She turned her face away, blinking hard but refusing to swipe her wet cheek with her cuff. Maybe the old lady hadn't seen her tears. Didn't old people have bad eyes? Nana Rose wore bifocals, and she'd had cataract surgery the year before she died.

But Nana Rose had seen everything when it came to Anna: when she was sad; when she was scared. And now, when the old lady in the embroidered coat spoke—
before
she actually spoke—when she took a slow breath before the words began to come out, Anna knew she had seen the tears.

“I would be happy to have her for a traveling companion,” the woman said in a faintly accented voice, as if she used to live in another country. “Traveling alone is so . . . well, so lonely.”  Then she looked straight at Anna, deep into her eyes. “Is that all right with you, child? Traveling with me?”

Anna stared back at her a long, breathless moment. There were no good choices for her here. Stay with her mother, who didn't want her, or go to her father, who also did not want her. The only adult who seemed eager for her company was this old woman, a complete stranger to her.

“Of course she's good with it.” Anna's mother stood up, the unlit cigarette tight between her fingers. “Well, if that's settled, I need to get going.”

“
Nein
. You will wait one moment while I speak to your daughter.”

Anna blinked at the woman's firm tone.
Nein
. That was German, wasn't it?

She peered up at her mother, who'd frozen with the unlit cigarette halfway to her mouth. The old woman had a soft look about her, but she had a steely core. Like Nana Rose.

“No problem. No problem,” Anna's mother repeated, digging in her pocket for her lighter. “Anna, tell the nice lady. Go on, tell her you'll be a good, what did you say? Oh, yeah, a good traveling companion.”

Slowly Anna stood. The old lady stared right at her. Not unkindly. More . . . expectantly. Like she cared only about what Anna had to say, not Anna's mother.

“She's got lunch with her. I packed it myself.”

Did not.
But Anna ignored her mother, as did the old German lady.

“Well,
Liebchen
? Shall we travel together?”

Anna clutched her bulging backpack to her chest. It was all she had left in the world. That and a one-way ticket to her father's house in the company of this pleasantly smiling old woman.

She took three steps forward. For now that would have to be enough.