Orphan Train

her and spreads the paper open on her knee. “I remember this.
     Miss Larsen had the most beautiful penmanship.”
    “Your teacher?”
    Vivian nods. “Try as I might, I could never form my letters like hers.”
    Molly looks at the perfect swoops hitting the broken line in exactly the same spot.
     “Looks pretty good to me. You should see my scrawl.”
    “They barely teach it anymore, I hear.”
    “Yeah, everything’s on computer.” Molly is suddenly struck by the fact that Vivian
     wrote these words on this sheet of paper more than eighty years ago. Upright and do right make all right. “Things have changed a lot since you were my age, huh?”
    Vivian cocks her head. “I suppose. Most of it doesn’t affect me much. I still sleep
     in a bed. Sit in a chair. Wash dishes in a sink.”
    Or Terry washes dishes in a sink, to be accurate, Molly thinks.
    “I don’t watch much television. You know I don’t have a computer. In a lot of ways
     my life is just as it was twenty or even forty years ago.”
    “That’s kind of sad,” Molly blurts, then immediately regrets it. But Vivian doesn’t
     seem offended. Making a “who cares?” face, she says, “I don’t think I’ve missed much.”
    “Wireless Internet, digital photographs, smartphones, Facebook, YouTube . . .” Molly
     taps the fingers of one hand. “The entire world has changed in the past decade.”
    “Not my world.”
    “But you’re missing out on so much.”
    Vivian laughs. “I hardly think FaceTube—whatever that is—would improve my quality
     of life.”
    Molly shakes her head. “It’s Face book . And YouTube.”
    “Whatever!” Vivian says breezily. “I don’t care. I like my quiet life.”
    “But there’s a balance. Honestly, I don’t know how you can just exist in this—bubble.”
    Vivian smiles. “You don’t have trouble speaking your mind, do you?”
    So she’s been told. “Why did you keep this coat, if you hated it?” Molly asks, changing
     the subject.
    Vivian picks it up and holds it out in front of her. “That’s a very good question.”
    “So should we put it in the Goodwill pile?”
    Folding the coat in her lap, Vivian says, “Ah . . . maybe. Let’s see what else is
     in this box.”

The Milwaukee Train, 1929
    I sleep badly the last night on the train. Carmine is up several times in the night, irritable and fidgety, and though I try to soothe him, he cries fitfully for
     a long time, disturbing the children around us. As dawn emerges in streaks of yellow,
     he finally falls asleep, his head on Dutchy’s curled leg and his feet in my lap. I
     am wide-awake, so filled with nervous energy that I can feel the blood pumping through
     my heart.
    I’ve been wearing my hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, but now I untie the old
     ribbon and let it fall to my shoulders, combing through it with my fingers and smoothing
     the tendrils around my face. I pull it back as tightly as I can.
    Turning, I catch Dutchy looking at me.
    “Your hair is pretty.” I squint at him in the gloom to see if he’s teasing, and he
     looks back at me sleepily.
    “That’s not what you said a few days ago.”
    “I said you’ll have a hard time.”
    I want to push away both his kindness and his honesty.
    “Can’t help what you are, can you,” he says.
    I crane my neck to see if Mrs. Scatcherd might have heard us, but there’s no movement
     up front.
    “Let’s make a promise,” he says. “To find each other.”
    “How can we? We’ll probably end up in different places.”
    “I know.”
    “And my name will be changed.”
    “Mine too, maybe. But we can try.”
    Carmine flops over, tucking his legs beneath him and stretching his arms, and both
     of us shift to accommodate him.
    “Do you believe in fate?” I ask.
    “What’s that again?”
    “That everything is decided. You’re just—you know—living it out.”
    “God has it all planned in advance.”
    I nod.
    “I dunno. I don’t like the plan much so far.”
    “Me either.”
    We both laugh.
    “Mrs. Scatcherd says we should make a clean slate,” I say. “Let go of the past.”
    “I can let go of the past, no problem.” He picks up the wool blanket that has fallen
     to the floor and tucks it around the lump of Carmine’s body, covering the parts that
     are exposed. “But I don’t want to forget everything.”
    O UTSIDE THE WINDOW I SEE THREE SETS OF TRACKS PARALLELING the one we are on, brown and silver, and beyond them broad flat fields of