Field Notes on Love(49)

“You don’t have to be.”

“Yeah, but I am.” She sucks in a breath, then stands up. He can see that her eyes are rimmed with red. “It’s just this stupid—where the hell are we, anyway?”

He glances back at the sign on the platform. “Fort Morgan, Colorado.”

“I know, I just mean…how are there so many places in this country without phone service?” she says, waving her mobile around. “It’s nuts.”

“Nuts,” he agrees, and her face softens.

    “I need to call my dads.”

He takes a step closer. “Of course.”

“You don’t have to—look, it’s going to be fine. She went through chemo this spring, and I think this can just happen sometimes. But she’s survived a lot worse. She’ll pull through. She always does. It’ll be fine.”

Hugo puts a hand on either of her arms, and she goes very still. “You’re allowed to be worried.”

“I know that,” she snaps, wrenching away, but he doesn’t move. He bends so their faces are level and sees that her eyes are filled with tears.

“It’s okay to be upset,” he says quietly.

She shakes her head, but her lip is quivering. “I’m fine.”

“Stop saying that. It’s just me. You can talk to me.”

“I hardly even know you,” she says, looking up at him through blazing eyes, and Hugo steps back, stung. He tries to compose his face in a way that doesn’t show this, but he can tell that he’s failed. Her shoulders sag.

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “That’s not what—”

“No, you’re right.” He kicks at a gray stone on the ground, watching it skip over the pavement. The train is loud beside them, a sound like the rush of waves at the beach yesterday. Beyond the tracks are a rusty water tower and a distant construction site, but otherwise the landscape is flat and gray and muted, nothing to see for miles around. All that emptiness stirs something in Hugo, and he lets the thought float up again like a brightly colored balloon: I don’t want to go back.

“Really,” she says, putting a hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I know,” he says, because he does. It’s not her. It’s just the wall she puts up sometimes. But he’s managed to knock enough bricks out by now that he can see through it anyway.

    He can see her.

“The truth is,” she says, not quite able to meet his eyes, “you probably know me better than a lot of people in my life do. Which is a weird thing to say, when it’s only been a few days.”

“It’s not, actually,” Hugo says with a smile. “It’s not weird at all.”

She nods, and so does he, and then the whistle sounds, and the conductor—who has been standing nearby—shouts to the passengers still lingering on the platform: “All aboard!”

Above them, the sun is starting to burn through the clouds. The train is louder now, hissing and popping and giving off a hazy heat as they begin to make their way along the length of it. Halfway down, Hugo bends to pick up the gray stone. He slips it into his pocket. Then Mae reaches for his hand and they walk the rest of the way together.





Mae nearly walks straight into a metal post as she gets off the train in Denver, but she’s saved by Hugo, who uses her backpack to steer her around it. She’s busy texting Pop, and then Dad, and then both of them for good measure. She’s written to Nana several times, too, though Mae knows her grandmother is probably sleeping.

All she wants is to talk to one of them. Any of them. It’s been forty minutes since she got reception back, and after eight phone calls and over a dozen texts, she still hasn’t heard a thing, which only deepens the gnawing in her stomach.

“Do you not find it a bit odd,” Hugo asks, “that this is called Union Station too?”

She gives him a blank look.

“Same as Chicago. Do you think Denver copied Chicago, or the other way around? Or maybe there was a bloke named Union who really loved rail stations, and he built—”

“Hugo?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you be offended if I did my own thing this afternoon?”

He tips his head to one side. “Is it because of my theory about Union Station?”

“No,” she says, smiling in spite of herself.

    “Then I completely understand.”

At the hotel, which has a life-sized cow sculpture in the lobby, they check in at the front desk. “It’s under Margaret Campbell,” Mae says, once again trying not to think too hard about this. It didn’t bother her at the beginning. After all, it’s her name too. But now, each time they get on the train or give their information at the end of a meal service, she’s reminded again that Hugo is supposed to be traveling with his ex, and she wishes it didn’t bother her as much as it does.

“Any mail for Hugo Wilkinson?” he asks, looking on hopefully as the clerk checks a stack of envelopes. But there’s nothing. “Guess I’m still skint.”

Mae pulls out her wallet. “It’s okay. You can borrow some more.”

“How do you know I’m good for it?”