On the Train From Chicago to San Francisco, the Woman in the Seat Next to Me Was Taking the Same Trip My Late Wife and I Planned for 30 Years and Never Took. She Was Doing It for the Same Reason

She was.

At six a.m., Denver was behind us, and the train was climbing into the Rockies. She had two cups of coffee on the little table. One was for me.

“I was going to set out two anyway,” she said. “Habit.”

We went through the Moffat Tunnel, six miles in the dark under the Continental Divide. We came out into snow on the high peaks, golden aspens in the valleys, and then the Colorado River, running beside the tracks for hours through canyons the color of rust and fire.

Ruth cried in Glenwood Canyon.

I didn’t ask why. I knew why.

Somewhere in Utah, in the afternoon, in the desert, she told me something.

“Edmund,” she said. “I’m getting off in Emeryville and flying home. I’m selling the house in Milwaukee in the spring. My daughter wants me to move to Phoenix and live near her. She keeps sending me brochures for independent living communities. Pickleball. A pool. She says I shouldn’t be alone.”

“Do you want to go?”

“I don’t want to be a project,” she said. “My daughter’s been managing me since Walt died. My bills. My Medicare supplement. My will. She took over everything because she was scared, and I let her, because I was too sad to fight. And now I’m fifty-six, and I’m on a train, and I can’t remember the last time I made a decision just because I wanted to.”

The desert went by outside, red and endless.

“What about you?” she asked. “What happens when you get to California?”

“I’ll stand on the beach at Point Reyes,” I said. “Where Maggie wanted to go. And then I’ll fly back to Iowa. To an empty house. And I’ll sit in it.”

“For how long?”

I didn’t have an answer.

That night, the train climbed into the Sierra Nevada. Somewhere near Truckee, in the dark, the conductor came through the observation car.

“Folks,” he said quietly. “There’s a rockslide on the tracks near Donner Pass. We’re going to be stopped for a while. Maybe a few hours. I’m sorry.”

Everyone groaned.

Ruth looked at me.

“Thirty years we waited for this trip,” she said. “What’s a few more hours?”

She put her head back against the seat, and after a while, without either of us saying anything, she put her hand on the armrest between us.

I put mine next to it.

Not touching.

Almost.