Chapter 3: The Train:
Looking in the mirror above the sink in the woman’s washroom at the train station, Annaliese Gray Morgan, better known as Anna, saw nothing special about her appearance. She saw nothing of consequence, nothing to set her apart, or to make her different from anyone else. Everyone always told her how pretty she was, but to her, they were just empty words, because she always felt so very different from everyone else. She remembered when she was a very little girl, her mother used to tell her how special she was, and how someday something important would happen to her.
Sometimes, Anna thought that day would never come.
She went into one of the bathroom stalls, locked the door, and slipped a piece of paper out of her pant’s pocket. Only then, when she was alone in the tiny stall, did she let herself cry. As she cried, she read the words on the little scrap of paper.
It read:
Ethan Morgan
1009 State Route 23, North
Glenn Briar, West Virginia 25504
(304)555-2535
It was the name, address and phone number of her father. Funny, she had gone there several times while growing up, but she never knew the address, not until two weeks ago, when her brother, Colin, wrote to her. He told her that they all loved her, missed her, and wanted her to come live with them. He said that their father didn’t want to upset her by asking her to come, but that he didn’t mind upsetting her, and could she please, please, come home.
She didn’t know what that meant. Perhaps her father was angry with her. She didn’t know. She should have gone with him after her grandfather’s funeral, but all her emotions were too raw, too real, like an open wound without a scab. That was two weeks ago. She had healed some since then, and she had come to the conclusion that since she had no where else to go, no other family, that she might as well go somewhere, anywhere, and there was as good a place as any other place, even if her stepmother was still there.
She wasn’t a small child any longer. She would no longer allow that woman to hurt her. This felt right. She needed her family. She needed a home. She needed her father.
Therefore, she packed all her truly important possessions, mostly books, into trunks and boxes and moved them from her room on the second floor up to the attic of the only house she really ever considered home. She knew her great-uncle would be living there now, and everything would be safe until she could send for them.
She didn’t need to take much with her, some clothes, personal effects, and some small mementos … a cross that was her grandmother’s, some family photos, and the solid silver bracelet with Celtic symbols that her mother gave her right before she died, as well as her mother’s bible and the book of Irish fairytales that her mother used to read to her at night when she was little.
Stuffing everything into two suitcases, one large tote, and a large handbag, she bought a train ticket for the closest town to Glenn Briar, West Virginia, which was a small hamlet called Millersville. She decided not to tell anyone that she was coming, in case they didn’t want her. She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving either, in case they didn’t want to let her go.
Then, while veiled in the darkness of dawn’s early shadow, she snuck out of her house, got into a taxi, and never looked back. She bought a train ticket, and now she was waiting on her train, which was detained.
She opened the door of the little stall and went back out to the sink in the woman’s room, and splashed cold water on her tear-stained face. Her luggage was right where she left them. She looked back in the mirror and tried not to remember the way she felt the last time she was at her father’s house seven years ago, knowing that would cause a fresh tide of tears to fall. The sound of the bathroom door opening brought Anna out of her melancholy.
A woman walked into the dirty bathroom with a little girl in tow. The little girl was crying. Her mother paid her no mind, no attention, as she went into one of the stalls. Anna smiled at the little girl. She felt bad that she was crying. She knew what it felt like to be small and sad.
“Why are you crying?” Anna asked. The little girl reminded Anna of herself.
The girl said, “I don’t want to leave my home.”
Anna understood that sentiment completely. “That can be scary. Where are you going?”
“My mom is taking me to my aunt’s house. I’m going to live there a while. My mother is going to someplace called rehab.” The little girl began to cry a new wave of tears.
Anna felt that old familiar armor around her heart begin to bow, though it didn’t break. She was in public, so she couldn’t show her emotions, since she only let them out in private, but still, she felt badly for the girl, and a bit envious, because the little girl could still openly show her ‘feelings’ and Anna hadn’t shown feelings for a long time now, but still she said, “It can be scary leaving home. I’m leaving the only place I’ve ever lived, too, and I’m a grown up, and I’m scared. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to show people what you feel. I know it is. It doesn’t make you weak, it makes you strong.”
When the little girl didn’t respond, Anna bent down, touched a silver necklace, which the little girl wore around her neck, and told her, “That’s a pretty necklace.”
The girl sniffled, and smiled. “My mom gave it to me.”
Anna smiled and held up her arm. “See this bracelet. My mother gave it to me. When I miss her, I look at it and I remember her and it makes me miss her a bit less. Perhaps that necklace will do the same thing for you.”
“What’s your name?” the little girl asked her.
“My real name is Annaliese, but usually people call me Anna. My middle name is Grey. I used to like my middle name, because I thought it described how I felt, but I no longer feel gray, so I don’t like it any longer. Isn’t that a funny middle name?” Anna tried to make the little girl smile with her joke, and she succeeded. She held out her hand, and shook the little girl’s hand. It reminded her of that time, long ago, when she first met her father, and he had held her hand in a similar way.
The mother came out of the toilet stall, shot Anna a hateful glare, grabbed the little girl’s hand and pulled her out of the bathroom, rebuking her for speaking to strangers.
Anna didn’t mean to get the little girl in trouble. She merely wanted to talk to someone. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. She grabbed her two bags, her tote, and her large purse and heaved everything upon her shoulders and in her hands, and went out to wait for her train.
She saw a familiar face as soon as she walked out in the lobby. There was no use trying to hide in the bathroom, for he had already seen her. She walked up to the man and said, “What are you doing here?” It was her grandfather’s younger brother, James.
“I think that question is better directed at you, young lady,” he chastised. “Why are you doing this? It’s madness. These people don’t even really know you, and they sure as hell don’t know you’re coming. You haven’t seen them in seven years! How do you know they’ll accept you?”
“I don’t,” she admitted. “But really, what else am I supposed to do? I’m an adult now, so I can’t really live with you, you know that. I won’t have access to my trust fund until I turn 21, so I can’t live on my own. I’ve never even thought about going to college. Most of all, I’m tired of being alone, Uncle James. I feel empty inside, and I’m tired of living this way. I feel old, and I’m only nineteen. I want a real home and a real family, and I felt as if I have nowhere else to go.” Tears began to well in her eyes, and she blinked them away. It would do no good to let her great-uncle James see her cry. He would never let her go if she did.
The thought that she was alone was a daunting one. Annaliese Morgan had turned nineteen years old last July, and, at nineteen and three quarters, she was totally alone in the world. Her mother was dead, and now both her grandparents were dead, so she was heading to a place where she wasn’t even sure she would be welcome, and she didn’t even know if she belonged there.
She had her father’s address clutched in her hand when she saw her uncle James. She sighed and slipped it into her pants pocket.
He said, “You left me a note telling me that you were moving out, and would I mind if you leave your things in the attic, oh and by the way, you’re going to go live with your father. I mean, come on, Anna, I’m taking you home, to your home.” He took one of her suitcases from her left hand, and pulled on her arm with his other hand. She wrenched it from his grasp.
“That’s not my home any longer and I want to do this,” she pleaded.
“Do they even know you’re coming?” he asked.
“No.”
“How long are you going to stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why, Anna? Why?” he begged.
She gazed at him for a long time and said, “I told you, because I have nowhere else to go. Because I have a hole in my heart that desperately needs to be filled. I know there has to be more to living than merely surviving day to day, living a life in a void or vacuum, without feeling a single drop of true life. I may be young, but I know that if I continue living this gray life that I’ve been living, I’ll soon fade to black and cease to exist. And most of all, because I think it’s the right thing for me to do. I need this … I need them.” Then she did something she hadn’t done in a decade. She began to cry … in public, with people all around.
In the end, her tears convinced him to let her go. They were never really close, anyway. He gave her a stiff hug and then he told her that if she needed anything she only needed to call him, then he stuffed some money in her pocket, as if she didn’t notice. He reminded her that he was the administrator of her trust fund, and that someday her grandparent’s house would belong to her. He promised her that her belongings would be safe, and ordered her to call him as soon as she arrived.
She promised him she would, even though she knew she wouldn’t.
Now, hours later, sitting on the train, she felt everything was right. She felt that for the first time in her life, she was doing the right thing. In an odd way, she felt as if she were going home.
She was anxious, but not afraid. She wasn’t afraid, even though she had never traveled on a train before. She was slightly afraid of the path she was taking, because she knew her life was at a crossroads, a proverbial fork in the road, and there were really only two paths stretched out before her. One was safe and familiar. It was straight, but narrow, stifling, but undoubtedly secure. It was one where she had to hide in a closet to cry. It was one where she had to pretend that she could fly so that she could feel free.
The other was unknown, and it seemed steep and unsteady, and filled with things and people unknown, and, only a year ago, she would never have dared tread on such an unfamiliar path, but now it felt right. She knew that on this new path she could finally face her feelings again, and she could cry anywhere, anytime she wanted, and it didn’t make her weak, it made her strong.
She looked out the train window, smoke blocking her view of the rolling countryside. She had been traveling for hours over familiar terrain, the rocking of the train had caused her to sleep, and when she awoke later, the familiar scenery changed before her to something unfamiliar, and totally magnificent. Her eyes were met with a multitude of colors: gold, green, purple, and blue. There were mountain peaks, and streams, tall ancient trees, and a deep, endless cerulean blue sky. She had never seen such beautiful, vibrant colors. The landscape resembled a painting, or a dream. Did this dare to be real? It was all so familiar; she had seen it all before, but never like this, up close, in broad daylight. She smiled, because she knew it was real, it was. It was the perfect day to go home.
She caught her reflection in the window by her seat. She didn’t look anything like her father. Anna took after her mother in looks—hair the color of winter wheat, flaxen blonde, pale and slightly curly, which she wore long, and usually pulled back into an unruly ponytail. Her eyes were such a bright, emerald green that everyone meeting her for the first time always remarked on them first. Her mother had the exact same eyes, the exact same hair, but her mother was beautiful. Anna always felt she was plain.
She was a bit too smart, too bookish, and even at her private school, she didn’t fit in. She never dated; in fact, she had never even been on one date in all her nineteen years. She figured it was because she wasn’t popular enough, not that it mattered to her. People always told her she was beautiful, but she couldn’t see it. She thought she was plain, ordinary, and nothing special. She always felt as if she didn’t belong anywhere, anyway, not that it mattered. She didn’t need to be special. She just needed to be needed.
The train lurched forward, and then stopped. Anna grasped the seat in front of her. She looked back out the window. She wondered why the train had stopped. She wasn’t sure she cared, because the scenery that greeted her struck her with an overwhelming sense of continual awe that she was happy to have a few moments to enjoy it. The hills of southern Ohio and southern Pennsylvania were replaced with actual mountains, blue and green, with tall pines and other conifer trees. It was early spring, but there were still patches of snow on the ground … in April!
A man walked down the aisle of the train and Anna asked him, “Are we in West Virginia yet?” She had only ever crossed these mountains at night, in a car, and she always seemed to be sleeping.
He smiled and motioned toward the window. “Look at those mountains, young lady. You’re in the Potomac Highlands. Those are the Allegheny Mountains.” Anna looked back out the window, her hands on the glass. She counted seven purple mountain ranges, each one taller than the next. Along the trail, near the track of the stopped train, she saw large rhododendron bushes, hemlock groves, and she thought she even spied a wild turkey. There was a mother deer and her two babies eating newly formed grass shoots from the ground. This was nature at its purest form, and she was a part of it. This was where she belonged. This was nothing like Ohio. The train lurched again, and it started moving once more. She continued to stare out the window.
The man sat down in the seat across the aisle and said, “This is the Monongahela National Forest. It stretches across over 900,000 acres.”
Anna felt such wonder. She had never had a special affinity for nature before, but something about this place seemed different to her. She had always held it in high esteem, and she wasn’t sure why until now. Now she knew…it was because it was special. “Wow,” she said, feeling that was an understatement. She was embarrassed at her monosyllabic response to the man, so she turned back to him and said, “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. I can scarcely believe it’s real. It feels like a dream. I mean, I’ve seen some of this before, but not so much, so open, so free. It’s like something I could only imagine in my mind, or something out of a fairytale.”
“Have you been here before, Miss?” the man asked.
“A few times when I was younger, but I don’t recall it looking like this,” she answered truthfully.
“Are you here on vacation, or sightseeing?” he asked.
She sat back in her seat, bit her bottom lip, looked back out at the scenery as it rushed by … the large rock formations, the streams, the tall trees that never reached the sky, the white-tail deer, the green foliage, and she smiled for the first time in a long time, feeling totally overwhelmed by emotion, and with her hand coming up to her mouth, she said, “No, I think I’m finally coming home, to stay this time.”