Last Call

Solenne Wildgrove had sat at the Ingleside railway station long enough that the stationmaster has noticed her and asked if she was waiting for someone.

“No, thank you,” she answered with the confidence of an obstinate sixteen-year-old. “I am waiting for the 4:17 train to Ashcombe.”

“Since one o'clock?”

Solenne nodded unyieldingly and turned her head away, pulling her carpet bag tight to her chest. All her earthly belongings could fit into this one small—though, the weight suggested otherwise—bag.

The stationmaster was almost right. She had been sitting there since noon, but he had probably been too busy with his lunch to notice her upon her arrival.

She watched mothers parting with tears from their daughters, parents sending their sons away to school, children playing in the steam, and lovers reuniting after long times of separation. She took note of each of them in the leader-bound ledger she carried everywhere.

She did not use this to record expenses or household accounts, but interesting features and habits of people, snippets of overheard conversations, and her own ideas.

It appeared everyone had someone to see them off.

Except Solenne.

Solenne was the only one who came to board the train alone.

Her aunt died three weeks ago. The woman who had been her home after her parents tragic death was gone, too, and now she is being sent somewhere else.

The instructions were given to her by a round-faced woman with hay colored-hair, who had arranged everything: four-seventeen, change at Ashcombe, Miss Bell will meet you.

She had repeated the instructions so many times that by now she knew them by heart, like a nursery rhyme.

The station clock said 4:02.

She had already imagined her new life with her great-aunt Beatrice Bell a thousand times. She had never met her and knew very little about her distant relative, except that she's a respectable teacher in her sixties.

And a spinster.

Those two facts were enough for Solenne to form a fairly complete opinion about her personality.

Miss Bell is probably a tall matron with bony hands, a tightly pulled bun, and the straight posture of someone who had swallowed a broomstick. She must live in an enormous grey house, alone or perhaps with several cats. Her new bedroom would overlook a field where nothing ever happened apart from the occasional bits of farm work.

Oh, and she probably have strict rules. That's why she had never married.

Or perhaps her life had been ever so dramatic.

Perhaps, she had almost married once, but her lover had died of pneumonia during one of the algid winters. Or worse, she was left at the altar.

Or worse still—

She had left someone at the altar. How treacherous.

“May I sit here?” a lilting voice broke into her daydream.

Solenne looked up from her ledger, “Yes, ma'am,”

An elderly woman sat beside her. She was everything Solenne could wish herself to become one day—elegant and self-possessed. She was wearing fine traveling gloves and carried a small leather case. Her eyes fell upon the carpet bag in Solenne's embrace, which looked older than the elder woman herself.

"Traveling alone?" she asked, indicating the bag.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Where to?” she asked it with the warmest smile.

Solenne hesitated.

She wasn't certain she meant to board the 4:17 after all. She thought about her unknown great-aunt and having to start her life over again somewhere nobody knew her, just as she had after her parents passed away.

She thought about the dreams she weaved in the past couple of days of remaining in Ingleside, where she at least knew some people and felt more at home than anywhere else at the moment, though not quite at home.

She thought about the letter tucked into her mother's recipe book. The one from Miss Aden, her former school teacher.

Eventually, she told the elderly lady that she was going to live with Miss Bell, her great-aunt whom she had never met before.

“That sounds rather like a life-changing adventure, dear. But you do not look very excited about this,” her smile softened. “Do you not wish to go?”

“I suppose I must,” Solenne admitted, her voice shaking.

The woman smiled again. “That wasn't what I asked,” and placed her gloved fingers gently on Solenne's arm.

“There isn't anywhere else for me to go.”

“There seldom is, until there is,” the woman replied.

Solenne considered this for a moment.

“I toyed with the idea of staying. But I am not sure where I could find boarding, or what I would do now. I only knew my aunt in Ingleside,” she glanced toward the trees beyond the station.

“I assume, I could sleep in the forest and live on berries and mushrooms, but I am not quite sure how to survive the winters.”

The woman chuckled. “My dear, you have a vivid imagination. You remind me of someone I used to know.”

“Oh?” Solenne grew a little taller in her seat.

“I once sat upon this very platform, many years ago, waiting for a train I eventually boarded. I was sent away to marry a man I had never met, to save my family from financial ruin," she paused. "I suppose it was a transaction that benefited both families, except for the two parties to be wed.”

She stared into the distance for a while before continuing. “There are trains one regrets missing. And there are trains one regrets catching.”

“Were you frightened?” Solenne leaned closer.

“Oh dear, terribly.”

“Did you consider not going? Or getting off the train somewhere nobody knew you and beginning a new life under a new name?”

The woman chuckled again. “How much you remind me of myself. I did. Of course, I did. I thought about both.”

“What did you do?” Solenne's eyes widened, catching the afternoon light.

“I stayed on the train.”

“Oh,” Solenne felt her soles settling on the ground beneath her. “How did you know you were doing the right thing?”

The woman held her gaze for a moment. “I didn't.”

“But were you happy?”

“We grew to love one another with time. My children also brought a great deal of joy into my life,” her sentence sounded unfinished, as though there was an unspoken 'but' at the end of it.

“Did you know what would happen?”

“Oh, no,” she smiled. “Nobody knows.”

A whistle sounded from not far away.

“Last call for the 4:17 to Ashcombe,” the stationmaster announced.

Solenne fidgeted on the bench. She pulled the carpet bag closer, and clutching her ledger and pencil to her chest. Then she thought about the letter again.

She could board the train and live with Miss Bell.

Or she could answer the call of her old schoolmistress.

Miss Aden had heard of Solenne's situation and begun asking around for possibilities before Solenne even knew of Miss Bell. She had written that she knew of a shop in Cavendish, where the proprietor needed a girl to help with the business.

Miss Aden knew the proprietor well, and he was willing to take Solenne on because she was already sixteen and had good references. There was also a small furnished room available for her with a widowed landlady who takes in boarders.

It's not the grand romantic escape Solenne had imagined, but it was respectable. And it was hers, should she want it.

“Last call for the 4:17 to Ashcombe.” the stationmaster called again. “4:20 train to Cavendish arriving on platform two.”

The elderly woman rose and smoothed her skirt. “That would be my train,” she gathered her small leather case and looked down at Solenne. “Whatever you choose, my dear, don't let fear decide for you.”

Solenne stood up, too.

Then she lifted her heavy carpet bag with one hand and smoothed her own skirt with the other, just as the elderly woman had done only a moment before.

Behind the glass, the station clock showed four seventeen.

She took a deep breath, and with shaky steps, she began to walk.