The train would come, late or not, and everything that happened before its arrival would be before, and everything that came after would be after. It was too late to stop it now. His past would be only a set of certain events that had led him to this desperate act of hope.

He was a fifty-four-year-old man whose face was shocking to him, and in a few moments even that slate would be wiped clean. He allowed himself that hope.

We all want the simplest things, he thought. Despite what we may have, or the children who die, we want the simplicity of love. It was not too much to ask that he be like the others, that he, too, might have something to want.

For twenty years, not one person had said good night to him as he turned off the light and lay down to sleep. Not one person had said good morning as he opened his eyes. For twenty years, he had not been kissed by anyone whose name he knew, and yet, even now, as the snow began to fall lightly, he remembered what it felt like, the soft giving of the lips, the sweet hunger of it.

The townspeople watched him. Not that it mattered anymore. We were there, they would tell their children and their neighbors. We were there. We saw her get off the train for the first time, and she got off the train only three times. We were there. We saw him the minute he set eyes on her.

The letter was in his hand. He knew it by heart. Dear Mr. Truitt, I am a simple honest woman. I have seen much of the world in my travels with my father. In my missionary work I have seen the world as it is and I have no illusions. I have seen the poor and I have seen the rich and do not believe there is so much as a razor’s edge between, for the rich are as hungry as the poor. They are hungry for God. I have seen mortal sickness beyond imagining. I have seen what the world has done to the world, and I cannot bear to be in the world any longer.