Mae rests her chin on his chest, listening.
“I want more time,” he says, and there’s a catch in his voice. “It’s always been easier for the others somehow. To be themselves and part of the group. But being here this week—it’s made me realize that I need space to sort that out for myself.” He reaches over and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I know you’re not a detour person—”
Her forehead crinkles. “What do you mean?”
“Only that you know exactly what you want,” he says. “Which is a good thing. But I think maybe this can be too.” He traces a finger over the back of her hand, deep in thought. “Did I ever tell you my mum used to call me Paddington? Getting lost was my specialty.”
She smiles at him. “Maybe it still is.”
“I’ve spent my whole life trailing after them, and this is the first chance I’ve had to be on my own, and I suppose I’m just not ready for it to end yet.” He laughs. “Does this make any sense, or do I sound like someone having a midlife crisis?”
“It makes total sense.”
He nods. “I just hope the university lets me. Alfie thinks they might only be interested in a complete set.”
“A complete set of what?”
“Sextuplets,” he says, his voice flat. “That’s how it always works. For interviews and photos and ads; for anything, really. People always want the whole six-pack.”
Mae rolls her eyes. “You’re people, not cans of beer. Besides, it’s only a year, right? They’ll still get all six of you eventually.”
“I don’t know if they’ll see it that way. It would be one thing if I had a good reason….”
“You do.”
“That I want to skive off for a year and travel the world?”
“It’s not skiving,” she says. “You just said so yourself. And even if it was, who cares? It’s your dream.”
“As of five minutes ago.”
“No,” she says, looking at him seriously. “You’ve known for a long time that you want something different. It just took you a while to figure out what it was.”
“I can’t decide if you’re the cleverest girl I’ve ever met or you’re just as mad as I am.”
Mae’s eyes are shiny with laughter. “Why can’t it be both?” she says brightly.
Below, there’s a chorus of bings from her mobile as they return to an area with reception. “We should get up,” she says. “Breakfast probably ends soon.”
“Wait, what time is it?” he asks as Mae leans over him to open the curtain, and the light comes streaming in to reveal a flat, dusty landscape. “Did we miss our stop?”
“No, they would’ve woken us. We were stuck for a while last night. You were half-asleep.” She’s already wriggling away from him, unhooking the safety net so she can swing her legs free and step next to the lower bunk. When she hits the floor, it’s with a loud thud. “There’s just no graceful way to do that, huh? Come on. I want pancakes. And bacon.”
Hugo closes his eyes for a second, thinking again of the text from his dad with a pang of guilt. When he opens them, Mae is unplugging her mobile from the charger. As she starts to scroll through a long series of texts, her face goes pale, and she grips the edge of his bunk to steady herself.
“What?” Hugo asks, his stomach knotted. Mae is always so unshakable; it’s alarming to see her like this.
She looks up as if she’s forgotten he’s there. “We lost service again.”
“We’ll get it back in Denver. Is everything—”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. She looks like she might cry. “My nana had a stroke.”
Hugo’s heart judders at the bluntness of the word. “I’m so sorry,” he says, though it sounds woefully insufficient. “Will she be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Mae says numbly. “I think so. My dads are on their way to the hospital now. The doctor told them it was a small one, so hopefully she’ll be fine, but…”
“But it’s still really frightening,” Hugo says, and she nods without looking at him, her head bowed over the screen. He feels frozen with uncertainty, not sure if he should leap down and hug her or stay where he is. This is big, what’s just happened, and in the grand scheme of things, they hardly know each other. It’s been less than a week. But it doesn’t feel that way.
It doesn’t feel that way at all.
The train is slowing down now, and an announcement comes over the speaker. “Fort Morgan, Colorado,” says the crackling voice. “This is Fort Morgan. We’ve got fifteen minutes here, which is enough time for a cigarette or some air, but not enough time to leave the platform. So feel free to step off, but keep your ears open for that whistle.”
Mae grabs her hoodie from the hook near the door. “I’m just gonna…,” she says, but she doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she slides on her flip-flops, unchains the lock, and heads around the corner.
For a few seconds, Hugo stays where he is, feeling like a balloon with a pinhole, the air seeping out of him so slowly that it’s hard to tell if it’s even happening.
By the time he scrambles off the bed and tugs on a shirt and a pair of trousers, the train has stopped. He takes a gulp of cool air as he steps down onto the platform. There’s nothing much here, just a small depot and a gravel parking lot. A few other people from their car have gotten off, too, some of them smoking, others squinting at the sky in hopes that the sun might come out, though a line of clouds is gathering in the distance.
He spots Mae all the way up front near the engine, looking very small and very much alone. As he walks toward her, she lowers her mobile, which was pressed to her ear, and stares at it for a second, as if considering whether to launch it onto the tracks. Then she bends down and puts her hands on her knees instead, trying to collect herself.
“I’m okay,” she says as he approaches, her head still lowered.
“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 brig
htly 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?”
“I don’t,” she says with a shrug.
He digs in his pocket and hands her a blue button that matches the ones on his jacket. “Collateral.”
“Thank you,” she says, accepting it solemnly. “But you do know we could also just use an app, right?”
“Right,” he says. “Though it probably wouldn’t be anywhere near as safe or reliable as a button.”
She nods. “That’s true.”
They drop their backpacks in the room, then walk back downstairs, past the giant cow sculpture, and out the revolving doors. The sky is a bright, cloudless blue, and Hugo takes a deep breath. “What’s that smell?” he asks, and Mae laughs.
“I think it’s fresh air.”
He takes another whiff, looking satisfied by this, then turns to her. “Look, this is a bit awkward, but I’m going to need some space now.”
Mae’s heart swells inexplicably, and she smiles at him. “Is that so?”
“It is,” he says. “I’m not sure if anyone’s told you this before, but you can be bit clingy, and I think—”
“Okay,” she says, laughing. “I’m going. You’ll be all right?”
He puts a hand on his chest. “Me? I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about. I give it three minutes before you start missing me desperately.”
“Three?”
“Maybe even only two.”
“Hey,” she says, and his expression becomes more serious. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he says. “Just ring if you need anything, yeah?”
“I will.”
Once they’ve parted ways—Mae heading in one random direction, Hugo in another—she tries phoning her dads yet again, but the calls go straight to voice mail. She sends another text to Nana, then waits for a second, hoping for a response. But still nothing.
In the distance, the Rocky Mountains are stacked up against the horizon, white capped and imposing. Mae stares at them for a moment, feeling very small, and then she shoves the phone into the back pocket of her jeans and begins to walk in the other direction.
As she waits for a light to change, she notices how spacious it is here, the streets all wide and breezy beneath the sprawling blue sky. It’s so unlike the cramped and busy sidewalks of New York, which is the only city where she’s spent any real time.
“You know what I miss most about Manhattan?” Nana once said when she was staying with them, and Dad—who can never resist an opportunity to tease her—was the first to chime in.
“The rats?” he suggested, which made her groan. Unlike Pop, who grew up there, Dad only lived in the city for a few years after college, and he’s much happier in the Hudson Valley, where there are more trees than people.
“The way you’re never alone,” Nana said dreamily.
“Exactly,” Dad said with a grin. “Because of all the rats.”
Mae knows he doesn’t hate it. Not really. It’s where he met Pop, where they brought Mae home from the hospital, where his whole life began. He might grumble about the smell of the city and the crowds on the subway and the heat in the summer. But mostly, he’s just giving Nana an excuse to defend the place she loves, a small kindness dressed up like something else.
That’s what Mae is thinking about now as she walks the streets of Denver, and about a thousand other memories of Nana too. But when she realizes what she’s doing, she shakes her head, trying to scatter the thoughts. Because this isn’t a memorial. Nana will be fine. She always is.
There’s a bookshop called the Tattered Cover on the opposite corner, and she heads toward it, eager for the distraction. Inside, it’s warm and inviting, with huge wooden beams and rows upon rows of shelves. Mae takes a deep breath, inhaling that particular perfume of paper and glue. By the time her phone rings, she’s on her second loop of the store, deep in the autobiography section. When she sees that it’s Pop, she hurries back out onto the street before picking up, her heart in her throat.
“How is she?” she says instead of hello. “Where have you been? Is everything okay?”
“It’s okay,” he says, his voice gruff. “We’re at the hospital.”
“How’s Nana?”
“She’s doing fine. It was a mild stroke, but they’ve run a lot of tests, and the doctors think she’ll be totally fine.”
“Was it because of the chemo?”
“They’re not sure,” he says. “She’s been through a lot this year. It could’ve been anything. But we all know a measly stroke is no match for your nana. Neither are the nurses, as it turns out. I’m pretty sure she made at least one of them cry over a poker hand.”
Mae loosens her grip on the phone. “Can I talk to her?”
“She’s sleeping now, but I’ll tell her you called.”
“I should be there,” she says, which is true, truer than Pop even knows. If she hadn’t lied to them, if she hadn’t gotten it into her head that she needed an adventure, she’d still be there right now. The knowledge of this is like a weight on her chest, and she takes a jagged breath. “I should be home with all of you.”
“It’s fine, kid,” Pop says. “Really.”
But still, she’s hit by a wave of guilt so strong her legs feel a little shaky. “I could get on a plane tonight,” she says, spinning in a circle, taking in the blur of old buildings and distant mountains. “There must be tons of flights from Denver. I could make it back by—”
“Mae,” Pop says, and she stops short. “She told me you’d say that.”
“She did?”
“Yeah. I’m supposed to tell you to stop worrying and enjoy the trip.”
Mae is quiet for a moment. “Should I? Stop worrying?”
“Honestly? I’m still working on that myself. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s to do what Nana says.”
“But you’ll check in with me, right? And let me know if anything changes? I’m getting on another train in the morning, and I’ll be in San Francisco the next afternoon. But I could jump off somewhere along the way if you guys need—”
“Mae, honey, it’s okay. We’re going to take her back upstate with us tomorrow, and then she just needs to rest. We’ve got it covered here. Really.”
She bites her lip, but the knot in her chest has started to unwind. “Okay. Well, make sure to tell her I love her. And Dad too.”
“I will.”
“And you,” she says. “Obviously.”
He laughs. “I obviously love you too.”
Hugo sits at the bar of an Irish pub, watching a football match on the fuzzy television that hangs above the shelves of liquor.
“Go on,” he says as the Chelsea striker drives the ball up the pitch. It’s stolen by one of the Liverpool defenders, and he groans. “Bloody hell.”
Field Notes on Love Page 15