Corbin had been asking the same question every day since Bacharach.
“I want to go home.”
He said it on the Rhine. He said it during hikes, at breakfast, and before bed. Every plan and every event was met with suspicion.
“Where are we going?” he’d ask.
“Lunch, baby.”
“No. I want to go home.”
That morning, the question came again, but the answer had changed.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going home,” I said.
“Now?”
“No. First we have to walk to the train station. Then we take a train to the airport, a plane, Grandpa’s car…”
He pulled the blanket over his head.
“Wait until I finish sleeping.”
But we didn’t—we couldn’t—we packed around him instead.
By the time the boys had eaten breakfast, the room looked as though we’d stayed a week instead of two nights. Clothes hid beneath beds. Chargers appeared where neither of us remembered plugging them in.
Dani compressed everything into the big duffel. Coats. Boots. Anything we wouldn’t need before California disappeared inside. I wrestled the zipper shut and balanced the bag across the stroller. It already started to lean.
~
The train station sat only a few blocks away but every bump tried to throw the duffel onto the sidewalk. By the time we reached the station I’d caught it so many times I stopped sighing.
Inside, I headed for the ticket machine.
It rejected my card.
I tried again.
Another red X.
The station buzzed around me. Suitcases rattled across tile. Departure boards flipped. Announcements echoed overhead.
I already knew which platform we needed, so I left Dani there with the boys and went searching for customer service.
~
One person stood ahead of me.
When he finished, nobody called me forward.
I waited.
An attendant looked up, then pointed toward a ticket dispenser across the room.
I walked over, pulled a number, and before I could read it, the same attendant waved me back.
She printed our tickets and slid them beneath the glass.
“These say 10:42,” I said. “I wanted the train now.”
“You can take any train.” She said.
At that moment my phone buzzed.
“Where are you? The train comes in three minutes.”
I ran.
The train pulled out of the station just as I reached the platform.
Dani looked from me to the departing cars.
Then the doors closed.
The train rolled away.
“It’s okay,” I said between breaths. “Another comes in ten minutes.”
She searched my face for a moment.
Then she nodded.
The next train wasn’t the express like we’d planned.
It stopped everywhere.
Apartment blocks gave way to warehouses, then trees, then another station. People stepped on. Others stepped off. Avery slept against Dani’s shoulder. Corbin sat beside the window with his toy lizard. He’d long since stopped asking how much farther.
By the time the airport station appeared, none of us hurried anymore. We just wrestled the bags onto the platform and followed the signs through the tunnels beneath the terminals.
Corbin looked up at me then.
“Are we going home?” he said.
“Yeah, baby. Now we’re going home.”
This time he didn’t ask what came next.
He just smiled and kept walking.
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