The Christmas Train (12 page)

On impulse, he stood up and reached for his phone. He needed to call his mother. He'd planned to tell his parents at the same time, face-to-face. But he was so far out of his comfort zone—

“Okay.” A stocky woman with a chart in her hand flung open the curtain. “What do we have here?”

Tom snapped his phone shut. “She fell out of bed, we think. I found her on the floor. It's carpeted,” he added.

“Well, that's good, I guess. Hi, Mrs. Stephens.” She patted Miss Eva's arm, then smiled down at her when she jerked awake. “I'm Dr. Abbott. I hear you were jumping up and down on the bed and fell out. How're you feeling?”

For a moment Miss Eva stared at the doctor as if she didn't understand what she'd said. Then her eyes shifted to Tom and brightened.

Tom squelched a grimace. Karl again.

“I feel
gut.
So happy,” she added, gasping a little for breath. And if the words weren't adequate to her frame of mind, the smile she fastened on Tom was. “I find my brother. You see?” She fought again for breath. “I find him and now we have another Christmas—” She broke off in a fit of coughing.

With a deft move the doctor pressed a button to raise the head of the bed. “Let me have a little listen,” she said, whipping out her stethoscope once the coughing eased.

“Are you her son?” she asked once she finished a cursory physical exam.

“No.” Tom signaled the doctor to turn away from the bed. “No relative at all. But she thinks I'm her long-lost brother, Karl Hess.”

“I see. And how did she end up in your care?”

“She traveled here with my daughter on the train. She's confused, though. She says she was coming to her brother's house, only there's nobody by that name in the phone book. So I took her home with us from the train depot last night. Then this morning she fell. The paramedics said your social worker would try to locate her son.”

The doctor nodded. “So she thinks you're her brother. Did you try to explain otherwise?”

“Not really. I mean, at first I did. But it was late when I picked them up, and she was obviously exhausted. So I just let her believe whatever she wanted. It seemed to make her so happy.”

“Yes, I see that.” She turned her attention back to Miss Eva. “So, Mrs. Stephens. You're having shortness of breath and your heart's marching to a different drummer. I saw the list of your meds and we'll be tweaking them just a little. We're also going to keep you on oxygen for a while. So you just rest here while I see about getting you admitted, at least until we get you stabilized. Okay?”

“Can I go home now?” Miss Eva asked as if she hadn't heard a word the doctor said.

“No. Not just yet.”

“It's okay, Eva.” Tom bent over her. “They'll take good care of you.”

“No, Karl. No!” Her faded eyes filled with tears and she reached a shaky hand out to him. “Don't go away. Not ever again do you leave me
und
Mutti.”

“Is she German?” Dr. Abbott asked.

“Yeah. My daughter says that sometimes Eva thinks it's still the war. You know, World War Two. We're pretty sure she thought she was going home to Germany to spend Christmas with her family.”

The doctor thought a moment. “If she lived through World War Two in Europe, it could be that the attacks in New York and Washington triggered her confusion. I'd better get a neurological consult, then. Somebody who deals with geriatric patients. Meanwhile, let me get on with having her admitted and moved to a room.” She paused. “Could you possibly stay with her until she's settled in a room? I'm thinking she'll be a lot calmer with you here.”

“We can stay,” Anna piped up.

Tom's heart sank. All he wanted was to get Miss Eva turned over to the responsible parties and then get on with his own problems. But Anna looked up at him so hopefully . . .

There was no way he could say no. “Sure. We can stay awhile.”

“Good enough,” the doctor said on her way out.

Tom rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. Now what?

As if Anna read his thoughts, she leaned on the bed's side rail. “Miss Eva, where did Karl go when he left you and your mother?”

Miss Eva's eyes veered to Anna's earnest face. “He goes to the war. Right, Karl?” Her eyes returned to his. “The Nazis want him to fight, but we are half Polish.” Each short phrase was bracketed by hard-fought breaths. “And he wants to defend Poland from the German army and the Russian one, too. When they find out he has joined the Resistance fighters, then we all become the enemy. Me
und
Mutti
und
Karl.”

Tom pulled a chair nearer. She was half Polish? If he remembered his European history, the Nazis eventually treated the Polish people almost as harshly as they did the Jews. “What happened to your—
our
—parents?”

Eva shook her head. “You remember. Papa, they make him go to fight before you left. But in the German army. Then when the Nazis find you are gone to the Polish Resistance, they come for us.” She struggled for breath. “Mutti tells me to run. Is all I can do.”

“When was this? Where did you run to?”

She closed her eyes as if it hurt to remember. “I leave in November. I remember because it is cold.”

“November. What year?”

She opened her eyes. “Nineteen forty, of course. I write you and tell you all this.”

Tom glanced at Anna, who was following their conversation with wide eyes. It felt wrong, pretending to be Karl. But maybe he could get enough information to help the social worker help Eva. Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his knees. “I'm afraid I never got that letter.”

“No?” She sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

“So, tell me where you went.”

“Here, Miss Eva,” Anna said, holding a glass and a straw up to her. “Do you want some water?”

Though weak, the old woman drank thirstily from the straw.
“Das ist
gut.”
She closed her eyes then, and Tom thought she had fallen asleep until she reached for his hand. “I leave through the window with one bag and I run to the graveyard, to the shed where old Egbert keeps his shovels. You remember?”

Tom nodded and glanced at Anna before answering. “I remember.”

“I stay until very dark. And then I go west. That is all I know to do: go west. I walk at night and hide in the day. I eat what I can find. Eggs I steal from a hen house. Carrots in the ground—” She broke off, gasping for air. The cords on her neck strained with every breath. “It is cold, the coldest winter I ever remember. And the snow, it comes and comes.”

She shivered. “My boots . . .” Tears leaked from beneath her white eyelashes. “For so many days I walk. Twice I can ride a train. Across the Elbe. I try to go to Switzerland but . . . is not safe that way. So I keep going.” She struggled to breathe. “I cross almost the whole of Germany, almost to Belgium. I am hungry all the time. All the time so hungry.”

Tom leaned forward, listening hard. She might not be clear about the present, but he had no doubt every bit of this tale was accurate. “Were you alone?”

“
Ja
. I travel alone, though sometimes I have help. But you remember how bad it is. Everyone is afraid to help. They are afraid of the Nazis. And of the Madman. To help the enemy is to become the enemy.” She opened her eyes. “There is no Christmas that winter.” With trembling lips she smiled up at him. “But now I am back and you are here and we have Christmas like before. A
Tannenbaum und
maybe a Yule log.”

Her smile, so pure and childlike, made him squirm. Every time she looked at him with such love in her eyes, so much joy glowing in her face, he felt like a fraud. Even though this deception was not of his doing, it felt like one more gigantic lie he was trapped in.

This sweet old woman wanted so desperately to find her family, she'd embarked on a journey across six decades and an ocean just to be reunited with her brother. She might be confused about time and place, but she didn't lack for love, courage, or determination.

Which cast his own behavior in an even worse light.

He'd spent the past decade ignoring the fact that he had a daughter not even a thousand miles away. Eva treasured her family above all else, while he . . . he'd just shrugged his off.

In his eyes he felt an unfamiliar burn. Tears? Surely not.

But when he swallowed, trying to beat down the uncomfortable sensation, a knot of emotions clogged his throat. Guilt and . . . and sorrow. Sorrow for Anna and the unsettled life that had been thrust on her, and sorrow for all the years he'd missed, the years he could have been a part of her life, but wasn't.

“Don't worry, Miss Eva,” Anna piped up, sparing him the pain of speaking. “We'll have a very good Christmas this year. Won't we . . . Karl?” she added.

They stared at each other across the hospital bed, and for the first time since Carrie's call, Tom felt like maybe he wasn't a total jackass. Anna, his daughter Anna, obviously approved of this charade he was playing. She
wanted
him to be Karl for Miss Eva.

Their eyes held a long, steady moment, until he recovered his ability to speak. “Yes. We will have a very good Christmas.”

T
OM
received four phone calls but he didn't take any of them. By the time the orderlies brought Miss Eva to a regular hospital room and got her settled comfortably in the bed, she was so tired she'd fallen into a heavy sleep. The social worker came in to say she'd begun the search for Major Paul Stephens Jr., and though she hadn't located him yet, she had a military contact on the case and was certain she'd get a call very soon.

“The doctor ordered something to help her relax, so she'll be okay if you leave,” the woman assured him. “You've been awfully nice to her, considering she's a stranger.”

“She's not a stranger to me,” Anna put in. “She's my friend.”

Tom smiled at Anna, impressed again by her loyalty. “Miss Eva was very good to my daughter.” And when Anna looked up at him, she smiled back. Their very first shared smile, Tom realized.

After the social worker left he asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Yep.”

At the hospital cafeteria they had breakfast and he checked his calls. Joelle once; his mother twice, and his sister. The women in his life were ganging up on him. He looked over at Anna before he returned any of the calls. “Do you want Joelle to come to the hospital and stay here with you while I go see my parents?”

“Does she
want
to stay with me?” Anna countered.

“I think she does.”

Her brow creased in thought. “No. I think I'd rather go with you to meet my other grandparents.”

Tom blew out a nervous breath. “I'm not so sure that's a good idea.”

“I don't care.” Her face turned mutinous. “I went my whole life with only one grandmother and then she died, and now it turns out I have another grandmother
and
a grandfather. I want to meet them. Even if they end up not liking me,” she added in a more subdued tone.

“I told you, Anna. They're going to love you.”

“So why can't I go with you?”

Frowning, he stacked her dishes and his onto the cafeteria tray. “How about I go in first to talk to them and you wait in the car till I come get you?” Even as he said it, he didn't like the idea. But what else could he do?

She pushed out her lower lip, then sighed and shrugged. “Okay.”

“It'll be cold in the car.”

“I said okay. I'm used to cold weather.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I guess . . . I guess I'll just call them and tell them I'm coming over.”

I
T
wasn't a long drive. But even though the main roads were clear, it was slow going. For Anna, every minute felt like an eternity. She was going to meet his parents, her grandparents. Despite his assurance that they would like her, she wasn't convinced.

She glanced sidelong at him. “Did you live here when you were a kid?”

“Yeah. Until I went away to college.”

“That's when you met my mother, right?”

He glanced at her and then back at the snow-lined road. “Right. That's where we met.”

Anna stared at her lap. “How come you didn't get married to each other?”

From the corner of her eyes she saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel.

“We, uh . . . I don't think we, uh, loved each other enough to get married.”

Anna looked up at his profile. He looked nervous and a little sweaty. “How come you moved back here after college?”

“I got a job offer working for an engineering firm here in Ennis. Besides, while I was away at college two pizza restaurants opened up in town. And, they deliver,” he added with an awkward grin, obviously trying to steer the conversation away from him and her mother.

Anna decided to help him out. “I love pizza.”

“Me, too.”

Then he turned into a long driveway and Anna forgot all about her mother and pizza deliveries. The house was pretty, just like on a Christmas card, pale blue with white trim and black shutters, and a front porch with rocking chairs plus a big wreath on the front door. But the coolest thing of all was a real Christmas tree growing right in the front yard. And it had all kinds of nuts and oranges and seeds hanging on it like decorations.

“It's a tree for squirrels and birds!” Anna pressed her face to the window as they passed it. “Who put it there?”

“I planted that one a couple of years ago to replace another one that had gotten too big to decorate. See? That big blue spruce next to the porch.”

“Wow. It's gigantic. Oh, look, there's birds eating at their Christmas tree.”

“Rabbits and raccoons come, too. If you want, you can help me replenish the peanut butter and seeds we press into the pinecones.”