"I figured Lila should have it," he said. "When she's older."
"Thank you."
"And I wanted to—" He stopped, and put his hands in his jacket pockets, and took them out again. "I wanted to tell you why I was on the train. Because you asked, and I didn't answer, and I don't want you thinking I was—I don't know what you thought."
"I thought you were drunk," Nora said. "Honestly. When I saw you on the platform. For a second, before I understood. I thought, he's drunk and he's come to make a scene. Like the wedding."
He took it without flinching, which surprised her. "Fair," he said.
"Why were you on the train, Tom?"
He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet and from the wallet he took out an index card, folded in half and soft at the edges from handling. He didn't give it to her. He held it.
"Nineteen days before he died," he said, "he called me. I didn't pick up. He left a message. I didn't call back." He was looking at the card, not at her. "In the message, he said he took the 5:52 every night. He said his daughter met him on the platform. He said if I ever wanted to see what that looked like, I should get on the train." He swallowed. "So I got on the train."
Nora put her hand out against the porch post.
"He called you," she said.
"Yeah."
"He never told me that."
"I figured he might not have."
"Nineteen days before."
"August second. Nine-oh-four at night."
She tried to think what she had been doing on the second of August, a year ago last summer, at 9:04 at night, and could not remember, and that was the worst of it, that it had been an ordinary night. He'd probably been on the back steps. He liked to sit on the back steps after Lila went down, with a beer and his phone, looking at the river through the gap between the Pruitts' garage and the Delgados' fence. She'd probably been inside, folding laundry or paying the electric bill or asleep on the couch. He had sat out there in the dark and called his brother, and he had never said a word.
"What else did he say?"
Tom looked at her, then. "You can hear it, if you want. I've got it on my phone. But I don't think you should hear it on the porch. And I don't think you should hear it because I'm standing here. I think you should hear it when you want to."