And James saw what she meant. Going down the ramp, beyond the gate, was one of the electric carts the Red Caps drove, the little white six-seaters with the orange flag on a pole, carrying elderly passengers and their bags out to the long-distance trains. It was going slowly. On the front seat, driving, was a big, broad-backed Black man in his sixties in a navy uniform jacket and a bright red cap, the red caps Amtrak's porters had worn in Chicago for a hundred years. He was steering with one hand and pointing out something to the passengers in the back with the other.
And walking behind the cart, right behind it, close enough to touch the rear bumper, following it down the ramp toward the train with her face lifted and fixed on the bobbing red cap like a sailor fixed on a harbor light, was Iris.
"Oh, God," said a voice beside him. Petra had come up, out of breath, her red hat gone, her hair wild. She saw what he was looking at. "Oh, God. She's going to get on the train."
"She can't get on the train. She doesn't have a ticket."
"She doesn't know that," Petra said. "She doesn't know anything right now except that red cap. That's me, James. Don't you see? That's what I taught her. She's following me."
They reached the gate together, all three of them, and the gate agent, a tall woman with silver braids wound up under her Amtrak cap and a scanner in her hand, stepped into the gap and put out her arm like a crossing gate.
"Tickets."
"My grandmother just went through here," Petra said. "The old lady behind the Red Cap cart. She has dementia. She doesn't have a ticket, she doesn't know where she is—"
"Then she'll be found," said the agent, not unkindly, "and brought back up. I can't let you on the platform without a ticket, honey. I'll radio the conductor."
"Radio her," James said. He pulled the lanyard from inside his jacket and held up his station ID, the one with the bad photograph and the blue facilities stripe. "And I'm going down."
The agent looked at the badge, and at him, and at the red scarf trailing from Petra's fist, and at Ruby. "You got business on Twenty-Six, Facilities?"