"Hi, Bird," he said.
She looked at him. She knew him; he saw that. But not the right way. "You're the electrician," she said.
"That's right."
"You were very kind to me. With the suitcase." She frowned. "Somebody took my suitcase."
"Nobody took it. It's safe. My boss is looking after it."
"That's good." She turned back to the window. "I'm going west," she said, and her voice was perfectly reasonable. "He didn't come, you see. He was supposed to come on the four-ten, and they all said he didn't, they said it's some other year, and I thought, well. Well, Iris. If he's not coming here, it must be because he's gone on ahead. He did that once. He went ahead to Omaha to see about a job and I followed." She nodded to herself. "So I'll follow. It's not so complicated."
The boy in the headphones had taken one earcup off and was staring at them both with an expression of deep unease. James gave him a small nod, man to man, that meant it's okay, I've got this. He had no idea whether he had this.
"Bird," he said. "Can I tell you something?"
She inclined her head.
"I'm not your James."
He hadn't planned to say it. Every part of him knew it was the wrong thing, the thing the young officer had done, the thing that knocked the floor out. But he was so tired, all of a sudden, of not being anybody, and he had a feeling, a feeling he couldn't have defended to Ron or to a doctor or to anyone, that she was too. That she was sitting in that lounge car not because she was lost but because she was trying, with all she had left, to get somewhere true.