The Station Girl

Epilogue

Four months later.

The two rode the train together, he looking out the window as she chattered on mindlessly. Nervously. Excitedly. It was one of the three, that he was certain, but he hardly took a word of it in. No, he was thinking back to his last visit to his adoptive parents. It wasn't possible that it was all a coincidence, was it? No, it couldn't be a coincidence. Somehow, someway, the three of them were inexplicably tied together.

He'd gone to visit his aging parents like he always did every Sunday. The only difference to all the other times was that he carried the preliminary edition of his book with him. He wanted to show it to them, to let them read it before it released to the public. The two of them had quietly read it over, murmuring words of shock and disbelief at times while at others, he could see the tears waiting to be released. He'd been expected to be congratulated for how well written it was or how unbelievable all of it was. He even expected to be told it was a complete mess, that he should never even consider publishing it.

What he didn't expect was how much they honed in on Little One's tale.

"Michael, if your train baby had survived the orphanage, I would expect her to be just as fascinated with trains as this Little One is." His mother held the book on her lap beneath boney hands covered in liver spots.

"Train baby? What are you talking about?" He asked as he reached out for the book, but his mother shook her head, tightening her grip on it.

"You don't remember her? She was almost all you could talk about those first few months after we adopted you!" This time, it was his father, shaking his head with a wistful smile as he thought back to all those years ago.

"Even before we officially adopted you, you were asking us to adopt her too. A little baby girl that had been given to them a few months before we first came to the orphanage. You were so perceptive as a little boy, and you were the one who noticed how much she quieted down whenever she heard the trains. Of course, the workers didn't listen to you so you took it upon yourself to take her down to the train station whenever they weren't keeping a close eye on you."

He sat there, stunned. She would have been five when the massacre had started if she hadn't been adopted by then. It matched up with Little One's age perfectly.

"Why didn't you ever mention her to me before this?"

"Sweetie, by the time the incident occurred, you'd long stopped asking about her. It's not that we didn't look into it, but we couldn't find any traces of her after everything was said and done. If... If she was dead, we didn't want to bring the past up again and upset you over it." His mother offered the book back to him. He didn't even realize he'd taken it from her until he was staring down at it in his own hands.

"I suppose it's not too late to show you what we found though if you're interested." Michael gazed down at the book, not hearing a word his father said nor the sounds of him moving. It wasn't until a piece of paper was slipped over the book's cover that he blinked and realized what he was staring at.

"This... Is it-?"

"It's the best we could find on her, son. The records of the baby who came to Beekley shortly before you were adopted, and what the investigation turned up on her afterwards. They didn't find her body, but they didn't find many to begin with."

"Her name was pretty. Carlyn Rowe. I would of named my own daughter after her if we had ever conceived after adopting you."

"Carlyn..." He murmured.

"Carlyn? Who's that? Ah! Is she the lucky girl you're dating?" Broken from his reverie, he looked over at the girl next to him. Lucy. A stubborn girl who wouldn't let him pay for her train fare. The girl who wanted to find her friend from fifteen years ago. The only person left in the world who knew where Little One was. How was it that he'd stumbled upon the one person in the world who knew where she was?