Free Death Train to Boston by Dianne Day

day to sit with me for a while. I had asked her if she would send a telegram for me the next time she was in town. I needed to let my business partner know that I was all right, I said. She had replied, "You don't have any business anywhere anymore except right here, so I reckon there won't be any telegrams sent. If God wants you here, who are you to argue that? And we know God wants you here, because Father says so."
    Hm, I'd thought, God may want me here, but you do not. That was as plain to me as the nose on her saucy face. Then I'd filed that observation away in my mind, along with all the others I was accumulating.
    Someday, surely, all these observations would be of use.
    I sighed. What was taking Tabitha so long to return with Sarah? Why couldn't I hear footsteps in the hallway outside my door when people came and went? Surely there was a hallway outside the door, and in a simple farmhouse, no more than a cabin really, it would not be carpeted. . . .
    Suddenly I could not get my breath, my heart began to pound, and my hands dripped cold sweat. Down to the very marrow of my bones I understood the origin of the phrase "scared to death," because I was. Surely one could not live long and feel this way?
    Oh, dear God, I was trapped in this one room! Trapped, without knowing where I really was, knowing nothing of the layout of the house, in or near what town it was situated, knowing nothing at all except these four walls and the view from this one window. I could not bear it! My heart fluttered like a bird in the cage of my ribs.
    When I was a child in Boston, one of my mother's friends had kept canaries in her house around the corner from us, in Louisburg Square. She had a whole room full of the tiny little yellow birds, each in its single, separate cage. I couldn't say how many cages, because I'd been too young to count them, but the day had come when I couldn't stand anymore to see those caged birds singing their pretty little hearts out. I had opened the doors of all the cages; and then I'd run away myself. I hadn't stayed to watch and see if they would fly away or not, but I knew what I would have done if I had been a bird. . . .
    I shifted in the chair to get my legs right under me. The chair had no arms, but I braced my hands against the seat. Did I dare to let my legs take my weight? Were they really broken and mending? I had only Pratt's word for it. I didn't remember the doctor's visit. What if my broken legs were as much a construction of Pratt's grandiose imagination as his angelic visions? What if my injuries were far less severe than he'd led me to believe?
    Oh please, I thought, I must get away. . . .
    I slowly lifted myself from the chair, keeping most of my weight on my hands. I felt pain; beads of moisture popped out on my forehead. My breath came in shallow bursts and I was dizzy, but the cold dread of absolute terror passed, because now I was doing something. The pain was not so bad . . . until I tried to straighten my knees.
    So early in the morning that the sky was still dark, Michael waited on the platform of San Francisco's train station for Meiling to arrive from Palo Alto. He had engaged an auto-taxi for the trip from the station to the Ferry Building; there they would cross the Bay to Oakland, and from Oakland their main journey eastward would begin.
    He was alone on the platform. Two porters in their red-capped uniforms leaned against the walls, perhaps catching forty winks. If they had been on duty all night, and they probably had, Michael did not begrudge the hard-working men their sleep. He preferred to be alone anyway.
    Michael's footsteps clicked on the cement platform as he walked back and forth, back and forth. He took off his bowler hat and ran his hand through his hair once, twice; then put the hat back on again. He didn't like to admit it, but Edna Stephenson had shaken his confidence. Was he doing the right thing by involving Meiling?
    She'd changed. Well, people do that, especially when