Free Night Train to Lisbon by Emily Grayson Page A

aunt? Although their “friendship” had developed over the past weeks, Jane was still and forever her “aunt,” no matter by what name Carson called her. No, Carson had no one. No one but him.
    Alec was whom she’d come to confide in. Alec was the confidant, the constant companion, the endless receptacle into which she could pour her wishes and desires and dreams. Even though theirlives were so different—or maybe because their lives were so different—the fact was, she could talk to him, and he to her, about almost anything. When she spoke of her upbringing, and her fairy-tale existence, he seemed to understand, nodding at key moments and asking all kinds of incisive questions, trying his hardest to imagine what this “Connecticut” must be like. And he seemed to understand, too, her embarrassment or discomfort or even boredom at having to describe dinners at the country club, the intricacies of the social season, the charity work that seemed to speak more to the needs of the wealthy women stuffing envelopes and ordering arrangments of flowers than those of the disadvantaged they were helping. And so he would gently switch subjects and talk instead about her —who Carson was—in a way that nobody else ever had. Who was your very best friend? he wanted to know. When were you happiest? What’s been your deepest fear?
    And when it was her turn, she would try to learn what his “Cambridge” must be like, and she, too, soon learned that he didn’t want to be defined only by equations on a blackboard. It was when he spoke of his own childhood, describing in detail his memories of his father, his relationship with his mother, now deceased, and the elderly, wealthy woman named Mrs. Violet Bertram whose house she’d cleaned, who had sent Alec to Cambridge, and who still maintained a room for him in her house—when he spoke of all this, he spoke from the heart, and Carson listened, rapt.
    Maybe they weren’t so different after all. Maybe this is what they had in common: Carson and Alec had come from isolated lives, they had always thought that in some way, without even thinking about it, how they lived was how the rest of the world lived, and now they knew otherwise. What else? one of them would ask, and the amazing thing was that there always was something else, something more, another detail or story that he could summon, or that she could remember about her own childhood, one more round of memories that they could share, and in so doing, remain together a little while longer.
    They were getting to know each other; this was what people in love did. It happened effortlessly, and the more that Carson learned about Alec, the more she seemed to love him, and when he asked her to make love with him, it was him she naturally wanted to ask about whether she should. But she couldn’t, and so she had to do once more what she’d found herself doing so often during this endlessly surprising and suddenly consequential summer, and decide for herself.
    â€œYes,” she whispered.
    Her aunt and uncle, upon realizing that their niece was falling in love while under their care, were of course concerned. “You’re a young girl,” Lawrence said that very same night at dinner, “and he’s an older man.”
    â€œNot so old. He’s twenty-five,” said Carson.
    â€œBut compared with you, it’s a lifetime,” Lawrence grumbled.
    â€œIgnore your uncle,” said Jane. “He’s forgotten what it was like to woo me when I was but a girl myself. The age difference shouldn’t really matter if you truly and honestly get to know and respect each other.”
    â€œThank you,” said Carson.
    â€œIf, of course,” Jane added lightly, “you’re well aware of what you’re getting into: that a man in his twenties might expect the relationship to include certain elements that are, shall we say, inappropriate for