The train station was nearly empty when he found her.
She sat on a wooden bench near the far end of the platform, the brim of her hat casting a long shadow across her face. In her lap rested a small suitcase bound with a single strip of red cloth.
He hadn’t expected her to be there at all.
The letter she’d sent had been brief: If you still remember, come before the 7 o’clock train. Nothing more. No name, no address. Only the date—and the signature: E.
Now, seeing her in person, he realized just how many years had passed. But her eyes—sharp, pale, unyielding—hadn’t changed.
“You came,” she said softly, without looking up.
He nodded. “I wasn’t sure if you’d really…”
“Wait?” She smiled faintly. “I never learned how to stop.”
The train tracks hummed in the distance, the sound of an engine still too far to see. He sat beside her, uncertain what to say. The cold iron bench bit through his coat.
She reached into her coat pocket and drew out a small envelope. “You should take this,” she murmured.
“What is it?”
Her gaze flicked toward him, then away again. “The reason you left.”
He frowned, staring at the paper between them. “I don’t understand.”
She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper he almost didn’t catch. “You were never meant to find me again.”
And then—she looked away.
The sound of the incoming train grew louder, filling the platform with echoes. He wanted to speak, to ask what she meant, but she rose, lifting the suitcase with surprising steadiness.
“I waited for you to forget,” she said. “But you didn’t.”
He stood too, reaching for her arm—but she stepped back, the movement precise, final.
The whistle blew. The air filled with steam and noise and the smell of iron.
When it cleared, she was gone.
Only the envelope remained on the bench. He tore it open with trembling fingers. Inside was a single photograph—of the two of them, taken long ago—and on the back, written in the same sharp hand:
“Some goodbyes last longer than a lifetime.”
He stood there until the platform emptied, the wind lifting the paper slightly in his hand.
And though he told himself she had left, part of him felt that she was still there—somewhere, just beyond the edge of the departing train.