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Show 36 ticket to the man. "Lady: This bus is going to Portland," he said. "Maine. It's going north." "Oh." Leah spoke to him weakly. "I'm sorry." If it had just . . . if it had just been the Boston bus, she thought, I could have gone. I could have done it. I could have made it. I could have slept the night in the depot. I would have met somebody who would have . . . She stepped down, quilt and bag in her hands, from the Portland bus. When the ticket agent left the small depot building for the night, he told Leah and the only other passenger waiting there on a bench, a man: "Just be sure you close the door tight when you catch your bus. Just be sure it's closed tight and locked." "I will," Leah said quietly. The terminal was very dim. The man on the bench said nothing. Leah pulled the folded quilt very tight to her. There was the dense smell, from somewhere, of packed, dirty snow and discarded candy wrappers. A New Hampshire State Police car pulled in outside and cruised the small terminal lot. There were no buses visible anywhere. "Where're you going?" the man on the other bench asked her. He wore an old Army jacket, levis, boots. His face was unnaturally thin, as if it had been pressed, somehow, between cars. There were several gaps in his teeth. "I'm ..." Leah looked at him. She felt her hands inside the folds of the quilt. She felt around. She wondered where Hunt's hands were. "Boston," |
