Read Online The Christmas Train by David Baldacci - Free Book Online Page B

only answer she gave was that it was time to go home. They talked, and then the talk snowballed into an argument, and then it cascaded downhill from there. By the time she had her bags packed they were screaming at each other, and Tom had become so confused and distraught that to this day he had no idea half of what he’d said.
    She took a cab to the airport, and Tom followed her, where they continued their argument. Finally, it was time to go up the escalator to get on the shuttle bus. That was when Eleanor, her voice now calm, asked him once more to come with her. If he really loved her, he’d come with her. He remembered standing there, tears in his eyes, feeling only a deep stubbornness fueled by anger. He told her no, he wasn’t coming.
    He watched her ride up the escalator. She turned back once. Her expression was so sad, so miserable, that he almost called out to her, to tell her to wait, that he was coming, but the words never came. It was like the night on the train from Cologne, when he was supposed to propose to the woman he loved but hadn’t. Instead, he turned and walked out, leaving her, as she was leaving him.
    That was the last time he’d seen Eleanor. Until five minutes ago, on a swaying train headed to Chicago by way of Toledo and Pittsburgh. He still had no idea what had happened to make her leave. And he still had no rational explanation as to why he hadn’t gone with her.
    With a jolt, Tom was transported back to West Virginia on steely Amtrak rails. He lay down on the couch, and the warm compartment, the hum-hush, siss-boom-bah of the wheels, his overwrought mind, and the darkness outside combined to push him into a troubled doze.
    Whatever it was must have hit Tom’s sleeper car directly. The sound was very loud, like a cannonball clanging off the side. He almost fell off the couch. He checked his watch. Six-thirty, and they were slowing down fast. Then the mighty Capitol Limited came to a complete stop, and looking out his window, Tom saw that they were not anywhere close to civilization. He smelled something burning, and although he wasn’t an experienced railroad man, that didn’t seem like something you’d want your train to be doing.
    In the darkness outside he saw lights here and there, as presumably train personnel checked where the broadside had come from and what damage it had done. He went out into the hallway and saw Father Kelly.
    “Did you hear that?” the priest said. “It sounded like a shot.”
    “I think we hit something,” Tom replied. “Maybe there was something on the track and we ran over it.”
    “It sounded like it hit our car, and we’re in the middle of the train.”
    Well, that was true, thought Tom. “I don’t know, I just hope we start moving again soon.”
    Regina walked by with a worried look. She was carrying a huge cluster of newspapers all balled up.
    Tom said, “Hey, Regina, what’s up? We’re not moving. Did Amtrak’s credit card bounce or something?”
    “We hit something, that’s for sure. They’re checking it out. We should be heading on shortly.”
    He looked at what she was carrying. “I take it you’re really into newspapers.”
    “Somebody stuffed them in the trash can. I don’t even know where they came from. Only newspaper on this train is the Toledo Blade , and we don’t pick that up until early tomorrow morning.”
    She walked off. Tom was starting to feel very smart for building extra time into his travel schedule. It looked like he was going to need it. In Twain’s day, the trip from St. Joseph, Missouri, to California measured nineteen hundred miles and by overland stagecoach took about twenty days. While Tom had to go over a thousand miles farther than Twain had, he was being pulled by something a little more potent than equine power. And yet it was beginning to look like Twain’s travel time might not be in any real jeopardy. Tom started thinking of small islands where he could hide out from Lelia when he didn’t show