After You've Gone by Evangeline Holland

Author:Evangeline Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

I DECLINED THE ASSISTANCE OF THE RAILWAY PORTER AND CARRIED my suitcase down the platform myself. It was bittersweet to walk down the same platform where, five years before, I watched the train that took Charles away from me grow smaller and smaller.

Only the faintest traces of the war lingered—a few empty sleeves or trouser legs, the tattered remnants of bunting from the peace conference celebrations last month, much stricter customs and passport bureaus. But instead of poilus and officers in the distinctive blue khaki of the French army rushing down the platforms and spilling into trains, it was children and their nurses, red-faced businessmen, midinettes in their gray frocks, all on their way to the beaches along the Normandy coast to escape the summer heat.

Paris had seen it through, and so, I realized with surprise, had I.

I shifted my baggage into my other hand, my fingers damp and sticky beneath my cotton gloves, and stepped inside the railway station proper. It was then that I saw him, peering about the station, turning this way and that, walking backward through the crowd, and anxiously scanning the faces of passing women. My eyes fell on the wicker carrier he carried and the restless cat inside and I stopped, my heart in my throat, suddenly swept by anxiety.

He was leaner, less imposing perhaps, though his loose summer jacket couldn’t hide the military bearing that held his broad shoulders erect. Those elegant, piano-playing fingers tapped a syncopated beat against the boater crushed in his other hand, and I laughed.

He turned then, somehow hearing my joy in spite of the bustle of the station and the yards between us. When our eyes met, it was as though we’d never parted in anger. I began to walk toward him, one foot in front of the other, and sternly reminded myself to breathe.

I now saw the end of my story, and I wasn’t afraid.

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