Read The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies Online
Authors: Kathleen Hills
Leonie's telegram said they'd get to Chicago on Tuesday, spend the night, and take the overnight sleeper to Chandler, and he could pick them up at the station. McIntire wasn't prepared to wait that long.
He set out at five in the morning to catch the outbound Copper Country Limited, only slightly groggy from a late night scrubbing floors.
He paused at the end of the drive to look back. The lawn was neatly trimmed and the garden as free of weeds as a contrite Claire Hofer could make it. He'd felt guilty about taking advantage of child labor, but Mia insisted that it would make the girl feel better, and maybe she was right. It surely made the garden look better. The kid did a good job. But thank God, she was still enough of a kid to use her armloads of quack grass as an excuse to pay frequent visits to the horses. She'd come and gone without greeting or goodbye. It was going to be interesting to see what she and Leonie's grandchildren made of one another. Chuckie must be about her age.
It looked like the county would let her stay with Mia, for the time being, fulfilling a middle-aged woman's life-long dream. It was more responsibility than should ever be placed on scrawny eleven year old shoulders. When Nick's health got worseâ¦Well, Claire would be no better off with her brothers. Legally, they were still residents of Iowa, and by the time county welfare got its rear in gear Jake would be eighteen and could conceivably be appointed Sam's legal guardian. Otherwise the two would have been prize catches for some farmer magnanimously offering a home to two foster children, and they'd start their life of servitude over again. Although with the question still officially out as to who had murdered their father, there might not be so many willing to take that chance.
Ironically, Joey might end up being the best off of the bunch.
The train was already at the depot when McIntire got there. He barely had time to buy a ticketâone way, trusting that Leonie had booked two sleeper compartments for the journey back. The kids would just have to squeeze into one. He hoped he wasn't being over optimistic. He didn't intend to spend the night sharing a berth with Chuckie.
It was the first train trip McIntire had taken since returning from Europe, and he'd missed it. Sitting with a book, no responsibilities, no ringing phones, no neighbors announcing deaths, watching the world passing by his window and pitying the people who weren't so lucky. He settled into his seat, his newspaper on his knees, and leaned back. When he opened his eyes the landscape hadn't changed, but his watch and his empty stomach said it was half-past noon.
The remainder of the day passed quickly enough with an extravagant lunch in the dining car, his newspaper, and another nap or two.
McIntire was not a connoisseur of train stationsâbleak, cold spaces. They could have been made entirely more inviting by lowering the pretentiously high ceilings and limiting the icy marble.
The designers of Chicago's Union Station hadn't stinted on either ceiling height or marble, but the place was far from cold. It's soaring cavernous space was hot and still and infiltrated with all the odors associated with trains and the mass of people traveling on them.
The train would spend an hour in the station before heading back. That meant he could either run around looking for Leonie or hang around and wait until they showed up.
He didn't have to do either. The fair hair and pale British faces stood out in the sea of robust mid-westerners like lilies in a wheatfield. They sat straight-backed on the edge of the massive wood bench, presenting six white knees in a rowâa serious-faced boy flanked by two thoroughly domesticated little girls in straw boaters, a separate species entirely from Claire Hofer.
Facing them, with her back to McIntire, was their grandmother.
McIntire crossed the pink marble expanse to approach from behind and put his hands over her eyes. “Guess who.”
Her startled gasp was echoed by his own, as a spume of tepid water drenched his shirt. She turned, a cone-shaped paper cup in each hand, one empty. “John, you ninny! I've half a mind to throw the other one!”
“Welcome home.”
“Thank you.”
“Don't I get a kiss?”
She cocked her head, considering, her eyes locked on his. Then, without turning, she extended the cup behind her back to her grandson. “Here,” she said, “Share this with your sisters.”
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