The Train That Waited

The Train That Waited

Rain danced gently on the roof of the station as people bustled beneath umbrellas and faded signs. The 9:40 train to Merrow Hill stood quietly on Platform 3, its windows fogged by breath and time. It had been scheduled to leave fifteen minutes ago, yet not a single passenger complained. Some barely noticed.

A tall man in a brown trench coat stood near the edge of the platform. He clutched a satchel that had clearly seen too many years of service, the leather torn at the corners, a faint scent of old paper escaping its seams. His name was Elias, though no one there knew it. He wasn’t waiting for the train—not exactly. He was waiting for someone who once said, “If you ever want to find me, I’ll be on the 9:40 to Merrow Hill.”

That someone was Clara.

Ten years ago, when they were just two souls in a city too big to hold promises, she’d scribbled her number on a napkin and kissed his cheek at a bookstore café. They'd spent seven afternoons reading poetry and laughing like children before life split them apart like pages torn from a book. She left for a job in a different country. He stayed behind to take care of his ailing mother. They had made no promises, only possibilities.

Yet he never stopped wondering about her.

Elias had kept the napkin all these years, though the ink had faded and the edges curled. When his mother passed away last winter, he found the napkin tucked inside a book of Neruda poems. That same night, he dreamt of Clara for the first time in years—her voice like wind in a wheat field, whispering, “Merrow Hill.”

So here he stood, ten years later, trench coat soaked at the hem, hoping fate ran on steel tracks and not just broken memories.

The train hissed quietly, as though exhaling its own anticipation. People continued to board—an old woman with a cage of birds, a boy with headphones, a couple speaking French too fast to follow. Still, no Clara.

Elias sighed and glanced at his watch. 9:57.

“She’s not coming,” he whispered to no one, and turned to leave.

Then a voice, warm and uncertain, called out: “Elias?”

He turned.

She stood there, umbrella tilted, hair shorter than he remembered, eyes just as wide. Clara. Real. Here. Now.

“I thought I’d missed it,” she said, stepping closer. “The train. And maybe you.”

He stared at her like a man who just found a piece of his soul that had wandered off. “I almost left.”

“But you didn’t,” she smiled. “That’s very you.”

A pause lingered between them—not awkward, but sacred. The silence of understanding.

They boarded the train together, finding two seats by the window. The rain had stopped, and the platform emptied as if it had served its purpose. The doors slid shut. The whistle blew. The train began to move.

Neither of them asked where the other had been, or what had taken so long. They talked of nothing and everything—the shape of clouds, the taste of childhood candy, the smell of libraries. The kind of conversation only two people deeply familiar with absence can have.

Elias finally reached into his satchel and pulled out the napkin. “I kept this.”

Clara laughed, eyes misting. “I lost mine.”

“I guess I held on enough for both of us,” he said.

Outside the window, the world blurred into color and light. The rhythm of the tracks echoed like a poem being read aloud.

Somewhere between Then and Now, they had found a new place called Again.

Story by shohel rana