When the Train Stopped at Verona Station

The night train from Milan to Venice was running forty minutes late. Rain pressed against the glass like a restless ghost, and every light outside smeared into a trembling reflection. The air inside smelled of wet wool and coffee.

In carriage seven, seat 42A, Luca Romano sat staring at his notebook. He was a writer who hadn’t written in six months—not since his engagement fell apart, not since his words stopped meaning anything. The blank page in front of him felt like a mirror.

Across the aisle, in seat 41B, Elena tried to fix her hair in the faint reflection of the window. Her suitcase was filled with clothes she didn’t need and unsent postcards—one from every city she’d visited since she ran away from a wedding she never wanted. She told herself she was traveling for freedom, but some nights, freedom just felt like loneliness with better scenery.

When the train screeched to a halt at Verona, something flickered between them. Maybe it was the sudden silence. Maybe it was the way she looked up at the same moment he did. Their eyes met through the reflection on the glass—two travelers, both running from something invisible.

He smiled first. She didn’t return it, not yet. But when the conductor announced another fifteen-minute delay, she leaned across the aisle and said, “You look like someone who could use a distraction.”

He laughed quietly. “You have no idea.”

She gestured to the notebook in his lap. “Writer?”

“Trying to be,” he said. “I think my words are on vacation without me.”

“That’s a nice way to say you’re stuck.”

He looked at her then, really looked—her tired eyes, the chipped nail polish, the kind of beauty that wasn’t trying to be seen. “And you?” he asked. “What are you running from?”

“Weddings. Expectations. Maybe myself,” she said, smiling faintly.

Outside, the rain turned heavier. Inside, their conversation became a shelter.

They spoke about everything—the people they’d loved, the things they regretted, the way music sounded different when you were heartbroken. Elena told him about her dream to open a café in Venice that sold only coffee and poetry. Luca told her how he once believed that love was enough to fix anything—until it wasn’t.

Time folded in on itself. Minutes turned into hours, and by the time the train began to move again, the world beyond the windows had vanished into night.

At some point, she dozed off. Her head leaned against the seat, her hand resting near his notebook. When she woke, she saw a single line written across the page:

“Maybe the right people meet at the wrong time.”

She looked up at him. “That’s sad,” she whispered.

“It’s true,” he replied.

The train slowed again. The speaker crackled. “Next stop, Verona.”

She sighed. “That’s me.”

He wanted to say something—anything—but the words tangled somewhere between fear and longing. “Will I ever see you again?” he asked finally.

She smiled, that same almost-sad smile. “Maybe in another story.”

When she stood, he noticed something slip from her coat pocket: one of her postcards. She didn’t notice, or maybe she wanted him to.

The doors hissed open. She disappeared into the Verona crowd, her red umbrella flickering once in the station lights before vanishing completely.

He stared at the postcard in his hand. It showed a watercolor painting of Venice at sunset. On the back, in looping handwriting, it read:

“If you ever finish your story, write it in Verona.”

Years later, Luca’s first novel—The Girl from Carriage Seven—won Italy’s literary award for debut fiction. The dedication read simply:

To the woman who reminded me that every story deserves to begin—even if it never ends.

Every October, he returned to Verona, sitting at the same café near the station, watching the trains arrive and depart. Sometimes he imagined her stepping off one of them, older, calmer, carrying the same red umbrella.

She never did.

But each time the rain touched the glass, he smiled and whispered to himself, “Some people never leave you. They just stop traveling beside you.”