Orphan Train

by Christina Baker Kline

I’ve come to think that’s what heaven is—a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

But I am skeptical. I know all too well how it is when the beautiful visions you’ve been fed don’t match up with reality.

In Kinvara, poor as we were, and unstable, we at least had family nearby, people who knew us. We shared traditions and a way of looking at the world. We didn’t know until we left how much we took those things for granted.

Would it compromise her probationary status to strangle this imbecile?

Time constricts and flattens, you know. It’s not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.

My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate.