The suitcase twists, spills onto the dirty carpet. She’s packed too much but she thought that in the blank future that stretches before her she might need even the broken, unnecessary things. Empty shampoo bottles, books read hundreds of times. Flight 345 to Denver, boarding, intones a voice. All London passengers check in at E-37. Also if she left anything behind, he’d come back, smash what he could, or toss her things into the alley, where feral cats cry, a hollow, alien sound that bored into her dreams. He’d even step on the cats if they were in his way; he’s that kind of man. He was a mountain of a man with gray teeth and grunting speech. She seldom understood him but she’d learned not to ask questions, because they caused punches, kicks. She’d prayed not for the beatings to stop—how could they—but for the blows to come faster, like water gushing from a tap. She could have borne it better then. He’d seemed a stupid man but he wasn’t. He intuited what would make her cry, vomit, scream. He’d hidden the bruises. When he broke her wrist it was winter, so her sweater sleeve covered the way it hung limp, wrong. But he was Jonathan’s brother. Jonathan’s blood sang through his veins. Jonathan’s triangular eyes, his square chin. After Jonathan died she’d been desperate; she’d combed social media, phone books, no luck. And then Thomas appeared, like a fairy, a changeling. The morning Thomas left she’d cooked him eggs with peppers. He’d read the paper, slouched to the front door, shoulders haloed by the morning sun. She’d collapsed on the couch, stared at a rerun of Apocalypse Now. Brown rivers, jungle, men with alive but dead faces.Thomas didn’t come back that night or the night after. So at night she’d lifted her shirt, cradled the bruises, because you have to love what you have left. She boards a train. I am starting a new life, she thinks. She’d believe it but for the other passengers, who clearly haven’t left themselves behind. An old woman, bent, weak. A man with gray skin, purple eye pouches. She knows nothing of L.A. but she promises herself she won’t expect glamor. She’ll accept dirt, getting lost. D Gates, the voice announces. She exits, pushes open a door. Someone falls into her from behind. She turns to see who but it’s only a boy, his muddy hair streaked with brilliant green. Are we supposed to get on that shuttle, he asks. I think so, she says. There isn’t anywhere else. They board a bus whose windows furl open like wings. The driver wears black gloves and his beard swallows the daylight. D Gates, she asks, and he says, I just drive, lady. Others file on. The old woman, the exhausted man. Soothed by the bus’s movement, she slips into a dream where she’s a child again, nesting in her father’s Ford, listening to him sing Frank Sinatra. He’d left her too, of course. At forty he’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and died of oxygen deprivation. But she never thinks of him blue, gasping. She pictures him soaring from the peak like an angel. The driver pulls into a parking lot. The light breaks, reassembles itself. He stands before them, hands in pockets, chewing his lip. This D Gates, asks the boy. No, says the driver. No son, not exactly. He clears his throat. I’m sorry about this folks. You have to understand it’s not something I want to do. It’s necessary. Something black, shiny, leaps from his hand. A gun. She knows nothing about guns so she won’t be able to say later, he pulled out a .44 or a .357 Magnum. The old woman makes a sharp, raw sound in her throat. The boy stammers. The driver hangs his head like a young boy getting punished in school. Now perhaps, he says, you folks don’t care whether I explain. But I want your opinion. I always think folks should have a say in how this goes. How what goes, asks the old woman. Lady, I’m robbing you then shooting you. Ain’t no sugarcoating it. But where will you go afterwards, says the old woman. Do you think you’re going to heaven? The driver smiles, slow, amazed. Lady I don’t believe in none of that. How could I? She thinks, this isn’t right, that old woman should shut up. She’s not who I would’ve chosen. I am supposed to be able to choose. This thought lodges itself in her chest like a knife. She stands up. The window is smeared with something nameless but she can still see everything. Tufts of soft grass, fractures in the asphalt, sunlight glancing off cars, seagulls wheeling in the wide, impossibly beautiful sky. This seeing is immense, burdensome, it takes all her effort. Sweating, breathless, she turns to the boy and smiles. What’s wrong with you, he asks her. There’s something broken about you. My husband, she says, he killed himself. In the end the truth slips out so easily. Mine died too, says the old woman. She has music in her voice. I used to have music in my voice, she thinks, who took it away, but then a cold, ugly truth drops through her veins. Nobody had taken it. She’d given it away, as easily as a child might throw breadcrumbs at ducks. The worst thing I’ve ever done, she tells them, is throw away everything I came in with. The old woman nods and the boy gives her a trembly, embarrassed smile. She turns back to the window and stares at a dandelion struggling up through the pavement. Heavy-headed, tattered, yet it won’t give up, it will never give up, it’s driven by its own secret, beating heart. When he shoots her, she’s thinking about how if she were outside, she wouldn’t pick the dandelion. No, she’d just sit beside it, and marvel at its immense, vivid, unmistakable life.