Serial Monogamy Read Online Free Page B

coincided with Mrs. Ternan’s leap toward the embankment. Nelly clambered down and, with one hand, hauled the bag toward the door.
    Soon enough a friendly face reappeared there.
    “I can just lift you down, miss, if you’ll permit the familiarity,” the engineer volunteered. “I warn you, the ground’s soft underfoot. You’ll get your shoes muddy, I’m afraid, but there’s not much for it.”
    “I don’t care about the shoes, but I have a bag with me,” Nelly replied. “Can I perhaps just throw it down ahead of me?”
    “Just pass it to me, miss, I’ll take it,” he replied.
    “Thank you. My mother and I are much obliged to you.”
    “Not at all, miss. Least anyone can do for you after what has happened. I hope your mother is not too alarmed.”
    “No. She is quite calm, thank you.”
    It was after she had passed over the bag and began to settle herself on the ledge provided by the bottom of the compartment door that the engineer noticed her bloody bandage.
    “Why, you are hurt, miss. I had not realized.”
    “It’s all right. I just cut myself on some glass. I only need a fresh bandage.”
    “We will get you a doctor soon as we can, miss. There are poor souls who are in worse need, I’ll tell you true enough, but we can’t leave you to bleed.”
    Nelly and her rescuer both braced themselves and he simply lifted her down to the crate he was standing on and from there to the ground. It was soft and muddy, as the engineer had warned; Nelly found herself standing in what seemed like a marsh area, a good ten feet below the track.
    As soon as she was clear of the carriage she began to recognize just how lucky they had been. The front of the train stood on the rail ahead as though nothing had happened but the back carriages had failed to cross a low viaduct that covered the width of the wetland and lay in a shambles in the low ground in which Nelly now found herself standing. The carriage she had just climbed from was the last to have remained on the bridge but dangledat a precipitous angle, which explained the discomfiting swaying they had felt.
    “If you just move this way, miss. We are trying to lay some boards.” The engineer indicated a few planks that had been laid so they could reach the far side of low land, where the last cars of the train still stood on the rail.
    “What happened?” Nelly asked, pausing to puzzle out the derailment as she stepped onto the planks ahead of him.
    “We were working on the track, miss. Had a section right out midway through the viaduct there.”
    “So the train didn’t clear it? Why didn’t someone warn the engineer?”
    “Oh, we would have, miss, in the usual manner of things, we would have had the missing section all back in place and shipshape. But we didn’t expect the Channel train until four o’clock.”
    “But I don’t think our train was early. We left Folkestone about five minutes late…”
    “I don’t rightly know, miss.” His voice became strained now as he tried to justify the unthinkable. “We weren’t expecting the train, that’s all.” He stopped there and then said more firmly, “I’ll carry this across for you, if you go ahead. Your mother is just on the other side.” He shepherded her over to a drier area that Mrs. Ternan had already reached on the far side of the viaduct. Nelly thanked him, and taking the precious leather bag, she stumbled up the embankment.

W hen I first started chemo, Al or Becky came with me and sat and waited while the nurses dripped the magic poison into my veins. But with the girls to be picked up from school and housework and cooking to be done, it soon seemed stupid to have another adult taking several hours off work to be there. It was more useful to have Becky do our groceries than come to my medical appointments. By my third cycle, Al was dropping me off at the hospital’s front door and I was taking a cab home. For my three-month checkup, I took the subway for the first time in almost a year. I