Clara startled. “What?”
Years later, Clara would become a secretary, then a manager, then a woman who wore sensible shoes and never spoke of Carstairs. But every November, when the sky turned the color of pewter, she would look up and listen. And once, just once, she would have sworn she heard it—the clatter of wings, the hard, beautiful violence of wild swans landing on a lake she never saw. alice munro wild swans
She didn’t know what to say. Her mother had warned her about flatterers, about men who commented on her hair or her dress. But no one had warned her about men who talked about swans. Clara startled
They did not go to the lake. That is the truth of it. They went to a diner, and he bought her coffee and a slice of apple pie. He told her about his wife, who had arthritis and rarely left the house. He told her about his daughter, who had moved to Calgary and never wrote. He talked and talked, and Clara listened, and somewhere between the pie and the second cup of coffee, the wild swans became something else—a code for loneliness, for the desperate need to witness something beautiful before the dark closed in. And once, just once, she would have sworn
“I don’t know you,” she said.
The train was a heavy, breathing beast. It smelled of velvet dust and hot metal. Clara had a window seat, and she pressed her forehead to the cool glass, watching the familiar pastures of Carstairs shrink into a green blur. She was terrified and thrilled in equal measure.