My mother held the list nearer the lamp, but the little gate did not soften or run in the heat. Its two posts were drawn crookedly, and across them someone had laid three bars, with a dark space left beneath the lowest. “I know that gate,” Elsie said, putting her finger just short of the paper. “It was at the bottom of the garden before the wall was built.” My father turned toward her, and for a moment the lamp flame made a bright line in his spectacles. “There was never a gate there,” he said, though he did not take the list when my mother offered it to him. Ada climbed down from the chair, and the boy reached for her hand before she had gone two steps.

The conductor came to look, bringing his cap with him, and the boy pressed against his coat when he saw the drawing. “That’s where I waited,” he said, tracing the air above the black bars. Through the open bedroom door the red seats had disappeared, and beyond them stood the gate itself, wet leaves caught against its bottom rail. My father went ahead of me into the passage and stopped with one hand on the ironwork; from where I stood, I could see the garden on the other side, the bare pear tree and the wall we had always known. Set into the wall was a small wooden door I had never seen before, painted the same green as my mother’s sewing box. “I bricked that opening myself,” he said, and drew his hand away from the gate. My mother came beside him with the list, and he took her free hand so tightly that the paper shook between them.

The conductor fitted Ada’s key into the gate, but it would not turn, and when he withdrew it the teeth were blackened. The boy knelt and pushed the loose leaves aside, uncovering a narrow latch beneath the lowest bar. “You have to reach through,” he said, though he kept his own hands tucked inside his sleeves. My father crouched, but the gap was too small for his arm; when I knelt beside him, he caught my wrist before I could try. “I closed it because you used to wander,” he said, looking past me toward the boy. “One night you came back with wet shoes and told us someone was calling from the other side.” He let go then, and I slid my hand through the cold leaves, found the latch, and lifted it while the bell began to ring.

The gate opened onto the garden, and the ringing ceased so abruptly that we could hear rain dripping from the pear tree. My father followed me through, with my mother close behind, while Ada and the boy remained in the passage beside the conductor. At the green door I found a shallow bowl on the step, filled with rainwater and a single length of blue thread; when I touched it, the thread drew taut and slipped beneath the door. My mother unfolded the list against the wood, and beside my name the little gate had opened too, its bars now drawn apart. Something moved on the other side of the door, followed by a careful tapping, as though someone were counting. My father put his hand on the latch, but before he lifted it, a voice inside called my name in my own voice.

The figures did not approach, though the carriage door stood open and the rain had begun again, stippling the platform around their shoes. The conductor’s father stepped down onto the lower stair, and the boy in the black coat caught at his sleeve. “Will you wait for me?” the boy asked. The man looked at the raised hands, then covered the child’s fingers with his own. “I ought to have come back before,” he said to the conductor, who stood close enough to hear but did not help him loose the boy’s grip. At last the boy let go, and the man stepped onto the platform, where the nearest figure lowered her hand and came toward him.

My mother carried the list to the doorway, shielding it from the rain with her palm. New names had appeared beneath the conductor’s, so faint that I had to lean over her shoulder to read them; beside each was an empty space. “They’re waiting to be called,” the man said, and reached up for the paper, but my mother kept hold of it. “Then why are they outside?” she asked. He glanced along the platform, where the woman had stopped a few paces from him, her wet skirt clinging to her ankles. “Because I kept the doors shut when the bell rang,” he said, and the woman looked at him without lifting her hand again.

The conductor passed the boy into my father’s care and went back to the open door, the brass key still in his hand. When he offered it to his father, the man shook his head and held up the folded ticket instead. “You keep it,” he said, and the conductor put the key carefully into his pocket before taking the ticket and tearing it across the old creases. The bell gave a sharp, uneven peal; farther down the platform, the dark windows lit one by one, and the waiting figures turned toward them. My mother read the first name from the list, and the woman beside the carriage answered so softly that I scarcely heard her over the rain. A space filled with the word HOME, and a door opened beneath the first lit window, revealing a narrow hall with a red rug and a pair of muddy boots set neatly against the wall.

The woman went in without looking back, and my mother began to call the next name, while the conductor’s father walked down the platform to meet the others. We watched from the carriage until the boy tugged at my father’s hand and asked whether our lamp would stay lit for him too; my father brought him across the threshold and settled him in the chair beside Ada. The conductor followed, leaving the carriage door open behind him, and laid his cap on the floor at the boy’s feet. When the last name on the list had been answered, my mother returned to the bedroom, but the passage remained where the closed door should have been. She turned the paper over, feeling along its damp edge, and found another name written on the back in handwriting none of us recognized. It was mine, and beneath it, where HOME ought to have appeared, someone had drawn a small black gate.

The small face flattened against the glass as the man turned toward the conductor. It was a boy’s face, pale in the carriage light, with a fringe of hair plastered to his forehead; when he lifted his hand, the man lifted his own to meet it through the pane. “I told him to wait,” he said, and his voice reached us thinly along the passage. The conductor looked at the child and then down at the brass key in his palm. “You told me the same thing.” His father’s hand stayed on the glass, though the boy had begun to slide it away.

I followed as far as the threshold, with Elsie close beside me and the list trembling against my knees. From there I could see that the window opened not onto our garden but onto a station platform, empty except for the boy and a bench shining with rain. The conductor went to the carriage door and pulled its handle, but the door held fast; his father reached past him, then stopped when the conductor stepped between them. “Who is he?” the conductor asked. “I don’t know his name,” the man said, and took a folded ticket from his pocket. Its paper was worn white along the creases, and when he opened it the conductor’s name showed faintly beneath a child’s thumbprint.

The bell rang, and the platform began to move past the window, slowly enough at first that the boy could keep pace by walking. Ada came to my side and held up her coat, letting the brass buttons strike together until the conductor turned. “Try the key,” she called. He fitted it into the carriage door, but before he could turn it, his father caught his wrist. “If he comes aboard, someone must stay and call the names,” the man said; the conductor looked back at us, at the lamp on the bedroom floor and the blue thread trailing from his shoe. Then he freed his wrist, turned the key, and opened the door while the train was still moving.

The boy stumbled across the widening gap, and the conductor caught him under the arms, drawing him in against the damp black coat. For a moment the three of them stood together in the narrow doorway, the father’s hand resting uncertainly on the boy’s shoulder. Behind me, my mother took the list and carried it into the passage, where she held it out to the conductor; he shook his head, and the blank space beside his name filled with a single word: HOME. The blue thread loosened from his shoe as he came toward us with the boy, but his father remained beneath the swinging lamp. “Come with us,” the conductor said, and the man looked toward the open carriage door, where the wet platform had stopped moving. Farther down it, beneath a row of dark windows, a dozen figures stood waiting, each with one hand raised.

The conductor opened his list so quickly that one corner tore beneath his thumb. His name was not among those already written, nor did it appear beneath Ada’s, where my mother’s still lay in its narrow, careful letters. “I’ve never had a ticket,” he said, and held out his hand for the one I carried. He turned it over, rubbed at the damp blue line on its back, and then brought it close enough to the lamp that my father warned him about the flame. The name remained where it was. Ada slipped down from the chair and stood beside him, studying his face as if she had seen it somewhere before. “Were you the man at the gate?” she asked, and his fingers closed around the ticket.

“I was a boy when I first saw that gate,” he said, looking toward the window rather than at Ada. “My father stood there in this coat, and he told me to wait on the train until he came back.” He touched the worn cuff, where a fresh row of stitches showed against the black cloth, and my father lowered the lamp to let him see it. “He never did, but the bell kept ringing, and there were names to call.” The older woman drew Ada close again, though the girl kept her eyes on the conductor. “Did you ever go looking for him?” she asked. He shook his head, and the ticket gave a small crackle in his hand, as dry as leaves.

Outside, a carriage door slammed, followed by another, each sound nearer than the last. The blue thread emerged from beneath the chair and wound itself around the conductor’s shoe; when he stepped back, it pulled tight, and the closed bedroom door swung inward onto the lit passage of the train. A man stood at the far end with his cap in his hands, his face hidden by the swinging lamp above him. The conductor took one step toward him, then stopped, gripping the ticket so hard that its mended seam began to part. My mother caught the edge of the door before it could strike the wall. “You said the train could ask,” she reminded him, and he looked from her to the man waiting in the carriage. “I don’t know what I want to answer,” he said.

Ada pulled the brass key from her pocket and placed it in his palm, folding his fingers over it just as she had done with the older woman’s. “You can come back,” she said, and my father set the lamp on the floor beside the threshold so that its light fell across both the boards and the carriage steps. The conductor put on his cap, but before he crossed, he handed me the list; his name had appeared at last, with a blank space beside it. He walked down the narrow passage, his shoulders brushing the red plush seats, and the man beneath the lamp lifted his face. The conductor stopped so suddenly that the blue thread slackened around his shoe. “Father?” he said, and the man raised one hand to the glass behind him, where another small face was watching from the dark.

Beside Ada’s name, in the conductor’s narrow handwriting, was my mother’s. She leaned over the list, her wet hair brushing his sleeve, and read it twice before looking at the older woman. “I don’t remember locking it,” she said. The older woman kept one arm around Ada, but with her free hand she smoothed the coat across her knees, finding a small brass key caught in a fold of its lining. Ada watched her draw it out, then reached up and closed her fingers over it. “You gave it to me,” she said to my mother, “so I could let myself out when the train had gone.”

The bell sounded again, close enough now to make the lamp flame tremble. My mother sat on the edge of the chair, and Ada shifted to make room for her, the coat slipping between them. “There was a man at the gate,” Ada said, “and he said he’d come for one of us, but he wouldn’t tell us which.” The older woman nodded slowly, as if feeling for a step in the dark. “I thought if I hid you, he would take me instead.” Ada turned the key in her palm, pressing its teeth against her skin. “I tried the door afterward, but it opened onto the train, and you weren’t there.”

My father crossed to the window and pulled it shut, though the rain had stopped coming in; outside, beyond the black branches, the train’s lit windows stood level with our garden wall. The conductor folded his list, but my mother held out her hand for it, and after a moment he gave it to her. “If my name is on the ticket, does that mean I have to go?” she asked. “It means the train can ask,” he said, his cap twisting between his hands, “and this time you may answer.” My older self came to stand behind the chair, and the older woman reached back until their hands found each other. My mother looked at Ada, who had tucked the key into her coat pocket, and said, “I’m staying here.”

For a moment the rails beyond the wall gave a long metallic cry, and the blue thread drew taut across the floorboards, pulling Elsie’s wrist toward the door. The boy caught her other hand, and my father lifted the lamp as the thread slid through her fingers and vanished beneath the chair. The pool there had drained away, leaving the RETURN ticket on dry wood; when I picked it up, I found the word had faded and another name had begun to appear. I carried it to the light, expecting my own, but the conductor saw it first and set his cap carefully on the chair. “That isn’t possible,” he said, and reached into his coat for the folded list. On the ticket, in the same narrow handwriting, was his name.