On a hazy Friday morning two weeks ago a high school girl was killed on the train tracks which run behind my house. She was talking a shortcut to school, and she was about halfway across the Deer Creek trestle, a half mile west of here, when the express commuter hit her. Her body flew clear across Deer Creek and came to rest a few yards up the opposite bank. The engineer of that train said he was blowing the horn as he tried to stop, but the girl never looked around; she just kept walking until she was hit.

The girl’s name was Melissa or Michelle Or Melanie. Some name that started with an M. I have trouble remembering things like that. She was 15 years old, three days short of turning 16, a year behind my daughter in school, though I don’t believe Emily knew her. According to my wife, her co-worker, Jeanine, who had her in Girl Scouts a few years ago, said Melissa was a pretty girl, a little shy, but with a very sweet singing voice. Someone else said she was an average student, mostly B’s, and on weekends she did volunteer work at the Mt. Adams Senior Home. Her parents had divorced three or four years ago, and she had lived with her mother and her younger sister.

“How could she be so stupid?” I asked my wife, Sara, the morning after the accident. “I can’t understand it. It makes me ... I don’t know.”

“Maybe she was distracted by something,” Sara said.

“What?” I asked. “What would she be distracted by? The paper says the police searched for headphones or cell phones and didn’t find any. How could she not have heard the train whistle? It doesn’t make sense. It’s just too stupid.”

My wife wrinkled her mouth and then smiled at me with sad eyes. “These things happen,” she said.

“Well, they shouldn’t,” I said. Sara hugged me, and it was a comfort, and for a moment I thought maybe we’d go back to bed, but we didn’t, and a few minutes later I thought about Melissa, and I was angry.

Naturally I wondered if she meant to kill herself. Maybe she was pregnant. Maybe she was doing it on a dare. Maybe she wasn’t prepared for some test that morning. Maybe she’d broken up with her boyfriend. Or maybe she was just singing a song to herself, not paying any attention to the world outside. There were too many possibilities. I wanted to know. I don’t know why I wanted to know, but I did.

That afternoon there was a home football game. Sara and I sometimes went to the home games because a few of her former pupils were now old enough to be on the team or in the band. I thought maybe this game would be cancelled, but it wasn’t; however, before the game they had a minute of silence in memory of Melissa. Down on the field the cheerleaders shivered in their short skirts, and we could hear some of them chattering blithely during the silence. I couldn’t believe they could be so rude, so uncaring. I wished something huge would come down from the sky and crush them.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Sara asked me.

“It’s those kids, talking and joking.”

“Kids are like that,” Sara said, squeezing my hand. “They’re still mostly just children.”

“I guess so,” I answered, and I was unhappy with myself for wanting that huge something to come down from the sky and squash them, but still it seemed they should be better behaved, and not just because it was proper but because one of their classmates had perished.

On Sunday morning I told Sara I was going for a run, and I jogged over to the Deer Creek trestle. The air was still and gray. I took a deep breath and climbed up the embankment and crossed the three sets of tracks to the side Melissa was walking on when she was hit. I stepped onto the bridge. There was no room at all between the edge of the outer rail and the drop-off into Deer Creek. Two feet at most. The railroad ties nearly touched the edge. I kicked a few loose pebbles. No way could anyone stand here and not get hit. No way in hell. What was she thinking? I walked out to the middle, Deer Creek some thirty feet below, and I stared down at the slow gray water. I looked over at the opposite shore where Melissa’s body had come to rest. What could have been going through her mind the moment before the train hit her? Did it kill her instantly, or was she alive as she flew through the air? Did she have some understanding of what was happening as she hurtled over the gray water towards the slope of dirty grass and jagged pebbles and amber glass from broken beer bottles? I imagined not so much the sound of her fall as the jolt of her body hitting the ground, and I rubbed my eyes, and my mind went blank. I walked the rest of the way across the bridge.

“I checked out the trestle,” I told Sara when I got back home. “There was no way that girl could have...”

Sara was looking at me strangely. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wanted to see. I thought maybe there was more room. I thought ... I don’t know what I thought.”

Monday morning I took the train downtown to the client’s offices. I tapped on Doug Jessick’s door. “Hey, Doug,” I said, “How was your weekend? Is your mom feeling any better?”

“Not really,” said Doug. He rose from his desk and came around to meet me. “The doctors think she won’t last the week.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told Doug.

“I know,” he said. “Listen, there’s something that’s come up. I wanted to catch you before you came in this morning, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to.”

“What is it?” I said. I knew it was bad news. I tried to make my tone such that it would be easy for Doug. “They’re canceling the project?” I said lightly.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Putting it on hold, but you know how that goes.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

“I was thinking they might,” I told Doug. “I suppose you’ll want the keys.”

“Yeah, when you have a chance.”

“I can give them to you now,” I said. I put the two keys in his palm.

“Listen,” Doug said. “Why don’t you stick around ‘til lunch? I think the cafeteria’s having that chicken ala king you like so much. Just kidding. We’ll go out. My treat.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I think I’ll be getting back home.”

I stopped in the card and gift shop in the lobby. I walked slowly down the aisles of cards and stuffed creatures but didn’t touch anything. At the end of one row was some stationery and several diaries, one of which had a cover of white vinyl and small red hearts and in the center a tiny lock. Taped to the back of the book I noticed a plain packet containing a pair of small silver keys. I shook the keys into my palm. They were nearly weightless, as light as a butterfly. After replacing the keys in the packet and taking the diary to the cashier at the front of the store, I stopped at the boutique next door where I picked out a slight silver chain. “Do you want it wrapped or something?” the girl behind the counter asked. I shook my head and let the chain slither into the sack with the diary, and then I walked back to the train station, thinking as I strolled about how the chain might look around Sara’s neck and whether she’d be able to feel the small diary key between her breasts and whether Melissa had kept a diary. No doubt the police would have examined it for clues.

The morning train was nearly empty. I sat in the head car and stared out the window at the passing church spires and factory smoke stacks. Pale smoke funneled up and faded into morning sky. I took one of the keys out of the little packet and fit the silver chain through its hole and fastened the clasp. With the chain and key resting in my palm, I closed my eyes and absorbed the quiet rock and roll of the train as it sped out of the city.

Passengers in the train which hit Melissa would not have felt the impact. The unexpected slowing of the train as the engineer tried to brake may have made them suspect something was not right, but the thump of her body against the hundreds of tons of speeding train would have been unnoticeable, insignificant, inconsequential except in the way those mythological Siberian moths cause tornadoes in Kansas or the way fireflies glow for a while after they’ve been strained by children swinging old tennis rackets on warm July evenings just before bedtime. When the train arrived at my stop, I didn’t get off. I pressed closer to the window glass, and the train streamed across Deer Creek. The crossing took but a second. At the next stop, a mile or so further on, I got off, and I walked home.

Sara wasn’t there. I put my package on my dresser and changed my clothes and started some water boiling for tea or coffee. I found the newspaper and opened it but couldn’t concentrate enough to read more than the headline. The teapot whistled on the stove and steam billowed out and the pot started rattling and thumping as the water boiled. I turned the heat off and the sounds stopped and the steam coasted away.

A couple of hours later, Sara came home. She was surprised to see me. “They cancelled phase two,” I told her. “I’ve been telling them for months the risks were too high and the potential gains too small, and they finally listened to me. Or more likely they just ran out of money.”

“What will you do?” Sara asked. I thought she might come to me and hug me, but she didn’t.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something will come up. For now I’ll just enjoy my time between assignments.”

“Oh,” Sara said.

“So maybe we can do some stuff together.”

“What kind of stuff?” Sara wanted to know.

“I don’t know ... museums and picnics?”

“It’s kind of late in the year for picnics.”

“We could always go someplace,” I suggested. “Take a trip.”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays I have afternoon preschool,” Sara reminded me.

“Couldn’t you get someone?” I suggested.

“I don’t know. They’re short as it is. I’d have to see.”

“Or we could just sort of hang out.”

“Hang out?”

“You know, be together more. You could practice being more aggressive, sexually.”

Sara blushed. “Um, let me take a shower first, okay?”

“I didn’t mean right now, necessarily,” I said.

When Sara got out of the shower I gave her the diary. “It’s for your secret thoughts,” I said.

“What makes you think I have secret thoughts?” she asked. Her skin was flushed and beautiful.

I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s very sweet,” Sara said. “Let me get dressed first, and then I’ll take a look at it.”

After she was dressed I showed her the key and the chain. “You could wear it around your neck,” I suggested. “It’s light. Hardly weighs a thing.”

“Thank you,” Sara said. She put her arms around me and gave me a kiss. “Sometimes you can be very sweet.” She smelled fresh and clean from her shower. She stepped away from me and set the diary and the chain and key on top of her night table. “I’ll try it on later, okay? I have to take care of a few things. I should be back before five.”

After she was gone I thought I should have asked if it was something I could help her with. I spent a few minutes trying to read the newspaper again, and then I gave up on that and wandered up the stairs to the attic. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the little window. I moved a few things around, and soon my fingers were covered with dust. I went downstairs and washed my hands and got a garbage sack, and when I returned to the attic, I put all of Emily’s old stuffed animals in the bag. Most of these critters had names. Bibby Bear. Roo Roo the Circus Dog. Doctor Monkey. Geneva Owl. Geneva Owl had a broken wing, and Emily used to spend hours doctoring it, wrapping Geneva’s wing in wash cloth bandages and then unwrapping her for another operation. Sometimes I’d be Doctor Monkey, called in for consultation. “You’ll be good as new,” Doctor Monkey would tell Geneva Owl. “Just a few days rest and you’ll be right as rain. Now I have to go. I’m going fishing in Mexico. Good-bye.” But Geneva Owl would always break her arm again and Emily would need to go through another operation.

I wondered if Melissa had stuffed animals, and what kind of games she played with them. I wondered what her mother would do with them. In the end I didn’t do anything with Emily’s sack of animals. Instead I read through a bunch of letters I’d written Sara during the first year of our marriage when I was in a training class for six weeks and she was home alone expecting. At the time I thought these letters captured my feelings of love and loneliness. Now they embarrassed me, and I wondered why Sara hadn’t burned them.