She doesn’t want to tell him what she heard. The casket in storage. She doesn’t want a panic. She only cares about finding Tom and getting out of here before it all goes mad.

“No,” she says. She hates that there’s fear in her voice. She hates that she’s speaking to what would have once been considered an intelligent, interesting person, and all she can do about is be afraid.

“What’s wrong?”

“This whole thing is wrong,” she says. “The train. Thinking we can push back. All of this is insane.”

“Hey, Malorie. Wait…”

“I’m finding my son and we’re getting off. We’re walking home because back there, when my teenager storms off angry, I know where he’s going and who he’s with.”

She makes to pass him. Dean doesn’t reach out to stop her, but his voice does.

“Don’t you think that, now that they’ve seen the train, now that they’ve ridden it, it won’t be the same back home?”

Malorie doesn’t have time to do this right now. She needs to keep moving, needs to make sure her son, who she’s protected for sixteen years, doesn’t do something dangerous.

Oh, my God, she thinks. You hit Tom.

It’s like she just hit him again. And again now. The memory of it feels more like a realization every time it returns. And the only color she can see is the color of a face that has been slapped.

“Are you sure he went this way?” Dean asks.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“I just came from the dining car,” he says. “And I didn’t see him.”

This is somehow worse. Like the train itself swallowed him. As if, by severing the umbilical cord (because that’s what it felt like, even to Malorie), Tom stepped into Malorie’s personal darkness and was pulled so deep she’ll never see him again.

“He’s here somewhere,” Dean says. “We’ll find him. So don’t worry. I’ll help.”

Malorie doesn’t want help. She doesn’t want to be here at all. It’s because of men like Dean Watts that everyone goes mad in the end. It’s the people who think beyond the fold.

Tom the man appears then, in the dark. He stands before the couch in the living room of the house where Malorie met him. At his feet are the pieces of a helmet he’s failed to keep together.

“I’m not gonna be able to get anything done until you find him anyway,” Dean says.

“Okay,” Malorie says. “Help me then.”