By Amy Allen
The trains appeared slowly at first—a green engine arriving from Amazon, three black freight cars addressed to my husband Nathan from an eBay seller named Railway Roger. Soon large boxes of metal tracks piled up on our doorstep, which Nathan began laying underfoot, spanning the front entryway through the kitchen, into the den, across our first-floor bedroom, and back out.
I cursed Nathan as I stumbled over the setup, spilling water from our dog Grover’s dish as I placed it on the ground, wincing as I landed a bare foot on the sharp tracks. “Just how much of a bonus did you get this year?” I’d seen the train equipment invoices on the counter and knew this was not a cheap pastime.
Nathan adjusted his reading glasses as he connected a caboose to a freight car. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a budget.” Grover barked at the train whistle as it chugged past his dog bed.
I let it drop. I was heading to a girls’ weekend with my college roommates and didn’t want to spoil it.
In truth, it wasn’t the cost of Nathan’s project that got to me, it was how it activated a familiar hollow in my chest—the longing for our kids to still be around. Fully grown and on their own now, they only made brief appearances for major holidays, busy as they were with their own jobs and lives. They’d have loved the trains when they were little, a chance to get down on their hands and knees beside their dad and make things go.
When I walked back in the door late that Sunday evening, I had to pick up my wheeled suitcase and carry it over all that was at my feet. I took off my coat and squatted down for a closer look, Nathan appearing by my side.
He’d added multiple grassy areas, buildings, and people along the track. As the train passed by us, yellow light glowing through its windows, I noticed a tall brick building, city cabs and buses on the street out front.
“Is that our Brooklyn apartment?”
“It is. Come this way,” Nathan led me into the kitchen where I saw a tan house with a grey chimney, the number 72 on its mailbox.
“Our first house,” my breath caught in my chest. My old beater Subaru was there in the driveway, next to his white pickup, his first big purchase using money from his job during college.
“Look,” Nathan pointed to the back yard.
In a big leafy oak tree hung a rope swing, and there I was, my hair long, body young, pushing our daughter Gemma into the air, her in the purple dress she wore for what felt like a year straight, a wide grin on her face. Nathan and our son Josh were at the picnic table, Josh, just a baby, gripping his favorite green blankie in his curled fist. My eyes were heavy with tears.
“I found an artist who made recreations using our old photos,” Nathan explained. “I’ve been planning it for a while.”
He took me through replicas of our kids’ schools, of our next home after the one at 72 Crestview Terrace, and then of one we’re currently in, the town pool where our kids swam, our neighbor’s treehouse where our daughter hid after running away from home, mad at us for not letting her go to a concert, the baseball field where our son hit his first home run, the pond where we taught our kids to skate and where Josh broke his elbow, falling as he tried to keep up with Gemma.
“I wish we could go back.” It felt like so much of our life was already behind us. I remember those exhausting days, longing for them to pass more quickly, crossing off milestones like achievements—now I’d give anything to do it all again. Nathan squeezed my hand.
With the finished train set, our house felt somehow fuller, the shadows of our past breathing among us. I acclimated to it, my movements now patterned around and over the tracks. Even Grover adapted.
Sometimes when Nathan got up early and headed to work, I stayed in bed and clicked the train remote, letting it wind its way down the tracks through our bedroom, its steady chug like the heartbeat of a newborn baby nestled against my chest, a whole, big life still to come.
Amy Allen is a writer based in Shelburne, Vermont, where she serves as the town’s Poet Laureate and runs the writing and editing business All of the Write Words. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, earning nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net in 2025, with one of her flash pieces having been selected for publication in Best Microfiction 2026. She’s the author of the poetry chapbook Mountain Offerings (2024).
