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He reached for her hand. “How about we forget about all that and celebrate you instead?”

She smiled and leaned across the table to kiss him. “Celebrate away, Henry Gale. A girl has to feel special once a year!”

He studied her for a long moment as a playful smile curved at his lips. “I’d like to make you feel special every day. Emily, I…” He paused as their plates of spaghetti arrived. “Let’s eat,” he said, the moment lost. “And then I’m taking you dancing.”

It was a bitterly cold evening. The chill seeped through Emily’s thickest coat and settled against her skin as they left the restaurant and passed the gin joints and backstreet jazz clubs Annie had once dragged her into.

The raw hopeful energy of the postwar years still pulsed in the notes of the musicians’ instruments, but Emily kept walking when Henry offered to take her inside.

“Not this one,” she said. “Let’s walk a bit farther. Find somewhere a bit quieter.”

Chicago was a city of bootleggers and mobsters, showmen and businessmen, a place where capitalists and industrialists like John Gale thrived, spurred on by soaring commodity prices and greedy stock market traders.

She felt a calling in a different direction.

She wanted to listen to a different tune, dance to a different song.

When Nell had written recently, Emily had read the pages over and over, mesmerized by her sister’s descriptions of cattle drives and rattlesnakes, cottonfields and creek beds full of gold.

More and more, she felt pulled toward a similar life.

The question was, did she have the courage to go and find it.

“We still seem to be walking rather than dancing,” Henry teased as they passed more places.

Emily turned to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel in the mood for dancing tonight.”

Henry stopped to buy roast chestnuts and a newspaper from the street vendors. The headline carried the grim detail of another murder.

“Don’t you ever get tired of it all?” Emily said as they walked on. “All the traffic and noise. The gangsters and violence.”

Henry laughed. “I’ve been tired of it for years. I’ve made the most of it, but nothing feels real to me here—bonds and loans and speculation on the stock market. It’s all so intangible. I want to get my hands dirty. I want to work the land and feel the pull of the earth as I turn the plow.”

Emily loved to hear Henry talk about his love of the land.

It reminded her of her mother, always looking for the beauty in the world, despite the ugliness she’d known.

She’d taught her daughters to wonder and observe, to care for a single blade of grass the same way they would care for an entire field, to treat a beetle the same way they would treat a mighty cart horse.

“Did I ever tell you my mammy dreamed of settling in Kansas?” she said as they walked. “She kept a pamphlet about it inside her Bible. Brought it with her all the way from Ireland. I used to listen to her reading it to my father.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“My father secured a good job in the steel factories. Mammy found work as a seamstress, and then as a dressmaker for Marshall Field’s. Then war came, and then the influenza…” Emily took a breath. “They ran out of time. Isn’t that the saddest thing?”

Henry came to an abrupt stop and turned to face her.

“Let’s not run out of time, Em. I want to wake up to a sunrise reaching across fields of golden corn as far as you can see.

I want to bring in the harvest and live in a home built with my own hands.

I want to struggle and thrive and breathe fresh clean air.

I want to swim naked in a creek whenever the mood takes me! ”

Passion burned in his eyes as he spoke. Emily was scorched by it.

“That’s a beautiful dream you have, Henry Gale.”

A smile skirted his lips as he reached for her hands. “But it’s no fun having a dream of your own. It could become our dream, Emily. Our reality. Yours and mine.”

Her heart quickened as she sensed what was coming.

Henry dropped to one knee and took her hands in his.

“Emily Margaret Kelly, would you do me the greatest honor of my life? I don’t have a ring, but I can’t bear to spend another day without you. Will you marry me? Come to Kansas with me?” A hopeful smile lit up his face. “Swim naked in the creek with me sometimes?”

Emily started to laugh, and then Henry laughed, and for a minute they were both helpless with laughter, tears streaming down their cheeks as the freezing Chicago wind whirled around them and Emily’s heart soared.

She pulled him to his feet, placed her hands on his cheeks, and kissed him.

“Is that a yes?” he said.

“Yes, Henry Gale! Yes! I’ll marry you and go to Kansas with you.” She kissed him again as she looked into his eyes. “I’d go anywhere with you.”

With Henry, she knew she could weather any storm. Whatever happened, and wherever life took them, they would share it together, for better or worse. She loved him, truly and wildly, this sweet funny man whose name echoed the wind.

—

They were married at the city hall a week later, an early dusting of snow for confetti, two strangers as their witnesses.

Emily wore a dress in cream chiffon and a garland of orange blossoms in her hair.

Henry looked handsome in a tan suit and brogues.

It was perfect. Emily loved the spontaneity and secrecy.

Loved the simple intimacy of the occasion.

Annie would have insisted on turning it into a great production, and she doubted Nell would have been able to make the long journey, so she’d decided to tell her sisters after the event.

Emily knew Annie would be terribly hurt but hoped that her happiness for them both, not to mention gaining Henry as a dear brother-in-law, would outweigh any damage to her feelings.

They spent their wedding night in the fanciest hotel they could afford.

Emily wasn’t shy with Henry. He was so gentle and sure that she quickly responded to his touch, allowing herself to be swept away on wave after wave of desire until she wasn’t sure where Henry stopped and she began.

As night gave way to the lavender light of dawn, she lost herself to him again.

She woke to a golden path of light that shone through a gap in the drapes and caressed their entangled limbs. It was unfathomable to her that she could wake like this every day now.

“Can we stay here forever,” she whispered. “Just you and me.”

Henry stirred and planted kisses on her cheeks. “My dear sweet Emily, I’m afraid I could never afford it. This place is five bucks a night.”

She threw a pillow at him, and loved him even more.