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The air was full of prairie dust the next morning.

Emily blinked, her eyes gritty as she collected the eggs from the coop.

A dry summer had seen a growing number of what folk were calling sandstorms, when the wind blew the parched topsoil.

They’d heard of a moving cloud of dirt that had passed through the Texas panhandle, creating static electricity and rubbing like sandpaper on the skin.

Nobody had ever witnessed anything like it.

The weather bureau had chalked it down as a one-off. A freak storm. A curiosity of nature.

Tornado season was almost over, but old-timers in town kept talking about the weather acting strange, and Emily was on high alert.

Some big winds had come through in the years since they’d made the prairie their home.

The house stood where the north and south winds met, and Henry joked that where the winds met, at the center of a tornado, the air was still.

“Tornadoes will pass right over us, Em. We won’t hear a thing.

” But she had heard them, more times than she wished to recall.

Her first experience of a tornado was seared onto her mind, the terrible wind screaming and roaring over the house like a thousand steam locomotives.

She’d come to dread the telltale rumble of an approaching twister more than she dreaded the rattlers and copperheads that lurked in the woodpile.

Every day, during tornado season, she studied the sky, always on alert, looking out for the emerald hue that indicated an approaching tornado.

She dreaded the big one that everyone experienced at least once in their lifetime.

Every season that passed without severe damage felt like a stay of execution.

The weather vane swung erratically on the barn roof. Emily’s skin prickled as she hurried back to the house, where she found Henry already hunched over his ledgers, his brow furrowed into a deep frown.

“It’s really picking up out there,” she said. “I was planning to drive into town a little earlier than usual, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.” It was Thursday, and that meant supper club.

She’d decided not to tell Henry yet about her suspected pregnancy, although she knew how happy he would be.

She wanted to be sure before she got his hopes up.

She would visit the doctor first, make certain of it, and make sure everything was going along as it should.

She was wary, and afraid. The memory of her miscarriage still haunted her, even after all these years.

Henry looked up from his accounts. “How about we both go in early? I could use the time to go to the bank.”

Emily detected a hint of concern in his voice. “Is everything okay?”

He stood up and kissed her cheek. “Everything’s fine.”

The one part of married life that Henry kept from Emily was money.

He didn’t like to discuss it with her, believing it to be man’s business.

It was John he’d turned to for financial advice when he was saving and planning his move to Kansas, and John’s business success made it hard to argue against him.

Emily still didn’t care for the way John conducted his deals, and gut instinct still stopped her from fully trusting him.

All she knew was that he’d written, a month ago, to tell Henry prices had taken a big hit on the stock exchange and that he should sell off whatever shares he had in steel and electricity and put his savings in the bank.

She’d found the letter when she was tidying Henry’s things.

She hadn’t mentioned it. Whatever she thought about John, she trusted Henry to do the right thing.

The wind had strengthened even further by the time she and Henry arrived in Liberal that afternoon. Henry made his way to the bank before it closed, too preoccupied by his own thoughts to ask Emily where she was going.

“I’ll see you later,” he called. “Pick you up at nine.”

“Make it eight,” she replied. “Just in case.”

She waited until he was out of sight and then, head down against the wind, hurried to the doctor.

By the time she was done and had arrived at the general store, the sky was already darkening.

“Wasn’t sure we’d see you tonight,” Laurie said as she ushered Emily inside.

“Neither was I. Henry’s picking me up a little earlier than usual.”

“Good thing, too. I don’t like the look of that sky one bit. Now, come on inside.”

The tentative friendships Emily had formed in her first year on the prairie had solidified into strong bonds with women she now admired greatly and cared for deeply.

They had even added some actual singing to their weekly gatherings as Emily taught them her favorite Irish ballads, and Ingrid taught them songs from her Dutch heritage, and they all sang the blues.

While the women shared their hopes and fears over pie and music at the Millers’ home attached to the general store, the men gathered at the saloon to discuss yields and wheat prices.

The wheat surplus had expanded again after another strong summer harvest. Grain elevators across the state were stuffed full, which meant prices would inevitably drop.

“I’ve never seen Hank so worried,” Laurie said as the women discussed their husbands. “He can’t sleep at night for turning over everything in his mind, and then he’s as irritable as a horsefly bite the next day.”

“I don’t understand why the government won’t buy back the surplus,” Ingrid added as she told little Eric to stop bothering his older brother.

“And still more folk arriving on the trains every week, and more acres being plowed up,” Emily added.

The lush fertile fields that had greeted her when she’d first arrived were now a torn and tattered patchwork of plowed sod. Once again, she recalled Ike West’s warning when they’d first arrived. She felt ashamed by what they’d done to the land.

“Eric! Leg dat neer,” Ingrid scolded her son, turning to her Dutch language as she often did when she was tired or irritated.

Baby Eric, named for his father, reluctantly put down the wooden spoon he’d been using as a drumstick on his brother’s legs and sat, scowling, at his mother’s feet.

He was a sweet little boy most of the time, but Ingrid’s struggle to raise the two boys on her own was plain to see.

Emily had hoped to find a quiet moment to confide in Ingrid following her appointment with the doctor, but decided it could wait.

She hated to see how tired Ingrid looked. She rarely smiled these days.

She’d felt the optimism fade among them all lately.

They were bringing in record harvests, but for what.

Barely a profit to be made between them.

She tried to lift everyone’s spirits with a song on the fiddle, but a string broke in the second verse.

“A sign of bad luck,” her father used to say.

“A broken string warns of a broken heart.”

—

Henry was quiet in the car and went straight back to his ledgers when they arrived home, rather than sit with Emily on the porch to debrief each other on their evenings, as he usually did.

Emily left him a while before gently encouraging him to join her. “You look tired,” she said. “Come and sit with me. Shake the day off.” She was eager to get his attention and try to lighten the mood.

Eventually, he relented. He closed his ledgers and pushed his pencil behind his ear.

“A problem shared?” she prompted as he sat beside her. “Laurie was saying she’s never seen Hank so worried. It might help to tell me what’s troubling you, or do I have to rely on Laurie Miller to know my husband’s state of mind?”

Henry offered a tired smile. “Seems like you already know. City folk are being encouraged to eat wheat three times a week, but if the surplus continues, wheat prices will tumble, no doubt about it.” He ran his hands through his hair.

“I don’t care for how things are looking, Em. I don’t care for it at all.”

Emily offered reassurance, just as he had reassured her so often over the years.

“We’ll be fine, Henry. We’ve savings in the bank.

You followed John’s advice and, although it nearly kills me to admit it, he’s proven to be right so far.

” She kissed the top of his head. After five years of marriage, and even with all the irritating little habits and ways that those five years had slowly revealed, Emily still adored her husband.

Whatever happened, and wherever life took them, they would share it together.

They complemented each other, like sunshine and rain.

It was a powerful combination. “Henry, there’s something… ”

He reached for her hand as he yawned. “Sorry, Em. I’m beat. I’m no company tonight. I think I’ll turn in,” he said.

Emily kissed his hand. “Get some rest. I’ll close up the coops and check on the animals. That wind’s really picking up.”

Her news would have to wait.

—

Emily woke to a low ominous wail.

She sat up. “Henry!” She pushed his arm to wake him. “Henry, wake up.”

Beside her, Henry stirred. “What is it?”

“Listen. The wind.”

The timbers already creaked all around them. The iron hinges on the doors squeaked as they were pulled and stretched. The sound was distinct, different from any other wind. They both felt a dull headache from the change in air pressure.

“Tornado!” Henry jumped out of bed. “Get to the cellar.” In a rush, he pulled on his boots and ran to the door. “Go, Em! Now!”

She hurried to the center of the room, rolled back the rug, and pulled up the hatch. Her heart lurched as she made her way down the ladder into the cold dark space. “Hurry, Henry!”

He was with her a moment later. “Looks like a big one, Em. A real big one.”

They clung to each other in the dark as the house shook violently above, the floorboards straining against the joists as they began to pull away.

Emily heard a sharp snap, then another, then a cacophony, like gunfire going off as nails sprang loose and the house seemed to heave and sway above her.

The noise was like nothing she’d ever heard—the impossible crescendo of ever-stronger gusts, the deafening, bloodcurdling shriek and whine and roar of the wind.

And then the unimaginable happened. The floor started to separate from the foundations and the house began to lift from the ground, heaving and swaying above Emily’s head, tethered only by a few stubborn struts.

Blinking against the roaring wind and sharp grit that peppered her skin, she saw the green-black sky above.

“Henry! What’s happening!”

He held her tight to his side. “Hold on, Em. Hold tight. I’ve got you.”

She gripped him like a vise as the house twisted some forty-five degrees before being dragged several feet and smashing into the ground. The windows and timbers were crushed and twisted. Everything that had once been inside was now outside, caught up and hurled in every direction by the storm.

In the cellar, Emily shut her eyes and clung to Henry. They cowered against the farthest wall as rain and dirt hammered down on them until she was sure they would be buried alive.

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t cry out. Couldn’t breathe. The wind and dirt choked her. Smothered her.

She prayed desperately, pleading for it to end—the deafening noise, the murderous wind, the terrifying bangs and booms and crash and shatter of God knows what above.

Please stop! Please be over! Please spare us!

She buried her face in Henry’s chest and retreated into herself, longing for it to stop as terror and panic set her heart racing and made her body shake as violently as the house above.

It seemed to last forever,

screaming and roaring,

endlessly raging,

forever,

on and,

on,

and

on.

And then it was done.

All that remained was silence.