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They wore their losses like a heavy shroud, hunched and weary beneath the weight of their despair as the rusted hues of fall decorated the cooler days of October in golds and crimson and bronze.

Back in August, their once-welcome friend of Lughnasa had seemed to only increase their yield of sorrow that year.

With much of their crops destroyed, there was little else to harvest.

They struggled on, trying to fit into the new shape of life in the simple home Henry had built in the footprint of the old one.

Emily felt like a stranger there. She took no joy in it.

She could barely bring herself to hang a single picture on the bare timber walls or place a cushion on their one remaining rocking chair.

She took no joy in her changing body either.

The colder nights left her stiff and tense, so that her whole body ached.

The tug of her swollen breasts and the developing life deep in her belly felt alien and unfamiliar.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This wasn’t the home she’d imagined raising a child in, but it was the home fate had given her.

Henry found her reading the letter Nell had written in reply to Emily’s news of the tornado.

“Still thinking about Nell’s offer?” He worried about Emily, and about their child. “It isn’t the worst idea.”

Nell had encouraged Emily to come and stay with her until the baby arrived. I know a thing or two about babies! Besides, I hate to think of you living in a shack, at the mercy of the weather. Winter will be unbearable. Please come, Emmie. I worry about you. You’ll be safe here.

She’d thought about it, considered it seriously, but for all that she would be well looked after by Nell, it felt wrong to abandon Henry and the prairie at the first sign of difficulty.

She would be running away—quitting—and she wasn’t a quitter.

Besides, it was what Annie had expected her to do all along, and she was too stubborn to prove her right.

She reached for Henry’s hand. “I can’t go running to my sisters at the first sign of trouble.

” She caught herself at the use of the word “sisters.” There was no such invitation from Annie.

She’d sent a short note offering her sympathies along with a bank draft from John to help with their repairs. “I’ll be fine, Henry. We’ll be fine.”

Henry looked at her and shook his head, affection in his eyes. “You’re as stubborn as an ink stain, Emily Gale.”

In the evenings, she played the fiddle, choosing songs that reminded her of Samhain, the witching season.

A favorite tune of her father’s, “She Moved through the Fair,” filled the house with its haunting melody.

Henry listened quietly, spellbound by the music and Emily’s voice.

He loved to hear her play and sing, encouraging her to pick up the fiddle even when she wasn’t in the mood.

Music was a comfort during the nights when the wind howled at the eaves and the warm glow of spring and summer were a distant memory.

Henry kept busy, chopping wood in preparation for winter fires, fixing and improving anything on his machinery that had become damaged or broken, or which was perfectly fine, but which he tinkered with anyway.

Emily had become accustomed to his “fall fidgets,” as she called them.

She knew he wouldn’t fully relax again until the spring thaws came and he could watch the fields for the first green shoots.

Until then, the only thing they could harvest was hope, and love. And that, they had plenty of.

Emily’s pregnancy and the destruction of their home had brought her and Henry closer than ever.

It was the worst possible timing after the devastating tornado, but it gave them a reason to start over and look ahead.

The thought of becoming a father had given Henry a new sense of purpose when it seemed that they had lost everything.

Emily tracked her progress in her journal, capturing her thoughts and feelings on the page as she found the words to express her ever-shifting moods, as unpredictable and turbulent as the sky.

Can’t sleep for thinking about what’s ahead.

Twelve weeks now according to my calculations…

Henry talks about little else. He is making a crib, although I told him it is too soon and bad luck.

There’s still a long way to go… She was mindful of her mammy’s piseoga—portents of bad luck—and found herself following old superstitions: avoiding graveyards, cats, and rabbits, and not eating green potatoes.

As the nights turned colder, they burned surplus corn from that year’s harvest as fuel for the fire.

“Smells good enough to eat,” Henry said as he came in from the fields. “Who’d have ever thought we would see the day when there was so much corn we would happily throw it on the fire instead of selling it?” He let out a long sigh.

“I was just thinking how it reminds me of the circus,” Emily said. “Of the popcorn and cotton candy we used to get as a treat.”

Henry sat beside her and took her hand. “And it reminds you of your sisters?”

He knew her well.

Emily nodded and stared wistfully into the flames.

“You never really explained what happened with you and Annie,” Henry said as he sat beside her. “What it was that caused such a rift between you?”

Emily sighed. She sometimes wasn’t sure herself.

“We’d already drifted apart in Chicago, and she never forgave me for not telling her we were getting married,” Emily said.

“I guess it all came to a head when she visited that time and our differences became more apparent than ever. Life has pulled us in different directions ever since.” At first, it had felt that life was putting obstacles in the way of any chance of reconciliation: a broken ankle, bad weather, outbreaks of smallpox.

After the tornado, Emily had stopped inviting Annie to visit.

She hadn’t even asked Nell to come. She didn’t want them to see how she lived now, or how tired and broken she looked.

Whatever desire she’d once had for Annie to admire what they’d built in Kansas had been smothered by the struggle of survival.

The ache of Annie’s withdrawal from Emily’s life had dissipated over the years, the memories and regrets a distant echo now, but still heard and never fully forgotten.

“I hope she’s happy,” she said. “That’s all I wish for her. ”

“With John? Highly unlikely.”

Emily smiled. “Henry. Don’t joke.”

“Well, it’s the truth. I never understood why she married him when she could have had any man in Chicago.”

“Perhaps not any man.” Emily longed to tell Henry what she knew about Dorothy’s father, but she’d made a promise to Annie to never speak of it again. Not even to Henry. “She’d had her taste of true love, and lost it. John was always second best.”

“She loves him, though, doesn’t she?”

“I think so. But in a different way. John was a safe bet. She settled for him and the security he could offer her, but what she really wanted was something more thrilling and intoxicating. Someone mysterious.”

She threw another couple of corncobs onto the fire, setting off a great popping sound.

“You mean that circus performer she fell in love with? The balloonist?”

“Aerialist.”

“Balloonist. Aerialist. It’s all the same, isn’t it? Magicians. Illusionists. Acrobats. Whatever you call them. What was his name anyway? You never told me.”

Emily hesitated. After protecting Annie’s secret so carefully, she was afraid to even hear his name spoken aloud. “His name doesn’t matter. For years, part of me wished they would find each other again.”

“Which part? The hopeless romantic? Or the sister who cares deeply, even though she pretends not to.”

“The romantic,” Emily said, smiling as she reached for Henry’s face. “The part of me that loves you madly.”

Henry kissed her cheek and placed his hand on her stomach. “I love you, too. Both of you.” He stood up and returned to his ledgers. “Be careful what you wish for, Em. We wished for a good harvest and high yields, and look where that got us.”

A somber mood had settled among the once optimistic farmers. Wheat prices were plummeting. There was now so much grain being produced across the millions of farmed acres of the Great Plains that it was costing farmers more to grow and harvest than they could earn by selling it.

“Only thing we can do is plow up more prairie grass to increase our yields next year and make up for the low prices,” he continued. “Sow more seed—wheat, corn, and cotton. A few good harvests and we’ll make back what we’ve lost.”

The farmers had discussed their options for months now. Henry was certain it was the right thing to do—the only thing to do—but Emily hated the relentless battle to make something from nothing.

“It’s like a dog chasing its tail, Henry. Surely the cycle just keeps going? More grain, more surplus, lower prices. On and on. When does it end? How does it end?”

“It ends when we give up. So we plow up and keep trying, because I’m not one for giving up. I didn’t think you were either.”

His words were unusually sharp, a challenge held within them.

“I was reading the newspaper earlier,” Emily said, eager to change the subject. “Things seem pretty bad on the stock market. Folk are saying there might be a crash. I wonder if John and his investments will be affected?”

Henry glanced up from his paperwork. “I wouldn’t worry about John Gale. He’ll find a way to dodge whatever’s coming. Some folk are lucky like that.”

“And us? We’d be all right, wouldn’t we? We have money saved?”

“Of course.”

Emily stared into the flames a moment longer, watching them flicker and dance.

“And you should know me better, Henry Gale. I never give up.”

—

News of the stock market collapse hit the wires at noon a week later. Reporters called it Black Tuesday, the worst day in the history of the stock exchange.

Henry was ashen faced as he crouched beside the Millers’ wireless radio in the general store and listened to the latest bulletin.

“Fourteen billion of stock value lost,” he said as Hank joined him. “Investors have lost everything.”

“Good job we ain’t one of ’em,” Hank said. “The bank is the only safe place for our money. Or a box under the bed, if you’ve a loaded gun to protect it with.”

Emily had heard enough. She placed a hand on Henry’s arm. “There’s no point listening to it all day, Henry. Let’s go home. Check on the animals.”

He hardly spoke as he drove back from Liberal, his brooding silence accompanying them until he turned the Model T through the farm gate and turned off the engine.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

“It’s all gone, Em. Everything.”

Emily reached for his hand as she stared at the simple one-room dwelling that now stood where their lovely home once had. It still broke her heart to think of all they’d lost. “We’ll rebuild properly in the spring, Henry. We just need to get through the winter.”

Henry turned to her, his eyes hollow, shattered. “I don’t mean the house. I mean everything. Every damn cent. We’re wiped clean. We have nothing to rebuild with.”

Emily froze. “What do you mean?”

“John assured me the shares and investments would come good. That in five years we wouldn’t have a debt to our name. I stretched us as far as I could, Em. Took a loan to buy the best machinery.”

“What about the bank? There must be money in the bank?”

“What money there is, I already owe to them.”

“But John advised you to sell the shares! I saw the letter when I was tidying your things. You did sell them, didn’t you? Henry?”

There was such a haunted look in Henry’s eyes. It frightened Emily to see it.

He shook his head. “The bank advised me to leave them. I’ve let you down, Em. Ruined everything.”

“I’ll write to Annie. Ask John to help.”

Henry shook his head. “I’ve never taken charity from anyone, and I don’t plan on starting now.”

“It’s not charity when it’s family. And it would just be until we are back on our feet.”

“I’m not asking John Gale for help. We make our own way, deal with our own problems. Besides, John is probably in a worse situation than we are.”

He grabbed his hat and stepped out of the car, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

Emily’s stomach lurched as she watched him walk away.

If Henry was too proud to ask John for help, then she would.

There was the child to think about now. If it meant going against Henry’s wishes to secure their future, then that was what she would do, even though it made her heartsick to think that it had ever come to this.

She would go to Annie and John, cap in hand, if she must.

She waited inside a while before she pulled on her shawl and made her way out to the fields, where she found Henry checking the corn beneath a beautiful pink sky. It seemed impossible that such beauty dared to show its face when such worry and despair was scattered among the furrowed fields.

“We’ll manage, Henry. We’ll start again.”

“With what?” Hope and fear and love warred in Henry’s eyes as he looked at her.

“With the same passion and determination that first brought us here. Nobody can take that away from us.”

She shivered suddenly as a Cooper’s hawk circled and wheeled above, its shrill cry the only sound beyond the soft rustle and sway of the corn.

She instinctively placed her hand on her stomach.

By next spring, they would have someone else to consider, another mouth to feed.

Her heart ached at the thought. Her whole body ached.

The thought of raising a child was daunting enough.

The thought of raising a child in the circumstances they now found themselves in was terrifying, but they needed to be brave.

“I don’t feel too good, Henry. I’ll go back to the house, fix some supper.”

“I won’t be long,” he said. “Just need a bit of time.”

“Take as long as you need.”

She’d barely made it to the barn before the first sharp pain took her breath away. She leaned against the fence to steady herself, drawing deep breaths, in and out, before hurrying on to the house.

She would lie down for a while. She just needed to lie down.

To rest.

Sleep.

But as she reached the house, the pains came in fast, excruciating waves.

It was all over before Henry had returned from the fields.