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She couldn’t deny the lift that Leonardo’s arrival had given to Henry, and the rest of the town, but while everyone else longed only for the rain, she also longed for a release from the secret she carried.

She wrestled with her conscience: remembering her solemn promise to Annie, but regretting her decision to hide the truth from Henry.

Since Annie and John’s accident, she’d come close to confiding in him.

After all, he was Dorothy’s guardian now.

But she’d stalled and stalled, afraid of how he would react to knowing she’d kept the truth from him all these years, and reluctant to rob him of his own Gale family connection to Dorothy.

How might Henry react if he discovered that Leonardo and Annie had deceived his cousin?

She couldn’t risk ruining everything, not now that they were so close to Leo bringing the rain, and with Henry finally feeling hopeful again.

He had a spring in his step. A purpose. Now wasn’t the time to unearth old secrets.

But the possibility of losing Dorothy to this charismatic magic man continued to grow from the first nagging seeds of worry to a deeply rooted sense of anxiety.

As Emily walked, alone, among the failed crops and dry dusty tracks, she couldn’t help wondering if a transient life with an enigmatic showman would be preferable to whatever she and Henry could offer.

Leonardo could take Dorothy away from all the dust, somewhere where the air was clear, where she could breathe properly.

Questions and doubt tumbled and turned through her mind as a Cooper’s hawk wheeled above.

Would Annie want her daughter to be with her father?

Should Dorothy perhaps be the one to decide?

She sat alone for a long time, watching the hungry hawks that circled above. As she listened to their peeping cries, she closed her eyes and returned to the shores of Lough Inagh, her hands in her sisters’, her mother telling them to always remember this place: their home.

She said a silent prayer, asking her mother and Annie for help, for a sign, for something to guide her in the right direction.

—

The sun began to set on another rainless day.

It had always been Emily’s favorite time, that perfect in-between hour when everything was bathed in a rosy glow and something of an enchantment settled over the land as it shifted from day to night.

But there was nothing of enchantment or magic that day.

Emily couldn’t be sure how much longer Leonardo would stay. She needed to know his intentions, even though it frightened her.

She invited him to sit with her while everyone else was occupied. “I would like to ask you about my sister,” she said.

Leo sat down and took his hat from his head. “Then I will answer my best.”

“How did you find her again?” she asked. “After the war?”

He explained how he’d been conscripted into the Royal Italian Army, and how terrible it had been in the cold winters, fighting on the northern borders in the Alps. “I couldn’t stand it,” he said. “After the Battle of Caporetto, I leave.”

“You deserted?” Of course he had.

“Si. Yes, I run away. You think I am the coward?”

Emily didn’t answer.

“I was to be executed, but the war ended and amnesty was granted. I look for Annie when I return to America many years later. But everywhere I look, she is vanished. And then I find her. In the newspaper.”

“The newspaper?” Emily didn’t remember Annie being in the newspaper.

“A picture. Of her wedding day.”

Of course. The announcement in the formal notifications.

“The day I find her is the day I lose her,” Leo continued.

“My Annie was married. I was too late. But I couldn’t put her from my mind.

I look for John Gale. He was easy to find—known by half of Chicago—and I follow him home from his office, and I see her.

She is so beautiful; and, I think, a little sad. ”

“How did she find out you were back?” she asked.

“I write to her. She write back. At first, she is very confused. We agree not to meet, that it is too late for us.” He took a deep breath. “But you cannot deny the things you are meant to have. We meet when Mr.Gale is away. And then I must leave with the circus. But when I return the next year…”

“She’d had the baby.”

He nodded. “She tell me the child is mine. That she is certain. And she is afraid that John will know the truth, so she ask if I will take her and Dorothy with me.”

Emily couldn’t believe it. Had Annie really been prepared to leave John, to give up her comfortable life for a life on the road, with Leonardo and the circus? “But you didn’t take them” she said. “You left them.”

Leo shook his head, unable to meet Emily’s eye. “I was afraid to be a father. As I tell you, I am forever a boy. I want the pleasure of your sister, not the responsibility of a child.”

Emily’s fear and worry was quickly replaced by anger. “We are all afraid of responsibility, Mr.Stregone—the responsibility for a child, especially—but some of us are brave enough to take it on anyway.”

“I tell Annie to forget me, that John should raise the child as his own. That it was for the best to be this way.”

Emily’s mind spun wildly as the missing pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

Her heart broke for Annie as she thought back to her desperate pleas for her to stay until the baby arrived, and how reluctantly—resentfully—she’d agreed.

All that time, Annie had carried her secret, afraid of John finding out, and unable to tell Leo that she was carrying his child.

And then she’d been abandoned by the man she truly loved.

Might Annie still be alive if Leo had taken her and Dorothy with him, as she’d wanted?

Emily felt sick to her stomach. “You told her you would marry her one day. She turned that hourglass thousands of times while she waited for you to come back. You left her when she needed you the most.”

He hung his head as he took a photograph from his pocket. “She give me this photograph of Dorotea. Named for my mama.”

Emily looked at the picture of Annie with baby Dorothy in her arms. The photograph that she had taken. Annie looked so young and beautiful. Emily turned the photograph over. On the back, Annie had written: Dorothy/Dorotea.

“When I am traveling with the circus and I look at the photograph, I know I have been the fool. I go back the next time I am in Chicago. I see Dorothy when I visit Annie.”

Emily’s mind reeled. “How often? How well do you know Dorothy?”

“I see her only once a year. I bring her a toy animal, for her birthday. A monkey, elephant, tiger, bear. Circus animals.”

Emily thought about the toys Dorothy had left behind in Chicago.

“When did you last see Annie?” she asked.

At this, Leo looked a little guilty. “Two years ago. After the money crash we need to work harder, more towns, more shows, to make the money. It is very hard to return to Annie. When I read about the accident, my heart is breaking. I go to the house. The lady tells me Dorothy is gone, taken by her aunt and uncle to Kansas. A town called Liberal. I write it down. Liberal, Kansas.”

“You must have seen Cora,” Emily said. “The housekeeper.”

Cora had remembered what Emily had told her. “…promise you’ll visit sometime. Head to Liberal and ask for Mrs.Miller at the general store. She’ll point you in our direction.” She wished she’d never uttered the words.

“I look for Dorothy,” he continued. “And then I meet Miss Watson and she is looking for me , to bring me to Liberal to summon the rain. And here is Dorotea. It is almost the miracle.”

Emily flinched at his words. “Her name is Dorothy! Besides, I still don’t understand why you came looking for her.”

At this, Leo looked her straight in the eye. “Why? Because she is my daughter, Mrs.Gale.”

The words landed on Emily in heavy blunt blows.

Dorothy wasn’t his daughter. Not in any true emotional sense.

If she was anyone’s daughter, she was hers, and Henry’s.

Leo had been a bit-part character in Dorothy’s and Annie’s lives.

Nothing more. Yet had she been any better?

She’d hardly known the child at the start of the year.

Now she couldn’t bear to think of being without her.

“So, what happens next?” she asked, bracing herself for his reply. “Do you plan on telling Dorothy the truth?”

The words hung in the dry dusty air around her as life seemed to pause, waiting to know in which direction it should turn, but before he could answer, Adelaide returned from the barn where she and Henry had been working on the Jenny.

“She’s all set,” Adelaide said. “Folk are getting restless, Leo. They want to know why it’s taking so long, and asking when the conditions will be right.”

Leo looked at Emily for a moment before turning his eyes to the sky. “Tomorrow, is the answer. Tomorrow we will answer all of the questions.”