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A prickle of anticipation tiptoed around the small home, as if it knew they were leaving.

Emily took a moment alone on their final day, glad to have the prairie to herself one last time before anyone else woke. She prepared herself for their departure, packed away any lingering regrets and sorrow.

When Henry joined her, they shared the silence together for a while.

“And so, we have reached the end of the road,” he said eventually. “We must leave.”

Emily reached for his hand. “The end of one road, yes. But the start of another.”

“Would you still choose it?” he asked. “This life? These hard years? Would you have come with me, agreed to marry me, if you’d known what we would face?”

For the briefest moment, she paused, checking her response before she turned to him with absolute certainty.

“In a heartbeat. I would take it all on again tomorrow to be here with you, right now. We wouldn’t have had the wonderful if we’d never had the wicked. It’s all part of the same story, Henry. All connected.”

Now that they had said their goodbyes to the few friends who remained, the final farewell was the hardest.

Behind the barn, Henry reached for Emily’s hand as he recited the Lord’s Prayer and they each scooped up a handful of dirt and added it to the little mound in front of them.

It was there, in their hands, that they carried the story of their successes and struggles.

The powder-fine dirt was so deeply burrowed into the cracks and lines on their weathered skin that no amount of scrubbing could shift it.

Like their grief, the prairie was part of them now.

Part of them that would always be rooted here.

“I once asked my mother how she’d felt to leave Ireland with baby Joseph buried there,” Emily said. “I asked her how she could bear it.”

Henry looked at her. “What did she say?”

“She said there are some things you can’t take with you on life’s journey.

No matter how much they mean, or how precious they are, or how painful the parting.

” She reached for Henry’s hand and placed it against his chest. “And she said that she was never a day without him, that a heart is the very best home of all.”

He offered a tired smile. “You’d have been a wonderful mother.”

“And you, a wonderful father. And we will be the best aunt and uncle we can be, for Dorothy.”

For now, there was no room for looking back, only forward. Whatever lay ahead, they would face it together.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you.” Henry pulled a packet of dollar bills from his pocket.

“Seems that Mr.Stregone has a decent bone in his body after all. He left this, the extra bit of money we raised for his second round of aerial bombing. He left a note to say Dorothy might like to save it for a rainy day. He left this for her, too.” He pulled a crumpled envelope from his shirt pocket, Dorothy’s name scribbled on the front.

“He said you would know when it was the right time to give it to her.”

Emily considered it for a moment before she pressed it back into Henry’s hands. “Keep it somewhere safe,” she said. “Remind me about it every now and then.”

—

Dorothy packed the few possessions she’d brought from Chicago, and the other things she’d collected during her short time in Kansas.

Her toy lion, her tin man, the Brigid doll made of straw, the notebook from Adelaide, the carnival coin from Leonardo, Annie’s silver shoes and emerald ring and circus memorabilia, and of course, Toto, along with his tomato crate bed and the blanket Emily had made for him.

But she didn’t pack the piece of Connemara marble Emily had given her when they’d left Chicago.

Emily noticed it on the table. “Don’t forget the Irish Green, Dorothy. For good luck.”

“Can we leave it here? If we bury it in the ground, it might help to turn the prairie green again. Emerald, like Ireland.”

Dorothy believed in such goodness and wonder. If that little piece of Ireland carried any trace of her kind heart, Emily was hopeful that color would return to this lifeless land.

As they dug a hole in the hard ground to bury it, Emily spotted a single grain of wheat. She picked it up and put it in Dorothy’s pocket.

“For luck, a ghrá,” she said with a smile.

“Is California nice?” Dorothy asked as they walked back to the house. “And Aunt Nell? Will I like her?”

“I don’t know about California, dear. I’ve never been. I guess we’ll find out, together. As for your Aunt Nell, she’s one of the kindest, cleverest people I’ve ever known. You’ll love her, that’s for sure.”

As Emily packed up the last of her things, she took the bundle of letters from the old shoebox.

One for each of Dorothy’s eight birthdays so far.

But it was the sixteenth birthday letter that still held a strange power as Emily tucked it into her purse.

Whatever secrets it held would be revealed in time.

And Emily would make sure Dorothy was ready to hear them.

That evening, as she wished Dorothy good night for the last time in their Kansas home, Dorothy said there was something she wanted to ask. It was a habit of hers to wait until bedtime to ask some of life’s most puzzling questions. A ruse to stay awake. Emily and Henry had become wise to it.

Emily sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, what is it tonight?”

“It isn’t something to ask, really, more something I wanted to say.”

“Goodness, child, spit it out! It’ll be Christmas soon!”

“I wanted to say that you can call me Dot sometimes. If you like.”

Emily’s hands stilled as she pulled up the covers. “Dot…That’s the name your mommy used to call you.”

Dorothy nodded, her inquisitive green eyes searching Emily’s.

Emily fought back her emotions. “I would like that, Dorothy, dear. I would like that very much.” She pulled the bedcovers taut and kissed Dorothy’s forehead, astonished by the love she felt for her, as wild and strong as any storm that had ever rushed over the prairie.

As Emily brushed her hair that night, letting it hang loose around her shoulders, she looked at her reflection in the hand mirror and saw the face of a woman she knew. The face of a woman who had struggled and survived.

The face of a daughter. A sister. A wife.

The face of a mother.

—

The winds were picking up, blowing hot from the south as Kansas slipped away behind them.

Emily held her father’s fiddle on her lap as she looked to the west and heard her mother’s voice, urging her on.

“Dá fhada an lá tagann an tráthnóna. No matter how long the day, the evening comes. Courage, Emily. Courage, a ghrá.”

She held her head high and pushed back her shoulders as she remembered a slice of apple, held up to the light.

“The same way the apple remembers the blossom it grew from, and the way the peel remembers the shape of the fruit it was attached to, you’ll always remember this little cottage in Connemara on the edge of Ireland… ”

She remembered. She remembered it all.

Home was in the tracks behind her, and in the unknown roads ahead. It was a familiar memory, and the prickle of uncertainty at the back of her neck.

She looked back, just once, as she recalled Annie’s words. “But is it enough, Em? Really? Is it everything you wanted it to be?”

It had been more than enough. For a while, it had been her world.