all unhappy. Dirt is raining from the sky. The trees are falling over dead. Animals are dying. We’re all unhappy.”
“He wanted to go to California,” Elsa said. “I said no. It was a mistake. I was going to talk to him about it, but…” She pulled the letter out of her pocket and handed it to them.
Rose took it in trembling hands and read it, her lips moving silently over the words. Tears filled her eyes when she looked up.
“Son of a bitch,” Tony said, crumpling the letter. “That’s what comes of coddling the boy.”
Rose looked stricken. “He’ll be back,” she said.
The three of them stared at each other. Absence could fill a room to overflowing, apparently.
The front door banged opened. Loreda and Ant came back with dirty hands and dirty faces and three small potatoes between them.
“It’s barely any use.” Loreda stopped. “What’s wrong? Who died?”
Elsa set down her glass. “I need to talk to you two.”
Rose put a hand over her mouth; Elsa understood. Saying these words aloud would change the children’s lives.
Rose pulled Elsa into a tight hug, then let her go.
Elsa turned to face the children.
Their faces unraveled her. Both of them were such spitting images of their father. She went to them, pulled them into her arms, both at once. Ant happily hugged her back. Loreda struggled to break free.
“You’re smothering me,” Loreda complained.
Elsa let Loreda go.
“Where’s Daddy?” Ant asked.
Elsa smoothed her son’s hair back from his freckled face. “Come with me.” She led them out onto the porch, where they all sat on the porch swing. Elsa pulled Ant onto her lap to make room.
“What’s wrong now?” Loreda said, sounding put-upon.
Elsa drew a breath, pushed off, let the swing rock backward and forward. Lord, she wished her grandpa were here to say, Be brave, and give her a little push. “Your father has left—”
Loreda looked impatient. “Oh, yeah? Where’d he go?”
And there it was. The moment to lie or tell the truth.
He’s taken a job out of town to save us. It would be easy to say, harder to prove when no money or letters came, when month after month, he didn’t come home. But they wouldn’t cry themselves to sleep, either.
Only Elsa would.
“Mom?” Loreda said sharply. “Where did Dad go?”
“I don’t know,” Elsa said. “He left us.”
“Wait. What?” Loreda jumped off the swing. “You mean—”
“He’s gone, Lolo,” Elsa said. “Apparently he jumped on a train.”
“DON’T YOU CALL ME THAT. Only he can call me that,” Loreda screamed.
Elsa felt fragile enough that she feared there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“He left you,” Loreda said.
“Yes.”
“I HATE YOU!” Loreda ran down the porch steps and disappeared around the corner of the house.
Ant twisted around to look up at Elsa. His confusion was heartbreaking. “When’s he comin’ back?”
“I don’t think he will come back, Ant.”
“But … we need him.”
“I know, baby; it hurts.” She stroked his hair back from his face.
Tears filled his eyes and seeing that made her own eyes sting, but she refused to cry in front of Ant.
“I want my daddy. I want my daddy…”
Elsa held her son close and let him cry. “I know, baby. I know…”
She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
* * *
LOREDA CLIMBED UP THE windmill and sat on the platform beneath the giant blades, her knees drawn up. The wood was warm beneath her, heated by the sun.
How could Daddy do this? How could he leave his family on the farm without crops or water? How could he leave—
Me.
It hurt so much she couldn’t breathe when she thought of it.
“Come back,” she screamed.
The blue, sunlit Great Plains sky swallowed her feeble cry and left her there, alone, feeling small and lonely.
How could he abandon her when he knew how much she wanted to leave this farm? She was like him, not like Mom and Grandma and Grandpa. Loreda didn’t want to be a farmer; she wanted to go out into the great big world and become a writer and write something important. She wanted to leave Texas.
She felt the windmill rattle and thought, Great, now Mom was going to come up, looking all pathetic, and try to comfort Loreda. Mom was the very last person Loreda wanted to see now.
“Go away,” Loreda said, wiping her eyes. “This is all your fault.”
Mom sighed. She looked pale, almost fragile, but that was ridiculous. Mom was about as fragile as a yucca root.
Mom continued climbing up to the platform and sat down beside Loreda, in the place her daddy