and ran out into the storm.
Elsa pulled the cover off the truck; the wind yanked the canvas from her grasp and sent it flying like an open sail into the hayloft. Milo whinnied in terror from his stall.
Elsa climbed into the driver’s seat and stabbed the key into the ignition, turned hard. The engine coughed reluctantly to life. Please let there be enough gas to find her.
She drove out of the barn and into the storm, her hands tight on the wheel as the wind tried to push her into the ditch. A chain tied to the axle rattled along behind her, grounding the truck so the vehicle wouldn’t short out.
In front of her, brown dirt blew sideways, her two headlights spearing into the gloom. At the end of the driveway, she thought: Which way?
Town.
Loreda would never turn the other way. There was nothing for miles between here and the Oklahoma border.
Elsa muscled the truck into a turn. The wind was behind her now, pushing her forward. She leaned forward, trying to see. She couldn’t drive more than ten miles an hour.
In town, they’d turned the streetlamps on in the storm. Windows had been boarded up and doors battened down. Dust and sand and dirt and tumbleweeds blew down the street.
Elsa saw Loreda at the train depot, huddled against the closed door, hanging on to a suitcase the storm was trying to yank out of her hand.
Elsa parked the truck and got out. Thin halos of golden light glowed at the streetlamps, pinpricks in the brown murk.
“Loreda!” she screamed, her voice thin and scratchy in the maw.
“Mom!”
Elsa leaned into the storm; it ripped her dress and scraped her cheeks and blinded her. She staggered up the depot steps and pulled Loreda into her arms, holding her so tightly that for a second there was no storm, no wind clawing or sand biting, just them.
Thank you, God.
“We need to get into the depot,” she said.
“The door’s locked.”
A window exploded beside them. Elsa let go of Loreda and clawed her way to the broken window, climbed over the glass teeth in the sill, felt sharp points jab her skin.
Once inside, she unlocked the front door and pulled Loreda inside and slammed the door shut.
The depot rattled around them; another window cracked. Elsa went to the water fountain and scooped up some lukewarm water and carried it back to Loreda, who drank greedily.
Elsa slumped down beside her daughter. Her eyes stung so badly she could hardly see.
“I’m sorry, Loreda.”
“He wanted to go west, didn’t he?” Loreda said.
The walls of the depot clattered and shook; the world felt as if it were falling apart.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just say yes?”
Elsa sighed. “Your brother has no shoes. There’s no money for gas. There’s no money for anything. Your grandparents won’t leave. All I saw were reasons not to go.”
“I got here, and I didn’t know where to go. He didn’t want me to know.”
“I know.”
Elsa touched her daughter’s back.
Loreda yanked sideways and scuttled away from the touch.
Elsa brought her hand back and sat there, knowing there was nothing she could say to fix this breach with her daughter. Rafe had abandoned them both, walked out on his children and his responsibilities, and it was still Elsa whom Loreda blamed.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, AFTER THE storm quieted, Elsa drove back to the farmhouse with Loreda. Somehow, Elsa found the strength to get herself and the children fed, and finally she tucked them into bed. All without crying in front of anyone. It felt like a major triumph. In the hours after Rafe’s abandonment, Rose’s pain had turned to seething anger that showed itself in outbursts in Italian. Loreda’s despair had left her mute during their evening meal, and Ant’s confusion was painful to see. Tony made eye contact with no one.
It occurred to Elsa as she walked into her bedroom—finally—that she hadn’t spoken in a long time, hadn’t bothered to even respond when spoken to. The pain of him leaving kept expanding inside of her, taking up more and more space.
There was no wind outside now, no forces of nature trying to break down the walls. Only silence. An occasional coyote howl, an every-now-and-then scurrying of some insect across their floor, but nothing else.
Elsa walked to the chest of drawers beneath the window. She opened Rafe’s drawer to look at the only shirt he’d left behind. All she had of him now.
She picked it up, a pale blue chambray with brass snaps. She’d made it for him