barrel full of food and towels and bedding, bundles of kindling and wood, and the black stove, strapped against the back of the cab. They packed as much as they could for their new life, but most of what they owned was still in the house and barn. The kitchen cabinets were nearly full, as were most of the closets. There was no way they could take it all. The furniture they would leave behind, like the pioneers who’d unloaded their covered wagons when the going got tough, leaving pianos and rocking chairs alongside their buried dead on the plains.
When they were completely packed, Elsa walked back to the house, over the dunes and troughs of sand.
Elsa looked around the house. They were leaving it full of furniture, with pictures still on the walls. Everything was covered in fine black dirt.
The front door opened. Tony walked in, holding hands with Rose. “Loreda is in the truck. She’s impatient to go,” Tony said.
“I’ll make one last pass through the house,” Elsa said. She walked through the powdery black dirt in the sitting room, over hills and across scrape marks. The kitchen window was gone; through it, the beautiful blue sky looked like an oil painting hung on a black wall.
Elsa walked into her bedroom and stood there, one last time. Books lined the dresser and the nightstands, each one draped in black dirt. Just like when she’d left her parents’ home, she could only take a few of her treasured novels with her. Once again, she was starting over.
She quietly closed the bedroom door on this life and walked out of the house for the last time.
Rose and Tony stood on the porch, holding hands.
“I’m ready,” she said, stepping onto the first riser of the porch steps.
“Elsinore?” Tony said.
It was the first time he’d ever used her given name and it surprised her. Elsa turned.
“We aren’t going with you,” Rose said.
Elsa frowned. “I know we planned to leave later, but—”
“No,” Tony said. “That’s not what we mean. We aren’t going to California.”
“I don’t … understand. I said we needed to leave and you agreed.”
“And you do need to go,” Tony said. “The government has offered to pay us not to grow anything. They have forgiven mortgage payments for a while. So we don’t have to worry about losing any more of the land. For now, at least.”
“You said there was no good news after the meeting,” Elsa said, feeling a rush of panic. “You lied to me?”
“This is not good news,” he said softly. “Not when I know you must go for Ant’s sake.”
“They want us to plow differently,” Rose said. “Who understands it? But they need the farmers to work together. How can we not try to save our land?”
“Ant … can’t stay,” Elsa said.
“We know that. And we can’t go,” Tony said. “Go. Save my grandchildren.” His voice broke on that.
Tony curled his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her gently toward him, touched his forehead to hers; this was a man of the old world, a man who shut up and moved on and never stopped working. He poured all of his passion and love into the land. For his family. This touch was how he said, I love you.
And goodbye.
“Rosalba,” Tony said. “The penny.”
Rose took off the thin, black-ribboned necklace that held a velvet pouch.
Solemnly, she handed the pouch to Tony. He opened it, withdrew the American penny.
“You are our hope now,” he said to Elsa, and then put the penny back in the pouch and pressed the necklace into the palm of her hand, forced her fingers to curl around it. He turned and walked back into the house, scuffling through the ankle-deep sand.
Elsa felt as if she were breaking apart. “You know I can’t do this alone, Rose. Please…”
Rose laid a callused hand on Elsa’s cheek. “You are everything those children need, Elsa Martinelli. You always have been.”
“I’m not brave enough to do this.”
“Yes, you are.”
“But you’ll need money. We took all the food—”
“We kept some for ourselves. And our land will provide.”
Elsa couldn’t speak. The last thing in the world she wanted was to drive across the country—over mountains and across vast deserts—with too little money and hungry children and no one to help her.
No.
The thing she couldn’t bear would be to watch her son struggle to breathe again.
And there it was: the truth Rose had already come to.
“Tony put money in the glove box,” Rose said “The tank is full of