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“Yes?” Rose said, looking up at her

“They didn’t love ry, I wonder if she sees ht in their eyes, either”

“Do you remember what I told you on the day Loreda was born?”

Elsa almost smiled “That she would love me as no one else ever would and make me crazy and try my soul?”

“Sì And you see how right I was?”

“About part of it, I guess She certainly breaks my heart”

“Yes I was a trial toof her life and at the end of yours God is cruel that way Your heart, is it too broken to love?”

“Of course not”

“So, you go on” She shrugged, as if to say, Motherhood “What choice is there for us?”

“It just … hurts”

Rose was silent for a while; finally, she said, “Yes”

In the distant field, Tony and Rafe were hard at work, planting winter wheat in ground that was as powdery as flour at the surface and hard beneath For three years, they’d planted wheat and prayed for rain and gotten too little and grown no crop at all

“This season it will be better,” Rose said

“We still have s mattered Elsa and Rose coer and more durable in the combination

Rose put an arm around Elsa’s waist, and Elsa leaned into the smaller woman From the moment of Loreda’s birth, and in all the years since, Rose had become Elsa’s mother in every way that mattered Even if they didn’t speak of their love, or share their feelings in long, heartfelt conversations, the bond was there Sturdy They’d sewn their lives together in the silent way of woether, prayed together, held their growing fah the hardships of farm life When Elsa had lost her third child—a son who never drew breath—it was Rose who held Elsa and let her cry, and said, Some lives are not ours to hold on to; God makes His choices without us Rose, who spoke for the first tirief could be borne one day, one chore, at a time