Nearly two years later… September 20, 1910
The bedroom’s mantle clock chimes the hour, startling Hannah to stop writing in her diary. She lowers her pen and allows memories to rise. Tender memories. Personal moments and thoughts dawdle and drift in her mind.
Behind more than one closed door in her farmhouse on the outskirts of town, this room is the one place where she feels safe to reminisce. To dream. To remember a love that was crushed out before it could begin.
She opens her eyelids. Hannah turns her head to look at the painting that followed the life-changing moment when she locked eyes with Cal in his studio and saw the future she’d wished she had.
This is the portrait he created. Touched. Finessed. It’s displayed with two much smaller portraits of her daughter and son.
Like many times before, she’s struck by the irony that her husband arranged the meeting with the artist for business and personal reasons. Her cheeks flush with warmth as she continues thinking about how her husband paid the man who captured her likeness. And how, in the process, the artist captured something far more.
Hannah closes her diary and tucks it into her vanity’s top drawer. She stands and steps over to the open window to announce, “Fünf Minuten, Kinder. You have five minutes to wash up and get yourselves ready to go to town.”
There’s no audible response.
“Cinco minutos. Emma? Noah? Where are you?”
“We’re right here,” says her daughter as she enters Hannah’s bedroom doorway.
“I’m here too. Washed and ready,” says little Noah from behind his sister.
“How long are we going to have to speak German, Spanish, and English?” Emma clucks her tongue and makes a sour face.
“For as long as God allows breath in my lungs and sunshine on my back. That’s how long.” Hannah adds, “Most families only speak one language. Ours is blessed with three.”
Hannah recalls how different she was when she came to this city as a bride from nearby Anaheim, when she was the only person at the orchard not to have black hair, not to love tamales, not to instinctively sway to the music of a mariachi band. The only one with blonde hair, the only one who spoke English and German and a bit of Spanish. She looks the children up and down, and clears her throat. “Hands out.” She barks the command like a drill sergeant.
The children do as she asks. Arms extended. Palms up. Just as they’ve responded to this playfully dramatic command many times before.
A grin grows on Hannah’s face as she opens her arms wide.
The children scamper over to be embraced.
“Well done. I’m proud of you. Your father would be, too,” Hannah says. “He always appreciated clean hands. Even after being a rancher’s son and an orchard owner, your father strived to be a gentleman in this house.”
“And you were his princess,” Noah says.
“No. That’s not right, silly boy. Momma was his queen.” Emma nods with satisfaction at her comment.
“I’m no queen. But I now run an orchard that has my face on its crate labels. And I run you two around as best I can. That’s a lot of responsibility. So, I’m delighted my two little Munchkins are turning out so fine.”
“Munchkins…you mean like in the book you’re reading to us?” asks Noah.
Hannah replies, “Precisely. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It’s quite popular these days.”
Emma adds, “I meant to tell you this, but I guess I got distracted. I was playing Dorothy out in the yard with Noah earlier today. I had a rope tied around his neck—loosely, of course—and he was my dog, Toto. The wind was blowing so hard. There was even a dust devil we pretended was the twister that took us to Oz.”
“You’ve been paying attention to my reading, I guess.”
“All the kids at school are talking about it because their families are reading it too.”
Hannah directs the children to the doorway. “Let’s be on our way. We have shopping to get done and then I have some baking to do for the church sale at the Street Fair on Thursday.”
“A fair! On the street! Right here in our town!” Emma twirls in a circle.
“I can’t wait.” Noah looks curiously at his mother. “But what’s a fair?”
“Just you wait and see…and taste…and smell,” teases Hannah. “Scoot-scoot. Off you go.”