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weather your skin, and turn you into an old man before your time?
    Yes, it was far-fetched, desperate even. But what if this man truly was Sam? What if he’d been dropped back into her life after all this time—after the big lie she’d told since she’d last seen him? What if he’d come back to the house that was rightfully his, to the farm his parents had left to her and Abby, believing she was Sam’s one true love and Abby his only child?
    What if he woke up, remembered all, and exposed her whopper of a fib?
    Stop it, Gretchen told herself and expelled a held breath. She’d been shaken by the storm, unsettled by the felled oak and inexplicable shower of walnuts. Those were muddling her mind, causing her to leap to an improbable conclusion.
    “The walnuts,” Trudy said, as if sensing the direction Gretchen’s thoughts had taken. “Don’t you figure they must mean something? Didn’t they always say that he could control the sky?”
    “And make the rain,” Bennie chimed in.
    “It has been rather quiet since he left for Africa.”
    “Like the farm has been holding its breath—”
    “Stop it,” Gretchen said aloud, concerned that her sisters had begun to wonder about the very same things that needled her. “Those stories about Sam, they’re just tales that grew taller after he disappeared. Just small-town gossip because Sam’s grandfather was a shaman. Sam Winston was a man like any other man,” she remarked, although that in itself was a lie. Sam had been like no one she’d ever known, a fact she hadn’t truly appreciated until he’d vanished from her life forever.
    “But, Gretchen—”
    “I mean it, Bennie,” she cut off the older twin. “Not another word.”
    Even as she pooh-poohed their suspicions, she felt the strangest pull, a physical tug that wouldn’t let her go. Like a part of her had been awakened from the deepest sleep and now twisted and turned within her breast, pressing at her from the inside out. Regardless of what common sense insisted, a tiny hope grew within her, tingling through her limbs, the nerves catching fire, causing the tiny hairs on her arms to stand on end.
    It was as though she’d seen a ghost, and the sort that was not wispy and translucent, but instead was solid to the touch and smelled like a real man.
    “Was there a car or truck near him?” Bennie asked, clearly unable to resist asking questions altogether. But at least this one was reasonable. “I didn’t hear the crash of metal, but there was so much other noise besides.”
    “I didn’t see a car dumped anywhere,” Gretchen admitted. “He has no shoes and his feet look scarred, but they’re hardly filthy enough to have walked a long ways. Who knows how he got here,” she said and stood between the twins, gazing down at the man.
    “Only one thing makes sense,” Trudy said in her ever-quiet way. “He rode in on the twister.”
    “You know, Trude,” Gretchen whispered, “I do believe that he did.”
    It was as if the sky had opened up and dropped him right into her lap.

Four
    An entire day slipped by as Abby alternately drew in her sketchbook and stared out the window of the Amtrak train, seeing but barely noticing the passing countryside. Her mind raced faster than the clickety clack of the wheels on the track, leaping ahead, imagining what it would be like months from then when her belly swelled to the size of a watermelon and she gave birth to a squealing infant.
    She squeezed her eyes shut, clutching the sketchbook against her thrumming chest as she envisioned cradling the child in her arms. Would it be a boy or girl? Would it look like her or Nate, or a combination of the two of them?
    She could hardly breathe, wondering suddenly: What if Nate really didn’t come back? Would she be alone through it all? Could she have their baby without him? Was she strong enough for that?
    That she couldn’t answer any of those questions caused her head and heart to ache.
    By the time they pulled into the