The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love.

The love, it comes in the beginning of her life and at the end of yours. God is cruel that way.

Even as she opened the door, she couldn’t quite believe she was doing this: she, who had ached for her husband’s touch for more than a dozen years but never once had the courage to reach for him, was going to walk out of this bathroom wearing only a towel.

wasn’t the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid.

“Hope is a coin I carry. An American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times … in my journey, when it felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going. I came west … in search of a better life … but my American dream has been turned inside out by hardship and poverty.”

Elsa couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. There was so much more to say, a lifetime’s worth of love and advice to bestow on her children, but there was no more time … Be brave, she might have said, or maybe she only thought it.

But for now, I am an explorer again, made bold by hardship and strengthened by loss, going west in search of something that exists only in my imagination. A life different than one I’ve known before.

Hope is a coin I carry, given to me by a woman I will always love, and I hold it now as I journey west, part of a new generation of seekers.