The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

A life, not merely an existence. That was her dream:

Fight for yourself. Be brave.

Don’t worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living. Be brave.

Apparently you couldn’t stop loving some people, or needing their love, even when you knew better.

“I can drop a dove in midflight. And I don’t even want to hurt them. You, I kinda want to shoot.”

Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day.

“You are of me, Loreda, in a way that can never be broken. Not by words or anger or actions or time. I love you. I will always love you.” She tightened her hold on Loreda’s shoulders. “You taught me love. You, first in the whole world, and my love for you will outlive me. If you had not come back…”

Sometimes a person had to stand up and say enough was enough.

We fought, we struggled, we hurt each other, so what? That’s what love is, I think. It’s all of it. Tears, anger, joy, struggle. Mostly, it’s durable. It lasts. Never once in all of it—the dust, the drought, the fights with you—never once did I stop loving you or Ant or the farm.”

Love is what remains.

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. The first Martinelli to go to college. A girl.