There's a sucker born every minute...
The odd thing about that was that no one who truly knew Emily Bright would ever have applied that phrase to her. For no one who spent as much time as she did with people on the extremes of human existence, in pain and grief and joy, could remain ignorant of some of mankind's essential flaws.
But she'd been born and remained a deeply optimistic person. And that cornerstone of her character, her insistence upon expecting the best in every person and situation, made her the perfect audience for the advertisement that a handsome young man thrust in her hand as she clipped down the street by the Broad Street train station. She'd sneaked off to visit Mrs. Sweeney, whom Dr. Goodale had decreed was recovering nicely from a bout with pleurisy, but Emily wished to examine her one more time just to make sure.
That, and the fact that she very much wanted the information on the flyer to be true.
Free land!
It can be yours! The vast central plains of this great nation abound with plentiful game and pure, sparkling waters, soil so rich that crops spring forth before one has barely scattered seeds upon the fertile ground! And it can be yours, your own home, on your own land, due to the foresight of our government, with no more investment than your own courage and labor...
She stood frozen, oblivious to the stream of jostling people that eddied around her.
Home, her own home.
She'd never had one, not one of her own since she was five. Oh, she'd lived places, she and her sisters, places she'd always understood she'd have to leave eventually. Even the beautiful house she'd lived in for the last fourteen years -- no one had ever allowed her to labor under the delusion it was hers. And now Norine, her sister Kate's stepdaughter, had made no secret of the fact that she was impatient to move back into the house her father had willed her.
Where would Emily and Kate go now? She'd no idea. Kate cheerfully insisted Emily shouldn't worry, all would be fine. And then she'd popped off to dinner with Floyd Ruckman, the late Dr. Goodale's old, very rich, and utterly unappealing friend.
Emily was terribly afraid that Kate had every intention of sacrificing herself on the altar of not-so-holy matrimony for Emily's sake once again. Emily had been too young to stop Kate all those years ago when she'd married Dr. Goodale. But now that Emily was fully grown and quite capable of taking care of herself, she had no intention of allowing Kate to make the same mistake again. But allowing, or not allowing, Kate to do something was never as easily accomplished as decided.
Kate had already given years of her life for Emily's sake. Emily had no doubt she would continue to do so until Emily proved it completely unnecessary. She'd wracked her brain for weeks in an attempt to figure out how to do just that, but short of marrying Mr. Ruckman herself, she'd yet to come up with a plan.
Someone plowed into her back, and she stumbled forward, reflexively clutching the precious paper.
“You're holdin' things up, missy,” a man in a natty suit and handsome black bowler growled at her.
Blinking, Emily surfaced from dazzling dreams of a snug little cabin surrounded by acres of burgeoning fields and pretty orchards. Hers, all hers. “Oh. I'm terribly sorry.” Around her, harried people rushed to catch the next train, shouted to hail a cab, or hurried toward the shops and businesses on the street, the ebb and flow of a great city and busy lives.
“Time to get movin'.”
“Yes.” She grinned so brightly the impatient gentleman couldn't help but smile back. “It certainly is.”
It took her three weeks to prepare. Luckily, those three weeks had been busy ones for Kate as...
