A Hope Remembered Read Free Page A

draped an arm around her shoulders, the other hanging lifeless at his side. Wounded in France, he’d informed Nora in his letter of inquiry about the farm she was sellling.
    “Perfect for all those children we’re going to have.” He pressed a kiss to his wife’s forehead.
    Nora folded her arms and looked away, the sting of resentment piercing her at their happiness. She didn’t need further reminders, however unintentional, that her life had been—and was about to be again—irrevocably changed.
    Nothing about the last two years matched her girlhood dreams, dreams that had included a husband and family. If Tom Campbell had survived the Great War, all those hopes would have been realized. He would be standing here now, instead of two strangers. It would be his arms holding her close, his lips kissing her, and she wouldn’t be trying to sell the only home she’d ever known.
    “The kitchen is through there.” Nora forced a friendly tone to her words. The more they liked the place and her, the less likelihood of having to endure more people she didn’t know traipsing all over the farm.
    The couple moved past her and stepped into the large, sunny kitchen. Nora followed. She rested her hands on the back of one of the chairs. How many times had she sat here rolling dough for her mother or eating meals with her parents? They’d been gone more than a year, but the memories entrenched in every space of the farm kept them close, as well as increased the pain of missing them.
    “The house comes with all the furnishings?” The young man’s eyes were trained on the icebox.
    “Yes.” Nora recalled the day her father had brought the icebox home in the wagon—a birthday gift for her mother. Grace Lewis had been so happy she’d cried. It was one of many surprises, big and small, her father had delighted in giving “his girls.”
    “You don’t want to take any of it with you?”
    Wanted to, yes. The piano, her bed, her father’s rocker, her mother’s gramophone. “It might be rather difficult to get an icebox all the way to England.”
    The young man chuckled, bringing Nora instant relief that she hadn’t offended him. “England, huh? Heard things aren’t going so well there right now. I would’ve thought more of them would be coming here, than anyone going there.”
    Nora had read something similar in the newspaper, but she wasn’t concerned. Caring for the farm alone since her parents’ deaths, she’d learned how to stretch her nickels and dimes and how little she and her dog, Oscar, could subside on. “Actually, I inherited some property there.”
    “A big manor house, huh?” He laughed at his own joke. “I met some of those rich Brits overseas. Decent guys, though most of them never worked a day in their lives before the war.”
    There likely wouldn’t be any rich Brits where she was going, Nora thought as she watched the man’s wife fingering the red-checked curtains over the window. She fought the urge to ask her to stop. She’d helped her mother sew those curtains one blizzardy day years ago. The bright color had brought instant cheer to the room and made the winter weather more bearable.
    “It isn’t really a house,” she replied, trying to focus on the conversation and not the way the woman continued to run her hands over the kitchen furniture. “It’s a cottage—on a sheep farm.”
    “A sheep farm?” The woman didn’t bother to hide her incredulous tone. “That’s a rather unusual occupation for a woman on her own.”
    Nora swallowed hard, hating the way the woman’s words stirred up her deepest fears. Could she really give up the only life she’d ever known to do something she’d never done before? In a place so vastly different from hers here in Iowa? Like her parents, the farthest she’d ever traveled was Minnesota.
    Clearly not expecting a reply to her candid remark, the woman asked eagerly, “Can we see the upstairs?”
    “Of course.” Nora bottled up her uncertainty and