“Hello, Dorothy.” Jimmy smiled, his pearly teeth shining under the sun.
“Hello, Jimmy.” Dorothy tried to smile back, but she couldn’t. Her heart did start pounding then, because she needed him to just spill the beans instead of hoarding them in his pocket.
Jimmy craned his neck and studied the pile of vegetables on the ground behind her. “You know you can’t pluck all those carrots and save the farm.” He wasn’t being mean about it, only speaking the truth.
“I know.” She sighed, taking a step closer to him so he could unharness the news.
“Then come with me.” He dropped his hat on the grass and grasped her hands with his warm fingers, his sky-blue eyes catching hers. “Marry me.”
Dorothy hesitated, thought about saying yes, since that would make things better. But it wouldn’t be fair to Jimmy because she didn’t love him like that. She had never loved him in the way that two hearts should be drawn together. Instead she’d made mistakes in her desperation and done things she shouldn’t have. With all her being, she didn’t mean to hurt him. “You know I can’t...”
“Who else are you going to find to take care of you?” His hand skimmed the side of her face, cradling it.
“Why?” Dorothy tore herself away from him. “Because everyone in town thinks of me as Crazy Dorothy?” She pressed her finger to his chest, jabbing it in as deeply as she could, not caring that it was un-lady like. It may have been the 1920s, but sometimes this town felt as if it was trapped in centuries past. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Besides, I can handle myself just fine.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Dorothy.” He looked defeated while worry lines etched into his forehead. “I just think you’ve had a hard time. When we were kids, after the tornado, and you said you’d come back from a faerie world called Oz, you changed. But just because you think something is real, and it isn’t, that doesn’t make you crazy.”
Perhaps the missing piece of why her heart could never be his was because he’d never once believed that maybe her story was true. “I still can’t marry you. The right girl is waiting out there for you. I know it.”
Jimmy didn’t say a single word as he studied the ground.
She couldn’t handle the silence any longer. “Now just break it to me. What’s to become of the farm? Is there any saving it?”
He scooped up his hat from the ground and placed it gingerly back on, then silently pursed his lips and shook his head. “No. My father isn’t keeping it or I could have tried harder. It’s worth more to auction off to a buyer.” Glenn was lead at the bank, and Jimmy worked for him. But even with Jimmy pushing his father to help her out, it was no use. The farm was just in too much debt.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out an off-white envelope and handed it to her. “I’m sorry, Dorothy. All it says is that the house will be claimed in two days. I really do wish my father would have listened to me.” His hand pressed softly against her cheek again. “If you ever need a door open for you, mine will always be.” He turned and walked away, his shoulders slumping a bit more than when he’d originally arrived.
“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered to herself. Sorry he’d believed she would have loved him. Even then, she hated Glenn and wouldn’t have wanted to see the man’s face as her father-in-law. She silently hoped Jimmy would never turn out like his father, but something told her he’d always be a proper gentleman.
She watched the car back out and drive off, kicking up the dust of the road once more. She plummeted to her knees when she knew he could no longer see her. Dorothy should have asked Jimmy to stay with her a little longer, not as a lover, but a friend, the one who had always defended her in front of everyone. Yet Dorothy truly believed that deep, deep down in his heart, he thought her to be crazy, too. She wished someone believed her about her past.
Wicked Witch. Glinda. Slippers. Scarecrow. Lion. Tin Man. Emerald City. Home. She pressed her palms to her head and pushed as hard as she could, trying to shove away the thoughts of creatures that everyone told her weren’t real. She screamed across the wheat and corn fields again and again until her voice cracked and her throat felt rough.
“It isn’t real. It isn’t real.”
“It is real. It is real.”
The silver slippers that had taken her back home hadn’t been on her feet when she’d awoken ten years ago in the wheat field. If it was real, then where were they?
“Stop it!” But she couldn’t control her spinning thoughts.
Leaving everything sprawled out across the ground, except for the shovel, she ran toward the house. Once she crossed the threshold, she stomped to the living room and smashed the shovel across the family portraits resting on the work bench, the paintings from the walls, the knickknacks on the shelves, then slammed the tool against the wooden table where no one ate but her. Fighting back her tears, Dorothy struck the wall, creating a large dent before tossing the shovel to the wood floor with a clang. “Why couldn’t you two believe me?” she screamed to the ghosts of her aunt and uncle, wherever they were. “If you two loved me so much, then why couldn’t you just listen to me!”
Dorothy didn’t feel like eating, even though she’d slaughtered the last remaining pig that morning to prepare one final stew. Now, there were no animals left to worry about either. She’d sold all the chickens and cows in an attempt to save the farm. There was nothing left to sell anymore.
With heavy eyelids, she walked over broken glass and prepared a bath. She stripped herself of her dirty clothing and slumped down into the warm water. Closing her eyes, she repeated the words there’s no place like home, until she drifted away, praying she would wake in the Land of Oz.
Something sounded, jolting Dorothy out of her deep dreamless world she’d entered. She’d fallen asleep in the bath—the water was no longer warm but freezing, her skin covered in gooseflesh.
The sound came again, a light tinkling of metal against metal. Snatching up a towel from the sink, she wrapped it around her wet body and hurried into her room. She tossed on a sleeveless white button-up shirt with a collar, paired with a clean set of striped overalls and black flats.
Remaining as quiet as possible, Dorothy fished out her uncle’s rifle from beneath her bed. Numerous wolves had come on to the farm that she’d had to shoot so they wouldn’t harm the other animals or destroy the crops. But this disturbance sounded different. There was always the chance of an intruder, too. Everyone in town knew “Crazy Dorothy” lived by herself out on the farm with no nearby neighbors. It would be so easy for someone to break into her house and take what little she had. But she had her rifle prepared, and because of Uncle Henry, she knew how to use it well.
The noise came again, out the window, somewhere in the wheat field. She scrambled to light a lantern as she opened the front door while holding the rifle awkwardly in the other hand. A sharp thrash echoed directly in the middle of the wheat, the tall stalks swaying with the wind under the silvery glow of the moon. This time, the noise was accompanied by a trickle of emerald green light, illuminating the wheat stalks. Flashing once, twice, and continuing as though it were signaling her to draw closer. She inhaled sharply, setting down the lantern. That brilliant green was something she knew all too well, despite the ten years that had passed since she’d been eleven.