What Joanna didn’t know was that I had already begun searching for somewhere else to live. I needed to leave the farmhouse by December because the owners’ son was returning to take over the property. My late husband, Dale, had worked there for thirty-four years, and although the family had allowed me to stay after his death, the arrangement could not continue forever. We had once dreamed of owning a little house with two rooms and a porch swing, but the years passed, and that dream never happened.
One afternoon, I stopped at the feed store and finally asked Mr. Ostrow about a rental advertisement I had noticed. He showed me a small white house behind the grain elevator. It had a front room, a narrow kitchen, one bedroom, a bathroom, and a porch swing. The rent was $560. I wrote the check immediately. Mr. Ostrow handed me two keys, and I stood outside holding them, realizing something extraordinary: for the first time in my life, I had keys to a home I had chosen myself.
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