Some secrets won’t let you go. Elvira Witsil lives about as far away from civilization as you can get, in a remote corner of Wisconsin where nothing much ever happens. In a house crowded with her mother, her cantankerous grandmother, and her little sister, Jessie, Elvira feels forgotten and alone. Their house also contains numerous secrets, and Elvira’s family holds their secrets closely. Secrets about the father that Jessie never knew, and that Elvira can’t forget. Secrets about that day five years ago. And the one secret that Elvira can’t quite understand: that Jessie sees things no one else can see. These secrets will lead Elvira and her family on a journey far away from home―on a journey toward redemption and healing―if she can just bring herself to believe. Diana Greenwood grew up with the Bobbsey Twins, Laura Ingalls, Huck and Tom, the Hardy Boys, Jo, Francie Nolan, and Oliver Twist. She tried to duplicate the adventures of her favorite characters by writing poems, stories, and scripts for summer performances in her backyard. Today, she still has those childhood editions on her bookshelf and spends her days writing stories of young people embarking on life-changing journeys. Diana makes her home in the Napa Valley, where she watches college football, volunteers at her church, and continues to devour books. Insight By Diana Greenwood Zondervan Copyright © 2011 Diana Greenwood All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-310-72314-1 Chapter One It wasn't a scream, exactly, coming from behind the closed door of my mother's bedroom. It was more of a moan that started small and rose in pitch to a sharp yip as if a dog were dreaming and someone snuck up and gave it a swift kick. I would never kick a dog. But there were days I wished I could kick my mother, and with all that noise, today was one of them. Her next yell was loud, but everything is loud when you live way out in the middle of nowhere like we did. Even crows scared themselves, the air was so quiet. Just that morning Grandma said, "Only a fool would live five miles from town with no way to move around come winter. Even a town as puny as Portage is better than nothing if you live close in." I guess we were fools, then, or my mother was. She picked this place. "Far enough from town for privacy and far enough from the Wisconsin River and the canals to confuse the mosquitoes," she pointed out to back up her decision. But the real reason was my mother liked to keep an eye on my father. She figured living out here would keep him home. She was wrong. Now Grandma lived with us in our tiny house, and she took up more space than he ever did. Grandma still looked pretty young, no gray hair and hardly any wrinkles. Having had her only child at the ripe age of eighteen, she was done with that early. Unlike my mother, birthing her second right now at the age of thirty-eight, ten years after I was born. To prove we were all alone, Grandma'd haul me out back when the switchgrass was dry, stand overlooking the rocky dell, and scream "Fire!" as loud as she could. We'd hear "Fire, fire, fire," growing fainter and fainter. She'd wait a bit as if someone would rush right up to save us. Then she'd say, "See? Not a soul within earshot." Sometimes she'd shout my name to the sky, calling "Elvira!" at the top of her lungs, and she'd say it bounced off the clouds with nowhere else to go and came right back to stick in her throat. She'd clear her throat to get my name out and even that echoed. But Grandma's shouts were nothing compared to the noise of having a baby, and my mother's next yell was much louder than her last. While she suffered behind her door, my job was to keep the washtub filled so Grandma could keep everything clean. My mother was birthing that baby without the midwife, as she couldn't get here, and it was too late now to try to get to town with snow to the eaves and no man to shovel us out. I lugged the kettle from the sink to our old Wedgewood stove. The blue flame puffed and sputtered. Out of habit, I glanced at the stove's little round clock as I did every winter morning, usually while I ate alone, making mountains out of oatmeal with my spoon and squinting in the dim light of the kitchen to read our only cookbook. While I waited for the water to heat, my eyes traveled to where the book lay on the counter. It was a collection of recipes from the Lutheran Ladies' Guild, bound and hand typed, with a cover of red gingham pasted on and fraying at the corners. It was already well used when we picked it up for a dime at the annual St. John's rummage sale, and I'd added a few stains to the pages. When we paid, a white-haired church lady in a sky-blue sweater had grasped my mother's hand and said, "Peace be with you." My mother took a step back. We weren't used to people being nice to us. But the lady smiled and handed the cookbook to me, so I felt as if it were mine. The dessert section was my favorite. I'd imagine making all those