“I’m looking for my sister. Is Elaine Larkin there?”
“You must be Annabelle,” the lady said, then turned around. “Elaine, your sister made it in time for your party!”
Party? Oh good heavens, she’d forgotten her sister’s birthday!
A moment later Elaine herself was at the window. “Annabelle! Come upstairs for some cake. We’ve got plenty.”
The sense of relief was so strong, Annabelle plopped down on the curb to sit. It had been a long few days that careened from angst to joy to heartbreak, and throughout it all she’d been worried about Elaine, but it was all right now.
“Stay right there,” the other woman called to her. “We’ll send someone down to let you in.”
Two minutes later, she found herself welcomed into the third-floor apartment, where at least a dozen people had gathered for the party. There was nice furniture, fancy carpets, and a piano where a young man picked out some tunes. A feast had been set out on the dining table, but most impressive were the people. They welcomed Annabelle into their fold like a long-lost friend simply because she was Elaine’s sister. Annabelle recognized the elder Mr. Talbot from the one time she met him at the library. His silvery hair was neatly groomed, and he leaned against the far wall of the apartment, looking slim and elegant in a formal shirt and vest.
Someone thrust a plate of birthday cake into her hands and gestured for her to sit at the table. She was about to take her first bite of cake when a teenaged boy snatched it away. “Everyone here must sing for their supper. We even made Elaine sing, and she’s the birthday girl. Now it’s your turn.”
The request stunned her into silence, but Elaine rushed to her rescue. “Singing was never Annabelle’s strong suit.”
Howls of protest greeted Elaine’s comment, but these people couldn’t know what they were asking. Annabelle wasn’t even permitted to sing in church because the gales of children’s laughter distracted the congregation.
The young man at the piano twisted in his seat to face her. He wore shaded glasses, and Annabelle recognized Harry, the blind soldier Elaine had been working with.
“Only people who sing are allowed to have cake,” Harry said. “It’s the rules.”
The cake looked delicious, but these people truly didn’t understand. “I can make grown men faint at the sound of my singing. The glasses will crack; the cake will turn rancid.”
“Now wemusthear it,” Harry exclaimed, and everyone else in the apartment joined in an anticipatory drumbeat.
Even Elaine looked ready to concede. “We’re all friends here. Go ahead and sing.”
“A slice of gourmet birthday cake is on the line,” the elder Mr. Talbot coaxed.
Annabelle wanted that cake, and these people did seem friendly. If nothing else, she had learned to be brave over the past few years.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she cautioned, then launched into a rendition of “My Wild Irish Rose.” She tried to hold the tune, but within moments the melody got away from her as she warbled off key. She completely missed the high notes, and everything was going spectacularly, horribly wrong, but her audience appreciated the effort and began cheering her on. She raced toward the end of the song before completely losing her composure and collapsing into laughter.
She earned a standing ovation for her efforts, along with hollers of praise and requests for more. Annabelle laughed so hard her sides hurt, and Elaine wiped tears of laughter from her face.
“Well done,” Mr. Talbot said, presenting her with the slice of cake. She was so busy talking and laughing with the others that it was almost an hour before she finished it. Elaine formally introduced her to the blind soldier and his wife, Martha. Harry pecked out a few tunes on the piano, but Annabelle steadfastly refused to sing again.
“The paint will peel from the walls,” she said, and a couple of the others playfully agreed.
Mr. Talbot eventually pulled Annabelle aside. “Your sister has done a world of good for my son,” he said. “He still has a long way to go, but she pulled him out of the depths of despair, and for the first time, I am beginning to have hope for him.”
This had been a good evening. Even though Annabelle’s heart had been broken all over again and her sister would be blind forever, there was good in life everywhere.
God was sending her a message. The world was a good place.She needed to look for it, even when life was full of pain. Her spirit was bruised and sore, but only hours after the worst heartbreak of her life, she had found joy as a dozen complete strangers welcomed her with open arms. God had never promised them a life free of sorrow, only the tools to hold and keep them through stormy days.
“Thank you,” she whispered in a quiet prayer.
Thirty-One
It had been six weeks since Annabelle’s fateful trip toGood Housekeeping, and the issue with their exposé on counterfeit food was due to be released today. Annabelle knew this because Mrs. Sharpe had written her a delightful note of thanks for bringing the applesauce to her attention, and told her to be on the lookout for a “satisfying article” beginning on page nine of the September issue.
Annabelle eyed the clock over the laboratory door, biting her lip. There were still fifteen minutes until five o’clock, when she could dash to the nearest stationer’s shop to grab the new issue. Adulterated food was Gray’s cause, not hers, but she still cared. It mattered. She was proud that she had helped expose tainted and misbranded food.
She went back to focusing the microscope on the samples of durum wheat she was studying. This plant had been grown under drought conditions, and yet the size of the wheat kernels seemed to be as plump as those grown with normal rainfall. Would this strain of wheat finally prove to be the answer for her parents’ farm?
Guilt gnawed at her. Her parents lived a threadbare existence in Kansas, but her father had fought her penny-pinchingmother so that Annabelle could go to college. So far it hadn’t paid off, but if this batch of wheat looked promising, perhaps the government would let her parents serve as a test farm.
