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“That clearly I’m considering whether or not I can save Oz, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought it up on my own.”

He says nothing.

“I can’t save it.”

“Okay.”

“Can I?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

I grumble to myself. “Never mind.”

“Yes,” he says.

When I look across the table at him, he’s serious, the ale forgotten. He doesn’t even appear to be drunk despite the large amount he drank. “If you want to save Oz, you can.”

“Why did you never come for me?”

It’s a question that’s been swirling in my head. An answer I desperately want, but am afraid to have. And yet I need it.

The chair drops back to the floor with a loud thunk. “Dorothy, you were exactly where you were supposed to be.”

“I wanted a mother and father.”

“And you had them.”

I suck in a slow breath, pushing down the tide of tears. “They were good to me.”

He nods. “I know.”

“And I always kept them far away. Because I was hoping for you.”

“I know.”

Years of built-up walls come crashing down. I shove my chair back. Blue watches me.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Where?”

“I have to go home.”

I go up to my room. Toto lifts his head, his eyes heavy.

“I have something I have to do,” I tell him. “Do you want to come or stay here?”

He blinks and curls back up, his decision made.

I don’t know if this will work. I don’t know what happens if it doesn’t. But I have to try.

I click my heels together and my room at the Red Wander disappears.

This time, whatever magic I use to pull me from one place to the next is easy and quick and within a single breath, I’m standing on the Kansas farm on a freshly built porch peering into a window glowing with candlelight.

The farmhouse has been replaced, but the interior is just bones with a makeshift kitchen in the back and two cots in the far corner.

Henry and Em and the neighbors nearby are hard, fast workers, but what they’ve created in such a short time makes me wonder if, here in Kansas, more time has passed.