Prologue

Penelope struggled to cram the last box into the back of her rusty, robin’s egg blue VW Bug that she named EllieBug. It was a snug fit, but she managed to juggle everything perfectly. As she slammed the passenger side door to her car, she heard her mother sniffling behind her. A groan escaped her lips.

 “Mom, come on,” Penelope said, rolling her hazel eyes.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Her mother said, stifling a sob, “I just can’t believe my little girl is-”

“I know, mom. I know,” Penelope cut her mom off before turning around and gazing into her mother’s eyes, the exact same color as her own. “You can’t believe I’m so grown up, that I’m finally on my way to college, and that I’m leaving the nest to be on my own. You’ve said it a thousand times.”

 “I’m know, but it still hasn’t sunk in yet,” Penelope’s mother said, pouting a little as she held open her arms, motioning for her daughter to give her a hug, “I won’t say it anymore, but I just want you to know how proud of you I am!”

Penelope walked into her mother's arms, holding onto her for a moment, lingering. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but she was really going to miss her mother and how close they were. Her father disappeared when she was twelve without a shred of evidence as to where he disappeared to. The police could never find anything conclusive on why he just vanished from the fields that late September afternoon, all they could conceivably argue was that he possibly ran away on foot.

Selma, Penelope's mother, argued that there were no troubles between her husband and herself and that the crops were thriving at the time. But without any tangible evidence of foul play or any other scenario, the police dismissed the case, leaving Penelope and Selma to fend for themselves. Superstitious rumors spread through the town, claiming that the farm was cursed by bad blood and a dirty deal with the devil.

That effectively ran off all the farmhands and prevented Selma from being able to hire any others for longer than a few months. In the years following Luther's disappearance, Penelope and Selma's bond grew stronger as they faced the harsh winters and droughts of the summer, pushing through each season clinging to one another for comfort.

This is why it was tearing Penelope apart to leave her mother, even though she always dreamed of being free from the farmlands that held such pain for her. To think of Selma struggling with the land all on her own broke Penelope's heart and almost made her forsake higher education all together. Her mother was her best friend, and the college was four hundred miles away from her small hometown. Too far for comfort. Standing there, holding onto Selma, Penelope considered unpacking the car and heading back into the large farm house for good.

"Alright, Nel," Selma said, rocking back and forth with her daughter in her arms, "You go do what you have to do. Get a degree and get as far from this damn farm as you can." Tears pooled at the corners of Selma's eyes and threatened to break loose.

“You got it,” Penelope said, giving her mother a quick squeeze before letting go and slowly backing away to her car, her resolve restored. She waved goodbye to her mother, turned and jogged towards the car.

Selma watched her daughter, nearly an exact copy of her husband, jostle herself into the Bug. She closed her eyes for a moment, picturing Luther's tall figure. The olive skin, the piercing blue eyes, the dark hair. She mumbled a small prayer before opening her eyes.

“I love you, Nel!”

"I love you too, ma." Penelope slammed the car door and started off down her long, unpaved, dirt driveway. Her farmhouse and the wheat fields that surrounded it flashed in her rearview mirror as she left home for her first semester at Morgan College that was clear on the other side of the state.