“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 to Good 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-pinching mother 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.

She glanced at the clock again. Twelve more minutes.