Later, I joined them at breakfast. If Lily had seen her father sitting on my bed, she passed no remark. Instead, she prattled on excitedly about the things she would do when she got to Texas. Aidan and I said little, focusing our full attention on Lily. When we finished breakfast, we went back to the carriage, where I found a corner seat and took refuge in my book.

The journey became monotonous. I was tired and stiff from sitting, even though the seats were plush velvet, not wooden, as they would have been on the trains at home. I was excited when we stopped in Chicago to change trains and climbed down on to the platform along with crowds of people. I was anxious to see Chicago, but we had to board another train without ever going outside.

At last, the train crossed the Texas border. I sat up straight and peered out the window, anxious to see the place that was to be my new home. For a while we passed through thick stands of pine trees. I hadn’t expected to see them because all that I had read about Texas suggested it was flat and arid. I wanted to ask Aidan about it, but, although he was smiling as he looked out the window, an unexpected shyness had overcome me, and I thought better of it. In time the woods gave way to vast stretches of brown, parched acreage. Stunted trees grew at odd angles, and dried-up bushes rolled across the land, propelled by the wind. It was like nothing I had ever seen—more like the surface of the moon than anything on earth. In my astonishment, I looked over at Aidan and realized he had been watching me.

“What do you think, Delia?”

“It’s different from Ireland.”

He laughed. “That’s what Mary said when she first saw it.”

I turned back to the window. The flatness of the land was relieved now and then by small hills and crude, rustic cabins. Occasionally I saw men riding horses in the distance, kicking up clouds of dust behind them. My stomach sank. Texas looked lonely and desolate, and I suddenly wished I had never agreed to come. I looked over at Lily, who stood with her nose pressed to the window. She turned to me, smiling.

“You’ll like Texas, Miss Delia.”

I gave her a faint smile back and nodded.

If I’d been honest, I would have told her that as long as I was close to her and her father, I didn’t much care where I was.

* * *