The days in between Daniel's letters seemed to crawl along. In between, Dad would harass me about Daniel, trying to enumerate all the reasons why he wasn't good enough. I only had to picture his face to draw enough strength from the memory to defend myself, the future I hoped for. I had never felt so secure, so certain that at last, things were going to work out. I planted apple seeds to grow trees, trees that we hoped our grandchildren would climb, spun and dyed wool and crocheted and knitted small baby garments, saved any money my family sent me, and invested it in oil lamps and other things we might need; my hope chest. Whenever Dad heard the words "hope chest", he would leer and clutch at an imaginary bosom on his own chest. I just ignored it.

Huge changes were in the works. We were going to move. Dad and Mom had found 72 acres of land with a house only three miles from Priest River. We were going to leave Coolin and its rotten people behind. Everyone else was delighted to be moving from the humble little cabin. Always somewhat averse to change, I looked forward to the new place, but the thought of abandoning the cozy log cabin saddened me. I talked to Daniel about the possibility of our buying the place; it was for sale for $10,000 for the ten acres and house. He already had a place though, and his little farm had a well and was already established.

Apparently my family was going to pay for the new spread by logging it and using the proceeds to pay for the land. There was a lot of talk about "selective logging". And of course, they would need a down payment. Coincidentally, this happened just as Sarah and I received our life's savings from our dad. I had thought of putting my portion towards buying the log cabin, but Dad wanted us to give our money up to buy the new place in exchange for receiving a portion of the land at some future time.

The moving process began. I stood at the thawing, muddy remains of my garden sadly, thinking of the Jerusalem artichoke roots still in the ground that would be left behind. We packed up what we owned, hauled the trailers out of there, the lumber, the junk Dad insisted of hauling from place to place. And the animals. When the time came to go back and get the animals, they left Andrea, my kitten, behind. They remembered Laddie, but said that there were too many cats to bring with, and so of course mine was the one that didn't get to move with us. I went back later, after we'd moved out but had returned for some small item, and I called and called to her, but never saw her again.