Hannah's New Home Read online

  Hannah’s New Home

  A Hannah Goes West Book #1

  by Amelia C. Adams

  With thanks to my family and to Hannah’s special friends—Heidi, Keira, and Tynzleigh.

  Cover design by Ammon Pinkston. Map by Caryn Pinkston. Images courtesy of Deposit Photos.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Glossary

  Hannah’s History Lesson

  Blueberry Muffin Recipe

  Chapter One

  New York City, New York

  1875

  Hannah Stewart knelt down on the horsehair sofa in the parlor and stared out the window. It seemed like her father had been gone forever, but her mother said it had only been a week. Now it was time for him to come home, but he still wasn’t there.

  “Mama, what’s taking him so long? Was he kidnapped by pirates or something?”

  Clarissa Stewart, Hannah’s mother, looked up from her sewing. “He wasn’t on the ocean, dear—he was nowhere near pirates. Be patient, and please come out of the curtains and sit like a young lady.”

  Hannah turned around and sat down. Her brown curls bounced on her shoulders. Her skirt ballooned out on both sides, making her look like she was wearing a giant pink cloud, and she pushed it down with her hands. “I’m nine, Mama. I’m not a young lady yet.”

  “You certainly are—or at least, you will be very soon, so you must start acting like it. And part of being a young lady is patience.”

  “But aren’t you excited for him to come home? He’s been gone forever!”

  Mother smiled. “Of course I’m excited, dear. But jumping up and down on the furniture won’t bring him home any faster.”

  “What if it did? Would you do it then?” Hannah had never seen her mother jump up and down on the furniture, and she wanted to know.

  “I wouldn’t because I’m a lady. Now, what do you hear?”

  Hannah stood up again and looked out the window. A carriage was out front, shiny and black with two white horses. “It’s Father!” she cried. “He’s finally here!”

  “Yes, he is. Now sit down and wait for him to come inside.”

  Hannah sat down, making her dress poof out again, and folded her hands on her lap. She really could sit like a young lady when she wanted to, but the problem was, she didn’t want to very often. It wasn’t any fun at all. It was much more fun to pretend to be a cowboy or an explorer.

  As soon as the front door opened, Lucas Stewart called out, “Where are my girls?”

  “In the parlor, dear,” Mother called out, and he entered the room with a big smile on his face.

  Hannah couldn’t be ladylike any longer. She jumped off the couch and ran into her father’s arms. “We’ve been waiting forever! I thought you’d been stolen by pirates, but Mama said no. What took you so long?”

  Her father chuckled. “I’m sorry about that. I missed my train and had to wait for the next one.”

  “But why, Papa? Why did you miss your train? You knew we were waiting for you.”

  Father looked over his shoulder as the carriage driver set his bags in the entryway. “Thank you, Charlie,” he told the man, fishing in his pocket for a few coins to give him.

  “You’re welcome, sir.” Charlie took the money, touched the brim of his hat, and left, closing the door behind him.

  “Come sit down, Papa,” Hannah urged, tugging on his hand. “Come and tell us.”

  Father laughed as he followed his daughter into the parlor. He gave Hannah’s mother a kiss on the cheek, then sat in the chair next to hers. “I missed my train because I had a last-minute meeting. That’s the nice thing about big cities, though—there are lots of trains if you miss the one you planned on.”

  Hannah plopped back down on the sofa. “Is Phil . . . Um, the place where you went . . . Is it a big city, Father?”

  “It’s called Philadelphia, and yes, it’s a very big city.”

  “Is it as big as New York City?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s about half the size, but it’s still very large,” her father told her. “And so I was able to catch the next train, and here I am.”

  “It was very hard to wait for you,” Hannah said. “I’ve been staring out the window all day.”

  “All day?” He pretended to be surprised. “Do you mean that you didn’t do any of your lessons?”

  “No, I did my lessons,” Hannah said. “But they weren’t any fun!”

  Father smiled. “Oh, little Hannah, not everything in life can be fun. I do have a surprise for you, though.”

  “You do?” She’d hoped he would say that. She loved it when he brought home gifts from his travels.

  “Go look in the small pocket of my large bag.”

  She jumped up and ran into the hallway where Charlie had put the bags. As soon as she looked in the small pocket, she knew which gift was hers and which was for her mother.

  “Here you are, Mama,” she called out as she came into the parlor again. “Papa brought your favorite perfume.” She paused when she saw her parents talking quietly. They both looked worried, and that made Hannah’s stomach hurt a little bit. When her parents looked worried, that meant something bad was happening.

  “Here,” she said, tucking the bottle into her mother’s hand.

  “Thank you, dear,” Mother said. “And thank you for buying it,” she told her husband.

  “Did you find your gift, Hannah?” Father asked.

  “Is this it?” She held up a blue cloth-covered book she’d found next to the perfume.

  “Yes! Open it and see what’s inside.”

  Hannah opened it, but it was blank. None of the pages had anything written on them. “There’s nothing inside, Papa. They forgot to put a story in here.”

  He laughed again. “They didn’t forget, sweetheart. You get to write a story of your own on these pages.”

  “A story of my own?” She’d never thought of such a thing.

  “Of course. I’ve heard you talking about being a cowboy and having grand adventures—you should write all that down so you can remember it later.”

  “Lucas, she’s supposed to be learning how to become a young lady,” Mother told him, sounding a little bit like a schoolteacher. “She doesn’t have time to make up stories.”

  “Maybe not, but she needs something to look back on when she’s older,” Father said. “Now Hannah, run upstairs and start your first story. I need to talk to your mother for a few minutes.”

  “All right, Papa. And thank you for my book.” She kissed his cheek, then dashed up the stairs. First, she’d need to find a pencil. Ah—there was one on her small desk. She sat down and opened her book to the first page. What should her book be called? Something exciting, of course. Something adventurous. Hmm. After a moment, she picked up her pencil and wrote on the first page, “The Adventures of Captain Blacktooth and His Criminal Crew.” That had lots of nice, exciting words in it. Then she started to work on chapter one.

  Chapter Two

  Hannah worked on her story until her mother called her to come downstairs for dinner. It was much easier to use her imagination than it was to write down all the words, but she knew she’d get better at the writing part the more she practiced.

  When she came downstairs and took her place at the table, she noticed that both her mother and father looked very serious.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. She expected them to tell her not to worry. That’s what they said a lot when they had a grown-up problem. But this time, her mother sighed.

  “Hannah,
we have something to tell you,” she said.

  “It’s not a good something, is it?” Hannah asked. “I can tell by the way your forehead is all wrinkly.”

  Mother smiled a little sadly. “Yes, my forehead is wrinkly. Lucas, do you want to tell her?”

  Hannah’s father nodded. “Sweetheart, while I was gone on business, I found out that one of my partners did something dreadful.”

  “What kind of something dreadful?” Hannah asked. “Did he steal someone’s treasure and bury it?”

  “Actually, that’s almost exactly what happened,” her father replied. “He stole money from the company and then he disappeared. No one knows where he went. We just know that he took everything.”

  “Everything?” Hannah was confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that the company is ruined. We’ve lost all our money.”

  Hannah was surprised. Her father always had money. Any time they went on a walk and she saw an ice cream cart, he’d buy her some. “Does this mean no more ice cream?”

  “It’s a little bit different than that,” her mother said. “We can’t afford to live in our house anymore, so we’re going to sell it and move.”

  “What?” Hannah couldn’t believe it. She loved her house. She loved how tall and skinny it was, with houses stuck on either side of it so they looked like books on a bookshelf. She loved the staircase with its eighteen steps and her bedroom window that looked out over a park. “But where will we live?” Oh, maybe they could live in an igloo. She’d always wanted to try that—she had a book upstairs with pictures of Eskimos. They looked warm enough, even if their homes were made of ice.

  “Do you remember how I was late today?” her father asked.

  Hannah nodded.

  “I was talking to a man about Kansas. A great many people are moving there now, people who need new places to live. There’s a lot of land for them to build houses, and this man needs someone to go there and work for his lumber company. He asked me if I’d take the job.”

  “Kansas? Where’s Kansas?” Hannah asked.

  Even though people weren’t supposed to leave the table during dinner, Mother stood up, took a book from a shelf in the corner, and returned to the table. She opened it up—it was a book of maps, and it said “Atlas” on the front.

  “Here,” Mother said, pointing to a spot almost right in the middle of the country.

  “And we’re here?” Hannah pointed to New York.

  “That’s right.”

  “But that’s so far away.” Hannah felt her stomach start to get sick. “I have friends here, Mama. And what about school?”

  Her mother and father looked at each other with those worried faces again. “There will be school in Kansas, sweetheart,” her father said. “And you’ll make new friends.”

  Hannah looked down at her plate. She didn’t think she’d ever be hungry again. “Do we have to go?” she asked, her voice very small. She was trying not to cry, and that made her throat hurt.

  “Even if we don’t move to Kansas, we do need to sell the house. I owe the bank a lot of money for it, and I don’t have any to give them,” her father explained.

  “We could move to a littler house here in New York,” Hannah said. “Then we could keep our friends.”

  “We’ve been talking about that too, and we’ll see what we can find,” her father said. “This job offer in Kansas is a good one, though, and it will give us the chance to start over.”

  Mother looked at Father again. “I think we need to tell her the rest,” she said.

  “If you’re sure,” he replied.

  Mother turned to Hannah. “There’s another reason why we’d like to leave town, dear,” she said. “When his partner left and took all that money, some people started saying mean things about your father. It will be hard for him to get another job here.”

  “But everyone knows Papa! They know he wouldn’t steal. He’s not . . . he’s not like a bank robber!”

  Her mother looked sad. “Everyone does know him, and they should trust him, but when it comes to losing money, people get scared. They don’t know who to blame, and so they blame everyone.”

  Hannah thought about it for a minute. “So, if we stay here, Papa won’t be able to get a job?”

  “We don’t know that for sure, but yes, that’s probably going to happen,” her mother said.

  “And jobs are where Papa gets money. So . . . I guess this means you have to go where the job is.” Hannah sighed. It must be hard to be a grown-up and make choices like that.

  “So, are you all right with moving to Kansas?” her father asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know. But if you need to do it . . . I guess I can learn to be all right with it.” Hannah’s stomach still hurt, and now her head didn’t feel right. “May I be excused? I don’t feel good. It might be poo-monia.” She rubbed her stomach.

  Mother smiled. “Do you mean pneumonia, dear?”

  “I guess . . .”

  “Pneumonia doesn’t give you a stomachache.”

  “Well, whatever it is, may I please be excused?”

  “Of course. I’ll come up in a few minutes with some mint tea.”

  Hannah left the table and raced upstairs, then curled up in the middle of her bed. Her father almost always brought surprises when he came home from his trips, but she didn’t want this kind of surprise. What did Kansas look like? What kinds of people lived there? Did they have children? Would there be anyone to play with? And . . . did they have Christmas?

  When her mother came upstairs a few minutes later, she set a cup of tea on the table next to Hannah’s bed. Hannah asked, “Will our lives be very different, Mama?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid they will be.” Her mother’s eyes were red, and Hannah could tell she’d been crying. “We’ll have to say goodbye to Cook, and we won’t have a maid anymore. We’ll be learning to do a lot of things ourselves, and it won’t be easy. But there’s one thing you must know, sweetheart. Your father and I love you deeply, and that will never change, no matter what.”

  Hannah sat up and threw her arms around her mother’s neck. “I love you too.”

  “We’re a family,” her mother said as she gave her girl a squeeze. “And we’re going to make this work together. Now, drink your tea and try to rest. I’m sure that poor stomach of yours feels terrible.”

  “Well, maybe not as bad as it did a few minutes ago, but yes, it’s still sick.” She sipped her tea. Cook must have put some honey in it—it tasted delicious.

  “There now. Let’s take off your shoes and put on your nightgown. Sleep is the best thing for you.”

  Once she had changed her clothes and she was tucked in bed, Hannah stared up at the ceiling. Moving away was scary, but she knew her mother and father would never let anything bad happen to her. They were moving so they’d be able to take care of her even better. She sighed. This wouldn’t be easy, but as long as they were together, everything would be all right.

  Chapter Three

  When Hannah woke up the next morning, she still felt some heaviness in her heart. She didn’t want to leave her home, and she didn’t want to say goodbye to all her friends in New York. And Kansas sounded scary. Weren’t there Indians in Kansas? Would it be safe there? She liked to imagine stories about Indians, but meeting a real-life one would be too much adventure for her!

  She got dressed, then picked up the book her father had brought her. Maybe working on her story would help her feel better. When she opened the book, the words wouldn’t come. It was hard to write about pirates when her stomach didn’t feel good. Instead, she flipped several pages to a nice clean spot and wrote “My Diary” on top of the page. This book could be a storybook and a diary at the same time. Her friend Janie had a diary. Hannah had never asked for one because she didn’t have any secrets to write down, but now she did.

  Dear Diary,

  I don’t want to move to Kansas.

  Love, Hannah

  She stared at what she’d written. I
t felt good to tell the truth about what she was feeling, but she knew this wasn’t everything. She couldn’t be a good storyteller if she didn’t say more about it, so she picked up her pencil again.

  Dear Diary,

  It’s me again. I still don’t want to move to Kansas, but my mother and father think it’s the best thing for us. I should try to think good things about it. But it’s all right if I’m still sad.

  Love, Hannah

  When she went downstairs for breakfast, she felt a little bit better. Maybe writing down her feelings had been a good idea.

  She was surprised to see her father sitting at the table, reading the newspaper.

  “Papa!” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You’re home today.”

  “Yes, I am. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m all right. But why are you here?”

  “Because I don’t have a job anymore, remember?”

  “Oh.” That’s right. It was hard to remember everything at once. “So you’ll be here until you get a new job?”

  “I’ll be home more, yes, but we have a lot to do before we move. I’ll still be very busy.” He put down his newspaper. “I’m not too busy to spend time with you, though.”

  Cook put a plate of eggs and muffins in front of Hannah, then turned to go back into the kitchen.

  “Wait,” Hannah said.

  Cook turned back around. “Yes, Miss Hannah?”

  Hannah looked at the woman’s kind face. “My mother says we can’t take you with us.” She swallowed hard. “I’m going to miss you, Cook.”

  Cook’s eyes filled with tears. “Well, bless your heart. Thank you, Miss Hannah. I’ll miss you too.” She wiped her eyes with her apron and then hurried back into the kitchen.

  Hannah picked up her fork and took a bite of eggs. She was very hungry because she hadn’t eaten much dinner the night before. “Mama says we’ll have to learn how to do things for ourselves in Kansas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who will make our eggs?”

  Father smiled. “Your mother, probably, until you’re tall enough to reach the stove. I might even take a turn.”