jessica mcclintock dressed my mother bought me at the outlet store in san francisco. the brooch had belonged to her grandmother, anna. my mother once told me the oil company paperwork's on a pile of papers on my father's kitchen counter. i read over the lees trying to puzzle out how much money we might earn from royalties if the company ever exercised its option to drill for oil on land in a remote northwest corner of north dakota. it seemed such an improbable windfall. we didn't even own the land, just the oil deep beneath the earth. besides being born, what had we done to inherit mineral rights from a woman lost to the prairies and to history? until an oil company came calling? 100 years later and who was anna? really? i held the brooch in my hand, my fingers rubbing the pearls. anna had touched this object. she, too, had worn the brooch pin next to her heart. she, too, must have once believed her land would bring her wealth. a tiny whisper called to me at the kitchen table. it was a tendril of a story beckoning me to follow the same whisper my mother had heard all