Free The Trespassers by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

young—but it had been a long time ago and the memory was blurry.
    The more she thought about it the less sure she became just how much she’d really overheard. She wasn’t sure, for instance, how much of what she’d told Grub, there on the bench in the rose garden, had been what Greta actually said, and how much had just been one of the “new parts” that Grub liked to have added to stories.
    But Grub seemed to believe it was true. At least he seemed to be quite certain that something very strange and mysterious had happened to the little girl who died at Halcyon. And that explained why he thought there was some weird reason that those particular toys were locked away in the dome-topped trunk.
    Neely wished she knew exactly what Grub believed, but of course she wouldn’t ask him. To ask Grub if he really believed something would be to break the rule . The rule that, in the past for instance, had kept Grub from asking her if she’d really seen a unicorn in Halcyon Grove, and had kept her from asking him if he’d really seen a pirate ship anchored off Point Lobos. To start asking that kind of question would be to ruin everything.

Chapter 19
    O F COURSE, THERE WAS ONE WAY NEELY COULD FIND OUT some of what she needed to know. She could ask Greta Peale herself. However, that wouldn’t be particularly easy. For one thing, it couldn’t be done on the telephone because Greta was too deaf. That left going to see her, which presented a different problem: Neely needed to talk to Greta without Grub being there, and Grub loved visiting old Miss Peale. But then Mom mentioned that Grub had a dentist appointment on Wednesday afternoon and Neely’s plan began to take shape.
    As soon as Mom and Grub left for the dentist’s, Neely started in on Dad about how Miss Peale was overdue for a Bradford family visit and some vegetables from Mom’s garden. The Peales, like the Bradfords, had been old pioneer families, and the Peale property was only about two miles down the coast. Miss Peale, who was almost ninety years old, had lived there all her life and had known Dad since he was born. According to Dad Greta Peale had once been one of the pioneer women of the Big Sur coast—one of the wild, strong, beautiful women that the poets and storytellers had written about. But now she was old and frail and walked with a cane. When Dad said he was too busy with the motel’s payroll book to go visiting, Neely reminded him of something he’d told her himself.
    “Remember how Greta used to bring you and Mom vegetables and fruit when you first moved back here from Berkeley and you had Aaron and Julie and Lucie and not much money and Mom was pregnant with me?”
    Dad smiled. “I certainly do,” he said, “but I doubt if you do.”
    “Of course I don’t actually remember it,” Neely said. “But I’ve heard about it lots of times. And now she’s old and lonely and too crippled to grow her own garden anymore.”
    “I give up,” Dad said. “Go pick some tomatoes and lots of zucchinis. Greta loves zucchinis.”
    When Dad and Neely drove up in front of the old Peale farmhouse in Dad’s pickup truck Greta was sitting on her front porch. She was wearing a bright colored shawl over a flowing black dress and her heavy white hair was wrapped around her head in a thick braid. Her weathered face was wrinkled into deep cracks and crevices and burned by the sun to almost the same color as the craggy cliffs of her beloved coast, but her eyes were still as wild and blue as the Pacific Ocean.
    “Beautiful zucchinis,” she said as she led the way into the house. “Picked at just the right time. Most people let them grow too big.”
    “I picked them,” Neely said. “I remembered you like little ones.”
    “Did you?” Greta stopped, and putting one hand under Neely’s chin, she turned her toward the light. She studied Neely’s face for a long time before she said, “Strength. A good strong face. Not a Bradford face”—she looked at Dad and