Free The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

he came up this way.”
    “I just know. There’s something about me that makes me understand Charlie. It’s like I know how he feels about things. Like sometimes I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll pass the jeweler’s and I’ll think that if Charlie were here he would want to stand right there and look at those watches all afternoon and I know right where he’d stand and how he’d put his hands up on the glass and how his face would look. And yesterday I knew he was going to love the swans so much that he wasn’t ever going to want to leave. I know how he feels.”
    “You just think you do.”
    “No, I know. I was thinking about the sky one night and I was looking up at the stars and I was thinking about how the sky goes on and on forever, and I couldn’t understand it no matter how long I thought, and finally I got kind of nauseated and right then I started thinking, Well, this is how Charlie feels about some things. You know how it makes him sick sometimes to try to print letters for a long time and—”
    “Look who’s coming,” Mary interrupted.
    “Where?”
    “In the trees, walking toward us. Joe Melby.”
    “You’re lying. You’re just trying to make me—”
    “It is him. Look.” She quickly began to tie her scarf over her rollers again. “And you talk about me needing eyeglasses.”
    “Cut across the field, quick!” Sara said. “No, wait, go under the fence. Move, will you, Mary, and leave that scarf alone. Get under the fence. I am not going to face him. I mean it.”
    “I am not going under any fence. Anyway, it would look worse for us to run away than to just walk by casually.”
    “I cannot walk by casually after what I said.”
    “Well, you’re going to have to face him sometime, and it might as well be now when everyone feels sorry for you about your brother.” She called out, “Hi, Joe, having any luck?”
    He came up to them and held out a brown felt slipper and looked at Sara. “Is this Charlie’s?”
    Sara looked at the familiar object and forgot the incident of the watch for a moment. “Where did you find it?”
    “Right up there by the fence. I had just picked it up when I saw you.”
    She took the slipper and, holding it against her, said, “Oh, I knew he came up this way, but it’s a relief to have some proof of it.”
    “I was just talking to Mr. Aker,” Joe continued, “and he said he heard his dogs barking up here last night. He had them tied out by the shack and he thought maybe someone was prowling around.”
    “Probably Charlie,” Mary said.
    “That’s what I figured. Somebody ought to go down to the gas station and tell the people. They’re organizing a big search now and half of the men are planning to go up to the mine.”
    There was a pause and Mary said, “Well, I guess I could go, only I don’t know whether I’ll have time to get back up here.” She looked at Joe. “I promised Bennie Hoffman I’d come to his party tonight. That’s why my hair’s in rollers.”
    “Tell them I found the slipper about a half mile up behind the Akers’ at the old fence,” Joe said.
    “Sure. Are you coming to Bennie’s tonight?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Come. It’s going to be fun.”
    Sara cleared her throat and said, “Well, I think I’ll get on with my search if you two will excuse me.” She turned and started walking up the hill again. There seemed to be a long silence in which even the sound of the cicadas in the grass was absent. She thrashed at the high weeds with her tennis shoes and hugged Charlie’s slipper to her.
    “Wait a minute, Sara, I’ll come with you,” Joe Melby said.
    He joined her and she nodded, still looking down at the slipper. There was a picture of an Indian chief stamped on the top of the shoe and there was a loneliness to the Indian’s profile, even stamped crudely on the felt, that she had never noticed before.
    She cleared her throat again. “There is just one thing I want to say.” Her voice did not even sound