Free Birds of Summer by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page A

Boswell, and then he’d had everyone write a paragraph in the style of one of the diarists. He read some of those paragraphs, and everyone had guessed which famous journal-keeper the writer had been trying to imitate. The extra credit assignment was to keep a journal about the events of the following week. Since she didn’t need the grade, Summer hadn’t intended to do it—until the week turned out to be one of the most important of her entire life. It had all begun at noon on Saturday.
    She had sensed a difference as soon as she walked into the Ranch kitchen. Nan was at the table and, as usual, she insisted that Summer join her, but she seemed quieter than usual as if something was on her mind. It wasn’t until lunchtime that it all came out. They were eating their chicken salad and bran muffins at the wrought iron table in the patio when Nan suddenly said, “Well, we’ve had an exciting time around here since last weekend. Richard came home last Tuesday with some incredible news and by Thursday we’d made the decision. We’re going back to Connecticut.”
    “Going back to Connecticut?” Summer said. “But what about …” What she was really thinking was, “What about my bank account?” but what she said was, “What about the horses?”
    “If we can find a place with a stable, I’ll probably take Scimitar and Greybird with me, but I’m afraid we’ll have to sell the others. You see, there’s been a decision to enlarge the New York plant, and Richard will have to be there full time for at least a year. Now that I’ve made the decision, I feel very good about it. California has been good for us but our roots are back East—family and many old friends. But we’ll miss this place tremendously—and the horses and all our special California friends.” She reached out and put her big smooth hand with its heavy rings over Summer’s. “We’re going to miss you, my dear. As a matter of fact, Richard and I were discussing the possibility of taking you with us.”
    “With you?” This time there was absolutely no pretense in Summer’s reaction—her astonishment was real and complete. “But …but …” she stammered and then, stupidly, “Clear to Connecticut? But where would I live?”
    “Why, with us, of course. Summer, dear …” Nan leaned forward, and her smile said she was going to talk about something personal.
    Summer felt herself tensing. She knew that kind of smile—smugly sympathetic. People had smiled at her like that before, and it usually meant they were getting ready to say something about Oriole. Not kids so much. Some kids thought there would be advantages to living with a mother like Oriole. But adults usually mentioned Oriole in the same tone of voice they used when there’d been a death in the family or someone had come down with an incurable disease.
    “We’ve made some discreet inquiries, dear,” Nan said. “Of course we’d heard rumors before, but we wanted to know a bit more about your background.”
    Summer managed to control her face, but as usual her body betrayed her—stiffening and pulling away. Nan smiled understandingly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It doesn’t change our opinion of you in the slightest. In fact, quite the contrary. We think you deserve even more credit than we’d realized. Richard kept saying that it reminded him of his Grandfather Mahoney’s story—a case of God-given gumption against all odds. What we’ve been thinking is that we’d just continue as we have here, except that you’d be living in, which would mean that you could spread the work out and do a bit every day after school instead of just on Saturdays.” Nan’s smile was wide-screen benevolent. “I know,” she said. “You must be feeling quite overwhelmed. You don’t need to decide right away. We won’t even be putting the house on the market for several weeks, so in the meantime we’ll go on just as before. But you think about it, won’t you?”
    Summer said she