Birds of Summer Read online

  “In a way, it’s like it was meant to be,” she said. “I guess Sparrow is really a lot like their little girl who died, and they’re both crazy about her. It was only Nan at first, but I think Richard is just as batty about her now. Or maybe even more so. Nan says he’s that way. All or nothing at all; and once he makes up his mind about something, you’d better not get in his way.”

  Pardell was rubbing the bald spot on top of his head the way he always did when he was thinking hard. “And Oriole?” he asked. “Has she agreed to all this?”

  “Not yet. But she will. On Monday, Richard and Nan are going to drive me to Ukiah to see her. I’ll talk to her first, and then they’ll come in. I’ll tell her we’ll just be going for a visit—nothing permanent or legal or anything—just a visit until she’s out of jail and all. And then, if she gets out before the school year is up, we’ll just write and say we want to stay until we’ve finished school. Then we’ll come back for a while next summer. The Olivers promised me that we could. But when we tell her we want to go back to Connecticut in the fall, she’ll let us go, I know. Oriole hasn’t said no to me since I was about five years old. Besides, she’ll be used to it by then. She’ll see that it’s the best for everyone. And eventually she’ll probably let them adopt Sparrow. That’s what they want to do.”

  “Is that what they said?”

  “Sure. They’d do it in a minute if they could. Richard even wanted to offer to pay all of Oriole’s lawyer’s fees and a lot of other stuff, if she’d agree to an adoption right away. But I talked him out of that.”

  “Yeah,” Pardell said. “That sounds like old Richard B., doesn’t it.”

  Summer was puzzled. “Do you know him? Richard Oliver?”

  “No. Not personally. But—” He paused. “—having read so much about him by a very acute and gifted journalist, I almost feel that I do.”

  “What do you mean?” Summer asked, but she really knew. She’d wondered, the night before when she discovered that she’d left the letter box on his desk, not only unlocked, but wide open. She couldn’t imagine how she’d done such a thing. She’d never before, in all those years, left it unlocked even for a minute. But after the initial shock, she’d decided that he wouldn’t have read the letters. He probably wouldn’t even have wanted to. But she’d been wrong. Apparently he had.

  “You did intend for me to read the letters, didn’t you?” He looked concerned—worried.

  “Oh, yes,” she said quickly, and while she was saying it, she suddenly realized that it was true—one of those mistakes that at some deeper level wasn’t a mistake at all.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about them,” he said, “but I was waiting for you to bring it up. I thought maybe you needed a little more time to think about it.”

  She nodded. It would take some time. The fact that someone—that Pardell—had read all the letters to Grant was going to take a lot of thinking about. But at the moment her mind shied away, skittering fearfully around the edges of full realization. With everything else that was going on at the moment, it was just too much to deal with.

  Pardell finally broke the silence. “So you don’t think it would be a good idea for the Olivers to offer Oriole money?”

  Almost with relief she brought her mind back to the immediate crisis. “No,” she said firmly. “It would be the worst thing he could do. Oriole would freak out if she thought it was anything like—like selling us.”

  “But she could certainly use the money?”

  “Well, yes. I guess so. But I don’t think that would occur to her. Oriole is really strange about money. She never seems to worry about it.” She smiled ruefully. “Hers, or anybody else’s. It’s something she just can’t seem to keep her mind on.”

  “Hmm.” Pardell was rubbing his head again. “As foibles go, I must say, that’s a rather refreshing one.”

  “I suppose so.” She’d never thought of it that way before.

  “So you think she’ll let you go if she’s convinced it will be best for you. But don’t you think it will be very hard for her later, when she comes back here—alone?”

  Summer forced herself to continue to meet Pardell’s eyes. “For a while, maybe. But Oriole never stays alone for very long. And she’s never depressed for very long either.” She smiled mockingly. “You know—bummed out? Oriole gets bummed out a lot, but she never stays that way. Even when things are really terrible, she’s suddenly tripping out over some dumb little thing, like an animal or a nice day. I really don’t think she’ll miss us for very long. And besides—” Summer was talking fast, urgently, sounding, she knew, as if she were trying to convince herself as well as Pardell. “Besides, it will probably be easier for her to find some guy who will really stick around if she doesn’t have two kids hanging around her neck.” She stopped to stare at Pardell angrily. “What are you laughing about?”

  “At the idea of you hanging around anybody’s neck. Let me assure you, little friend, that I cannot imagine you as an albatross—as a weight around anyone’s neck, that is. And I mean that as a compliment. As a superlative compliment, in fact.”

  Her eyes wavered, then, and fell. She’d always found it easier to face up to criticism and disapproval than to a compliment.

  “However,” Pardell went on, “it seems to me that, as usual, your assessment of the situation is fairly accurate, at least as far as Oriole is concerned. But how about Sparrow? Do you really think that life as a substitute Debbie would be the best thing for Sparrow?”

  “I know. I’ve thought about it a lot. Particularly lately. When we were out there, I almost decided it wouldn’t. It’s just that staying here with Oriole is going to be about the worst possible thing for her. I’m sure of that. I’m going to go away to college soon, and she’ll be here alone with Oriole and—the thing is, they’re so much alike. For people like Sparrow and Oriole, it’s so much a matter of chance. You know. It’s fate, or the times, or the people they meet. They’re just like mirrors, reflecting back whatever they see.”

  “And you think Sparrow will be happy reflecting back the Olivers.”

  She shrugged. “Pretty much. The thing is, there’s a lot that she just won’t see.”

  “Like?”

  “Like?” She grinned. “Like smug—and stuffed shirt—and the way they’re so sure they’re right about everything.”

  “I see. And that brings us to another question. How about Summer—who does see? How about a sixteen-year-old who sees with remarkable clarity? Where is she going to fit into this arrangement?”

  Her smile admitted that he’d hit on a tender spot. “Who knows?” she said.

  “What I gathered from the letters is that their interest in you is a bit different.”

  “I know. With me it’s more like, ‘the best little parlor maid they’ve ever been able to lay their hands on.’”

  “Knock it off, kid,” Pardell said. “You know it’s more than that. I gather that they are very impressed and admire you very much. It’s just that you didn’t happen to be a seven-year-old who resembled their lost daughter. But I agree that it looks like your situation at the Olivers’ is going to be rather ambiguous. Particularly if Sparrow is going to be family, and perhaps you aren’t.”

  She shrugged again, grinning. “So what? Life is hard. And besides, I’ll get the same fringe benefits. Like no more food stamps, for instance.”

  But Pardell didn’t smile back. “Okay,” he said, making it sound like “okay, if you want to be that way.” “But there’s another consideration. What about you—and Oriole. What about needing to know about Oriole, when she’s three thousand miles away. You can’t run three thousand miles.”

  Anger flared immediately. He had no right. No right to read her letters and then talk about something so private. So private that ever since it had begun when she first started school, she’d never mentioned it to anyone—except Grant, of course. Clenching her teeth she turned her head away.

  He waited, and it wasn’t until she brea
thed deeply and started to turn back, that he said, “I’m sorry, Summer. But it’s something you should think about.”

  “I have. And it’s all right. It’s all over. Ever since the night of the raid. I knew it the next day. It’s like, well, it started when I first had to be away from her. I was always afraid she’d be dead or gone when I came back, and back then that was like the end of the world. And even after I knew it wouldn’t be, I couldn’t stop feeling, not in my mind but somewhere else, that it would. But when I woke up after that night, I knew that, in a way, it had happened, and it hadn’t been the end of the world. And I wasn’t ever going to have to run home again.”

  “Okay. Good. I believe you. But in a way running is what you’re planning to do. A different kind of running. A hard-headed, well-thought-out kind, this time. But it is running. And the thing is—you don’t need to. You don’t need Connecticut. Sparrow—maybe. I’m inclined to agree with you about that. But not you, Summer. Oh, it won’t be fatal if you go. Unpleasant at times and probably fairly infuriating, but you’ll come out all right. But the thing is, you would anyway. I’m as convinced of that as I am that the sun’s going to be coming up”—he glanced toward the window—“before very long. You’ll be a great success in Connecticut, just as you would be right here in Alvarro Bay, in spite of all the people who’ve enjoyed being sure that you wouldn’t, all these years. And in spite of Oriole, too.”

  She was angry again. He was just trying to confuse her. It was none of his business, and she resented it. She couldn’t say so with words, but there was a better way. She stood up and started to leave.

  “Come back here,” he said, and to her surprise, she did. When she was staring at him, frowning and clenching her jaw, he said. “And one more thing. If you run off to Connecticut to live by scheming and conniving, which, by the way, you’re very good at, you’ll be throwing away one of your greatest assets. Did you realize that? Granted you’ve got assets to spare—I mean, smart, capable, self-disciplined, but the one that’s really unique is the way you feel about Sparrow—and Oriole. Yes, and Oriole—underneath all the disillusionment and frustration. It looks to me as if you’re planning to trade in a really unique talent for love and loyalty on a bowl of security pottage, and a not very—”

  She didn’t hear the rest because she left the room and shut the door firmly behind her. She’d have slammed it if it hadn’t been for Sparrow.

  It was beginning to get light when she got up and turned on the gooseneck lamp over Pardell’s desk. Tearing a page off one of his long yellow tablets she began to write.

  Dear Grant,

  I’ve been thinking—most of the night, actually. And I’ve finally decided that I don’t really want to go to Connecticut after all. So I’ll just tell Oriole that it’s too hard for me to take care of Sparrow all by myself, and the Olivers have made this offer to take care of her for a while. I know Oriole will agree to that, and then there’ll be lots of time to deal with what happens next. Sparrow won’t want to go without me, but I can talk her into it. She won’t miss me for long and it will be easier for her to be an Oliver without me there to complicate things.

  But that’s not the reason I’m not going. The real reason is that I don’t want to. I never did, really. I’ll go away soon enough, but not now and not to Connecticut. And when I do go, it will be to someplace I choose for myself, and where I can go on making my own choices.

  That’s all for now because I’m finally getting sleepy.

  Love,

  Summer

  She put the letter on top of all the others, and then closed and locked the box and climbed into the hide-a-bed, shoving Sparrow over to her own side. A minute later she got up again, unlocked the box and took the letter out. Clearing off a spot amid the Pardellian shambles, she spread out the yellow sheet, right in front of his chair, where he’d have to see it. Halfway back in bed, she stopped again. Back at the desk she grabbed a pen and drew a line through the word “Grant.” Then she drew several more lines until it was entirely crossed out. She thought for a moment, and then, in place of the crossed-out name, she wrote—“Alan.”

  A Biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Zilpha Keatley Snyder (b. 1927) is the three-time Newbery Honor–winning author of classic children’s novels such as The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm. Her adventure and fantasy stories are beloved by many generations.

  Snyder was born in Lemoore, California, in 1927. Her father, William Keatley, worked for Shell Oil, but as a would-be rancher he and his family always lived on a small farm. Snyder’s parents were both storytellers, and their tales often kept their children entertained during quiet evenings at home.

  Snyder began reading and telling stories of her own at an early age. By the time she was four years old she was able to read novels and newspapers intended for adults. When she wasn’t reading, she was making up and embellishing stories. When she was eight, Snyder decided that she would be a writer—a profession in which embellishment and imagination were accepted and rewarded.

  Snyder’s adolescent years were made more difficult by her studious country upbringing and by the fact that she had been advanced a grade when she started school. As other girls were going to dances and discovering boys, Snyder retreated into books. The stories transported her from her small room to a larger, remarkable universe.

  At Whittier College, Zilpha Keatley Snyder met her future husband, Larry Snyder. After graduation, she began teaching upper-level elementary classes. Snyder taught for nine years, including three years as a master teacher for the University of California, Berkeley. The classroom experience gave Snyder a fresh appreciation of the interests and capabilities of preteens.

  As she continued her teaching career, Snyder gained more free time. She began writing at night, after teaching during the day; her husband helped by typing out her manuscripts. After finishing her first novel, she sent it to a publisher. It was accepted on her first try. That book, Season of Ponies, was published in 1964.

  In 1967, her fourth novel, The Egypt Game, won the Newbery Honor for excellence in children’s literature. Snyder went on to win that honor two more times, for her novels The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm. The Headless Cupid introduced the Stanley family, a clan she revisited three more times over her career.

  Snyder’s The Changeling (1970), in which two young girls invent a fantasy world dominated by trees, became the inspiration for her 1974 fantasy series, the Green Sky Trilogy. Snyder completed that series by writing a computer game sequel called Below the Root. The game went on to earn cult classic status.

  Over the almost fifty years of her career, Snyder has written about topics as diverse as time-traveling ghosts, serenading gargoyles, and adoption at the turn of the twentieth century. Today, she lives with her husband in Mill Valley, California. When not writing, Snyder enjoys reading and traveling.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1983 by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Cover design by Barbara Brown

  978-1-4804-7153-5

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

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  EBOOKS BY ZILPHA KEATLEY SNYDER

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