First Came the Owl Read Free

she went down School Street. She didn’t feel like going home. It would be too quiet and scary.
    Water Street was nice, and she slowed down to enjoy it. The post office had evergreen wreaths and fake candles in the windows, and she knew she could go in and have a gumdrop. Even grownups ate them, so they could joke around with John the Postmaster. But Nita didn’t feel up to joking.
    The bookstore was bright with the shiny covers of new books, and the other store in the bookstore building had a golden sun right in its window. Nita looked at the real sky, with only a pale gray glare where the sun should be. The one in the store window was much better. Up close, Nita could see it was made of little bits of fabric, a quilted sun. She smiled back at the glowing window.
    Suddenly, Brenda came flying around the corner. “Race you to the bike path,” she shouted. Nita started running without thinking, and she almost caught her. “Last one there is a rotten egg!” shouted Brenda. Nita sped up and just managed to tag the back of Brenda’s jacket as she ran through the ferry parking lot gate and took off up the bike path. Not too rotten, Nita said to herself.
    Now she was farther toward home. She walked slowly under the railroad bridge, staying on the side that had no pigeons cooing in the beams.
    It will be fine, it will be okay, Dad will be home soon, but why is Mom so sad? Nita walked and worried up the shortcut, down the street and all the way down the beach, up the driveway, and into the white house by the lighthouse whose light was flashing out over the bay.
    Warning! Rocks and shoals! Warning! flashed the big light.

Three
    C RACK ! Nita cracked an egg on the side of the bowl. It looked fine. What was a rotten egg? she wondered. Her mind went back to the race with Brenda.
    â€œWhat’s a rotten egg like?” she asked her father.
    â€œSulfur.” He bent down and sniffed the bowl. “But those eggs aren’t rotten. They’d smell like sulfur. Like the fires of hell.”
    Nita laughed. Her father had fancy ways of saying things. Boy, sulfur must be awful. But she was tired of eggs—an egg for lunch, and now, eggs for dinner. No one was doing the shopping, that’s why.
    Dad smiled at Nita, and his blue eyes creased around the edges. It always surprised Nita that she could have such a blue-eyed dad. He had explained to her about genes and blue eyes, how if one parent had brown eyes and no gene for blue eyes that the children would always have brown eyes. But it wasn’t only that. Nita looked like her mother, dark eyes, black hair, brown skin. Her father was pale skinned and blue eyed and looked like what Nita thought of as American. She didn’t think she looked half American, though Dad said she had inherited his stubborn look and his love of potato chips.
    Now she beat the eggs with a fork. “I’m going to cook them. You could get Mom.”
    Nita heard him in the other room, coaxing Mom. She put some bean sprouts and green onions into the egg mixture and dropped little egg pancakes into the sizzling pan. The rice was done.
    When Mom came to the table she was quiet. She looks so mysterious, thought Nita. What is she thinking? Her smooth brown face didn’t give away her thoughts. Mom was sealed off like someone in a space capsule going to the moon. Earth to Mom, thought Nita. Talk to me. Why won’t she talk to me? Nita felt so lonely right there next to her mother with Silence sitting like a fourth person at the table.
    She put her mother’s plate down in front of her.
    Dad tried to keep the conversation going, but it was hard to talk to Silence. So he turned to Nita.
    â€œHow was school?”
    â€œIt was … school-like. Oh, and there’s going to be a play— Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. ”
    Mom didn’t pick up her fork. Dad cut a little bite and tried to put the fork in her hand. Nita knew he hated to feed Mom because