The Third Silence Read Free Page A

everybody acted like nothing had happened.”
    “Even Grandpa?”
    Dad stared at the table top. “He had to, to keep his job.”
    “Would you—if it happened—”
    “No. I wouldn’t. But thank God, it’s not like that anymore, son.”
    God, I sure hoped not. “What’s going to happen to her?”
    “Your friend? Nothing much. They’ll let her go in a couple of days. The magistrate will probably fine her for being a nuisance. That’s all.”
    “Her car?”
    “It’s impounded. She can get it back.”
    “Dad…” I stood up, because I was all nerves. Had to put the day to rest somehow. “Dad, can we go see the car?”
    “ Now? ”
    “Yes.”
    “What for?”
    “You’ll see. Dad? Please?” I stretched out my hand to him.
    He rolled his eyes and let out one of his hurricane sighs, but he stood up and took me to the impounding lot.
    * * *
    Inside the chain-link fence, under the sodium vapor lamps, the painted-up car seemed pitiful, like an old lady who’s piled on way too much makeup. Someone had put the lids on the margarine tubs and wrapped the wet brushes in newspaper and piled everything into the back seat. Dad stood reading the car while I found the blue paint and the paintbrush she had handed me.
    “Penguin dust,” Dad murmured with a chuckle, and then he glanced over, saw me painting on the trunk of the car, and yipped, “ What are you…” But he stopped himself. He just walked over to see what I was doing.
    Reading, he whispered, “These be/three silent things:”
    I’d remembered, finally, where I’d seen it: in my handbook of poetic forms. It was a poem called “Triad,” in the cinquain form, by the woman who’d created that form, who had the most unpoetic name I’d ever heard of: Adelaide Crapsey. I felt pretty sure Gray Braid’s name was not Adelaide. As I finished the poem, I tried at first to imitate her precise, quirky printing, but gave it up. I just let her writing be hers and mine be mine, and when I finished, the poem was still a poem:
    These be
    Three silent things:
    The falling snow…the hour
    Before the dawn…the mouth of one
    Just dead.
    I stood back, and we both read it over and over. Dad said nothing at all, just laid his hand warm and heavy on my shoulder.

Acknowledgments
    “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” Wallace Stevens
    “Who Goes With Fergus?” William Butler Yeats
    “Western Wind,” anonymous early English lyric
    “First star to the right” from PETER PAN, James M. Barrie
    “The rain never gets wet,” and “Thank you for reading my car,” Mickie Singer
    “Fern Hill,” Dylan Thomas
    “Under Ben Bulben,” William Butler Yeats
    “Red Sky at Night,” anonymous verse
    “Dream of pear empanadas” and “Don’t cry over chihuahua pee,” Nancy Springer
    “Penguin dust” from “Marriage,” Gregory Corso
    “serpent-haunted sea” from GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND, James Elroy Flecker
    “Tom O’Bedlam’s Song,” anonymous 17th century ballad
    “Triad,” Adelaide Crapsey

Edgar Award-winning author Nancy Springer,
    well known for her science fiction, fantasy, and young adult novels,
    has written a gripping psychological thriller—smart, chilling, and unrelenting...
DARK LIE
    available in paperback and e-book in November 2012
    from New American Library
    Dorrie and Sam White are not the ordinary Midwestern couple they seem. For plain, hard-working Sam hides a deep passion for his wife. And Dorrie is secretly following the sixteen-year-old daughter, Juliet, she gave up for adoption long ago. Then one day at the mall, Dorrie watches horror-stricken as Juliet is forced into a van that drives away. Instinctively, Dorrie sends her own car speeding after it—an act of reckless courage that puts her on a collision course with a depraved killer...and draws Sam into a desperate search to save his wife. And as mother and daughter unite in a terrifying struggle to survive, Dorrie must confront her own dark, tormented past.
    “A darkly riveting