Skylark Read Online Free PDF Page B

down, filling the rain gutters. It sent little rivers down the driveway. Everything smelled sweet. Caleb spread his arms and ran out into the rain in his clothes, racing around the yard. I laughed and ran after him. We jumped and ran, feeling the cool water run down our faces. We looked up, and Sarah stood on the porch. She smiled, and, very slowly, she walked down the steps and lifted her face to the rain. Then she ran down the lawn to take our hands and dance with us. The aunts came out on the porch to watch.
    “Rain!” Sarah called to them. “It’s been so long!”
    William came up from the water in his yellow slicker and hat to watch, too. Then, laughing, he took off his slicker to dance with us until the aunts made us come up and dry off with towels. We were sorry to see the sun come out.
    “I remember you when you were little,” William said to Sarah. “Running, climbing. You were always in the trees; out on the rocks. You never stayed still.”
    Suddenly Sarah looked at William.
    “Do you remember a song Papa used to sing about a skylark?” she asked.
    William smiled.
    “A poem. I only remember the first line: ‘Like a skylark Sarah sings!’ Papa said you’d never come to earth.”
    Sarah looked out over the sea, and I knew she was thinking of Maggie’s words to her on the dry prairie. Words I wasn’t supposed to hear. “You’re like the prairie lark, Sarah. You have not come to earth.”
    That night I wrote Papa a letter.
     
    Dear Papa,
    Caleb and I miss you. Sarah misses you, too. We are fine. We went fishing and rowing in William’s boat. Sometimes seals poke their heads out of the water to watch us. You would love the sea.
    Write soon,
    Love, Anna.
     
    P.S. I gave Sarah your kiss.
     
    I didn’t tell Papa about the rain.
     
    The aunts had tea in the moonlight. The light lay like a blanket over the water below.
    “Have you ever been married, Aunt Harriet?” asked Caleb.
    “Caleb! That’s private,” I said.
    But Aunt Harriet smiled. She took Caleb on her lap.
    “Private, maybe,” she said. “But like everything else, it’s history. No, I was never married. Almost, but not quite. I never met a dashing man like your father.”
    “What’s dashing?” asked Caleb.
    “That’s what I’m doing,” said Aunt Lou, coming down the path. She was dressed in
a bathrobe. “I’m dashing into the water. Do you want to come? I’m going skinny-dipping.”
    “Do you mean you’re going to swim all naked?!” asked Caleb.
    Caleb followed Aunt Lou down the path. And then his voice came up the hill.
    “Anna! Come here! In the moonlight she looks like a big fish!”
    Aunt Harriet and Aunt Mattie laughed, Aunt Mattie so hard she spilled her tea. And then it was quiet again.
    “Everyone goes skinny-dipping,” said Sarah. Her voice was soft with memory.
    I thought about the pond at home when the moon came up so big and close it seemed you could touch it. Far off a loon cried on the water. The bell buoy made a lonely, sad sound.
    That night, under the same moon that Papa saw, we could see fireworks from the faraway town. Splashes of color in the sky, red and silver and green.
    “They’re like the dandelions that bloom in the fields at home in summer,” I told Sarah.
    Sarah reached over and took my hand.
    “Do you think the drought’s over yet?” asked Caleb, leaning against Sarah.
    “No,” said Sarah. “It’s not over, Caleb. It may be a long time.”
    Her voice was low, her eyes dark and sad. She looked at me.
    A long time. I didn’t like those words, a long time .

13
    M ore letters came from Papa. The dogs missed us. Papa missed us. All our days were long days filled with green all around us, and the sea. The rain should have made us happy, but it didn’t. It made us think about Papa. Even Caleb looked sad now. One day Sarah showed him the woolly ragwort that grew in Maine, but it didn’t make Caleb laugh the way it used to.
    At night Caleb had bad dreams. I could hear him, and I could