Read Online Willow Run by Patricia Reilly Giff - Free Book Online Page A

with a ripped shade leaned against the wall.
    In the dim light I could see Mom lying under the patchwork quilt, her arm hanging off the side, the crumpled handkerchiefin her hand. I backed away, thinking she had gone to sleep, but she turned and sat up. She wasn't crying anymore, but her eyes were swollen, and a strand of hair was stuck to her cheek. “Oh, baby, where have you been?” Her voice was breathless. “We didn't know where you were.”
    I started to say I wasn't the baby anymore, but that would have made it worse. “I'm sorry.”
    “Dad is out looking for you. How could you do that?”
    I couldn't say I had gone to the movies. How would that have sounded?
    “Go outside, look for Dad. He's frantic trying to find you.”
    I didn't move.
    “I thought…,” she began, and stopped. “Two gone in a day.” She sank back on the bed again, her eyes closed, and tears seeped out from under her lashes. “Go find Dad,” she whispered.
    I went through the kitchen then, turning the teacup upright before I went outside.
    I heard Dad's whistle when I opened the door, a shrill sound that he used to call me home for dinner when I was at the beach.
    “I'm here,” I called, going down the cement walk. Kennis was sitting there trying to stick two pieces of wood together with a couple of rubber bands.
    Dad stood in the middle of the street, his back to me,whistling again. I kept calling and waving as I went toward him until he turned and saw me.
    “Meggie?”
    “I'm sorry,” I said again, but he pulled me to him, hugging me so hard I had trouble taking a breath. I knew he'd ask where I had been, so I rushed on. “Listen, I could make more tea. Some for you and some for Mom. Lots of sugar.”
    His eyes were red.
    My father crying. “What happened to you?” he asked.
    I stared down at the cracked cement under my feet. “I was with Harlan and Patches,” I said slowly. “The kids on the other side of the walls.”
    Dad nodded. “It's all right. We were just worried….” He swallowed hard. He was having trouble with his mouth, too.
    “Let's go home,” I said. “Let's just go home to Rockaway. Eddie won't even know how to picture us here. He won't know what it's like.”
    Dad closed his eyes for a moment; then we walked along the street together. “I want to show you something,” he said.
    He took long steps, so I had to hurry to keep up with him. We passed a row of ugly apartment houses, then a bunch of trailers with wash strung on lines from one to the other. People were coming and going from the factory, swinging their lunch pails.
    And then the houses were gone, and the people, and wewalked along a dirt road toward open fields. “It's just a little farther,” Dad said.
    As the road curved, I saw what he wanted me to see: a row of trees that hadn't been sawed away, and after that a field of grass so high we could just about see over it.
    I stood there breathing in that dusty air; then I reached out with my fingers to touch the feathery top of a yellow plant. The sound of insects buzzing was everywhere, a sleepy sound like the one I always heard when I went around the back of Grandpa's house into his garden.
    One day Eddie hammered thin stakes into the ground and twirled the tiny bean vines around them. “What would I do without you, Edvard?” Grandpa said.
    Above, the sun was a glowing ball lighting a path through the field so the green stalks in the center were blurred. It was almost as if I could walk across the top of them and keep on walking straight up into the sky. And at the far end of the field was a small house, unpainted, with a tiny porch in front, and a stone chimney that leaned a little. It looked as if it had been there forever.
    “Willow Run. It was all like this before the war,” Dad said. “A small town named for a stream that ran through here long ago… trees, everything green and lovely.”
    He waved his hand in front of him. “Maybe it will be like that again afterwards.” He shook