Season of Change Read Online Free Page A

wake by Monday, Miss Stephanie. Why, when your parents come to get you, you won’t even want to go home! In fact, you two just head on back home Sunday night, just leave them here.”
    My heart squeezed hard, like somebody was standing on my chest. I fake-laughed with everyone else just so I wouldn’t cry.
    “Dad,” said Lynn, laughing. “When we get here on Sunday, we’re going to want our kids back.”
    “Well,” said Grandma Roberts. “You just may not get them.”
    Our good-byes felt rushed. My throat got dry, and my stomach started to hurt. Jumping the wake? Staying with grandparents who were practically strangers? Waiting for Daddy and Lynn to talk to Jon and Olivia about whether our lives would change? How was I going to survive this weekend?
    Before I knew it, Daddy and Lynn backed out of the driveway. Their car rounded the bend and then drove out of sight. I had to set my jaw. Somebody who’s fifteen shouldn’t cry when her parents leave.
    “Diana, Stephanie, come down to the dock and see the mother goose,” Grandpa Roberts said. I felt so glad to have something to do that I ran through the grassy yard all the way to the dock.
    I followed Diana and Grandpa Roberts out onto the long dock, looking through the slits between the wooden boards at the shifting brownish-green water a few feet below. The sun was shining and the surface of the lake sparkled in sweeping patterns, feathered by the wind. Some people drove by in a boat, waving. We waved back. The wake from their boat rippled toward us, gently vibrating the dock, and then lapped onto the shore.
    At the end of the long dock floated a smaller dock and a boat slip with a metal roof. In that boat slip bobbed a pontoon boat with a canvas cover. In an indentation of the cover toward the front of the boat sat a Canada goose, with her full gray body and long dark neck and head, with white markings on her throat and chin. As we approached she lowered her head, opened her black beak, and hissed at us.
    “She’s sitting on seven eggs,” said Grandpa Roberts. “She never leaves the nest. There’s the male right there. He goes and gets food for her.”
    Sure enough, swimming just along the edge of the dock was a dark-headed goose a little bit bigger than the one on the nest. He gave us a searching look and swam in a wary circle, ruffling his wings.
    “They’re used to Grandma and me, and eventually they’ll get used to you, too,” Grandpa said. “Butwe’re not going to be able to use the pontoon boat for awhile!”
    Just then Grandma Roberts joined us with a plastic bag of bread in her hand. She tossed some small pieces to the male, which swam forward quickly, stuck his neck out, and gobbled them down.
    “Can I feed the female?” Diana asked.
    “Sure.” Grandma Roberts handed Diana some bread, and she tossed it close to the female sitting on the eggs. The female ignored the bread at first. Then, cautiously, without moving her body, she stretched her neck to reach the morsel. She grasped it in her bill, jerked her head rapidly to gulp it down, then sat back upright, eyeing us with suspicion.
    “Do you want to feed them, Stephanie?” Grandma asked.
    “That’s okay,” I said.
    “She’s been sitting on the eggs for almost a month,” said Grandma.
    “Wow,” Diana said. “I would be so excited if they hatched while we were here!”
    “Geese mate for life,” Grandpa Roberts added. “These same two geese have been coming back to lay their eggs right around here for years. But this is the first time they’ve chosen our boat cover as a nest!”
    The geese never took their beady dark eyes off of us.I could see just the edge of one of the eggs beneath the mother’s gray feathery breast.
    “How do geese know who to pick as their mate?” I asked. What did geese know about staying together that people didn’t know?
    “Haha, yeah, do they ever fight with each other?” Diana asked. She got what I was talking about.
    “I see them try to attack