The Moon by Night Read Online Free

rest.”
    John stretched luxuriously. “As for us , we can lounge around on the beach all day.”
    Daddy, who was sprawled on an old wicker chaise lounge, grunted, “Aside from the time you’ll spend helping me get the station wagon ready.”
    Mother shoved Daddy over and sat by him, then turned to me. “What got into you this morning, Vicky? Why did you run off when I needed you?”
    I looked at the screen door, where a moth was clinging, his wings momentarily flattened against the criss-cross pattern of the wires. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to go down to the beach for a while to think. I didn’t mean to stay so long.”
    I expected Mother or Daddy to let me have it then, but all Mother said was, “I guess we all feel the need to go off and sort things out, Vicky. This is a pretty big step for all of us. For Daddy and me, too, you know. Next time you want to disappear for a while check with me first, will you?”
    I was grateful not to be getting a bawling out. Here I was going around moping and if I sat down to think about it I’d probably have to admit that it was harder on Mother than anybody, and she wasn’t making any kind of fuss at all. From the way she behaved on the outside you’d have thought that moving from our own house, that stood on its hill about a mile outside a small New England village, to an apartment right in the middle of New York City was no more important than a trip to the Island.

    Well, it was a lot more important than that. None of us could remember living anywhere except Thornhill, or having Daddy be anything but a busy, always overworked country doctor. We knew he’d spent what few spare moments he had in research, and that he’d kept in close touch with his old professors and colleagues at medical school, but when he came back from a meeting in New York and told us that he’d accepted a post teaching and doing research at his old school we all flipped. Well, we flipped if it can mean just plain shock and doesn’t mean we were wild with joy. We weren’t. At first we weren’t anything but stunned. We didn’t even realize all at once that it meant leaving Thornhill, that it meant moving to New York. But Thornhill’s over a hundred miles from New York. Daddy couldn’t very well commute.
    Funnily enough it was Rob who was the first to catch on to what it really meant. He got terribly upset, the way he sometimes does, and burst into tears and said that he wouldn’t move to New York, that Daddy couldn’t leave Thornhill, and then he got very white and suddenly looked very grown up and not at all the baby we always thought him, and said, “You’re not going to sell the house! Daddy, you can’t sell the house!”
    â€œNo,” Daddy said. “We hope we won’t ever have to sell the house, Rob. We’re renting it for the next year to the doctor who’s taking over my office. He and his wife are people you’ll all like, they’ve got a darling baby, and they’ll take care of the animals for us.”
    â€œThe animals!” Rob got positively green with dismay. “Aren’t they coming with us?” He put his arms around Rochester’s neck. Rochester’s rear end wriggled with affection; then, as Rob’s grip
tightened with intensity Rochester gave him a big slobbery kiss of friendship and apology and pulled away so abruptly that Rob sat down hard on the floor.
    Daddy laughed and said, “We can’t very well take the animals on a camping trip, Rob.”
    We all went into a state of shock again. “CAMPING TRIP!”
    Now Mother and Daddy were both laughing, and Daddy said, “We thought it might soften the blow if we bought a tent and sleeping bags and took a trip out to California to see Uncle Douglas and Aunt Elena and Maggy. It’ll be a break between our two lives. Once I really get going in New York I’m not going to