“Really, Franny, I don’t know how you know these things,” said Sina.

“I read.”

“Anyhow, I suspect she knew more than she would let on. She seemed to feel her presence in Comox was urgent.”

“That sounds bad,” I said. “Bad or melodramatic. We really don’t know her well enough to make a judgment call, do we?”

“No, that’s what I thought. I asked if she thought he was going overseas to fight that evil Hitler, but she said no.”

“Didn’t she even give you a hint as to what she thought he might be up to?”

“No, she refused to say.”

“The nerve,” I said.

“Just so,” said Sina. “You’ve hit the nail on the head; to come over and ask such a very great favor and make wet marks on my nice clean walls and yet refuse to give any juicy details—well, it defies all manners and sense.”

We both looked out the window and I decided I was out of good ideas for the moment, so I finished the cookies in a couple of bites.

“Still, that’s what we’re stuck with. I think I’ll go to bed,” said Sina.

“Good idea,” I said. And then something occurred to me. “Tomorrow is the last day of school before the special spring vacation. You don’t suppose she means to leave them here all spring long?”

“I’ve no idea. Nobody tells me anything,” said Sina despairingly, and she went up the stairs muttering, “Doughy or pasty-faced? Which is less apt to offend?”

I made my last trip to the outhouse before turning in and sat among the bats and insects thinking that having these strange children cluttering up our 270 acres this spring was not what any of us had planned and how everything can change in a blink.

Then I walked back toward the house. I could hear the owls overhead, always there, always unseen, like tree monks chanting who who who, their mysterious plainsong, their mystical calls sent into the night, into the black unknown, calling to what we were all calling to, who who who, where where where, setting the universe right, steadying my tangents, piping me to bed.

THEY ARRIVE

Well, we are all put on this earth to suffer, and the next day after I’d gotten home from school Crying Alice drove Winifred, eleven; Wilfred, nine; and Zebediah, six, over to the house. Winifred and Wilfred looked similar. They both had long rangy limbs, sandy hair, and freckles. Wilfred, although younger, was taller than Winifred and wore horn-rimmed glasses that made his eyes large and owly. He had a front flop of hair that he was always brushing out of them. Winifred kept her long hair neat. Zebediah was short and dark with olive skin and black curly hair and could have come from a whole other family, so different was he from Winifred and Wilfred. They each carried a small duffel bag. I eyed the bags, trying to determine from the size of them exactly how long they would be staying. But it was difficult. They were medium bags. That could mean that Crying Alice was an over-packer and they would be with us for the weekend only (oh, please God), or she could be a severe under-packer, planning to park them with us for a few months, necessitating Sina taking them shopping. Or the children could lead a spartan existence, eschewing all but the bare necessities. In which case they would not be so appalled by the outhouse. I had had the odd girl over to play and they all seemed to think that by the time 1945 rolled around, everyone in the world should be in possession of an indoor flush toilet. As I had grown up with the outhouse, I had never considered us “strangely medieval,” as one potential friend put it.