The Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle

layers.
    We were all very jumpy. Mother knew this, and maybe she was jumpy, too, I don’t know. That’s one trouble about parents; they always try to hide it from you when they’re worried about something, and lots of times you’d feel a lot better if they’d just come out and tell you what was on their minds. I think Mother sometimes does tell John things. I suppose I’m too young. Too young to be told things properly like a grown-up, and too old to go clamoring to Mother for comfort. This is something Uncle Douglas understands. He talks to me as though I were twenty at
least, but when he sees I’m upset he’s apt to pick the biggest chair available and then pull me down into it with him, so that I feel protected and can have the pleasure of being treated like a baby with none of the problems.
    â€œI don’t like Tennessee,” Suzy said again, looking at a marshmallow and deciding whether or not to toast it. “Where’ll we be tomorrow night?”
    â€œTennessee again,” Mother said. “It’s a bigger state than I’d realized, and we’re going diagonally across it, from the north-east corner to the southwest.”
    â€œUgh.”
    Mother rumpled Suzy’s curls. “Don’t blame Tennessee for an unpleasant incident, Suzy. Daddy took care of it and nothing happened.”
    â€œBut it might have,” Suzy said. “I wish we had Rochester with us.”
    I went along with Suzy. Having Rochester around would have made me feel lots happier. “Mother, what would have happened if Daddy didn’t know Judo?”
    Mother laughed. “Judo was just a spectacular way of handling the situation. I think Daddy could have managed without.”
    Suzy made a face. “If we have to be in Tennessee again tomorrow I’m just as glad he knows it.”
    Mother held her marshmallow carefully over the embers. “Tennessee’s a lot prettier a state so far than I’d expected. I love the rolling hills and winding roads. And the amazing and utterly unusable speed limit of sixty-five.”
    John laughed, “It made me feel kind of a square to be driving about fifteen miles under the speed limit all the time.”

    â€œAnd remember that wonderful house?” Mother said. “Oh, I guess it was still in Virginia—the one full of gables and painted every color of the rainbow.”
    â€œRed, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,” Suzy counted.
    So we got to talking about the things we’d seen that day and began to forget the black leather jacketed hoods. Then we heard a car coming up the road, and Suzy called out happily, “There’s Daddy and Rob.”
    John can identify all kinds of engines. “That’s not our car. And it’s going much too fast.”

Five
    I felt my skin raise up into goose pimples. If the hoods came back and Daddy wasn’t there I wasn’t at all sure of John’s ability to take care of us, no matter how much Judo Daddy had taught him. But of course I didn’t say this to John.
    The car swished up the hill and into view, a shiny black gorgeously new station wagon with a tent trailer behind it, and a California license. It was obviously not the hoods’ car, but there was a black jacketed boy at the wheel, and all I could think of was that he was one of the gang and they’d stolen the car.
    It swooped all the way around the campgrounds, then returned and swooshed into the campsite next to ours. I started to get up, but Mother put a restraining hand on my arm. Then we saw that the only other people in the car besides the boy at the wheel were a man and woman, both quite a bit older than Mother and Daddy, I’d say, and sort of plump, wearing the kind of camping clothes you see in ads and not usually on people.

    The sun was breaking through the clouds, now, and, though it was low on the horizon and the sky was turning pink, there was more light than