Where the Forest Meets the Stars Read online

  “I heard—kittens,” Jo said.

  “Can she go see them?” she asked Gabe.

  “We won’t disturb them at night, and Jo needs to eat.” He said to Jo, “We have plenty of leftovers from dinner.”

  “Oh . . . thanks,” Jo said, “but I—”

  “You’d be doing us a favor. I made too much.”

  “Pork chops, applesauce, green beans, and mashed potatoes,” Ursa said. “Gabe grows everything at the homestead. He even makes the applesauce. There are apple trees here, Jo! I climbed them today!”

  “Kittens, piglets, apple trees—talk about a kid’s fantasy world,” Jo said.

  “She’s been quite happy,” he said.

  “I see that.”

  Ursa dragged Jo by the hand up the cabin stairs beneath a wooden sign that said THE NASH FAMILY HOMESTEAD . They passed a row of rocking chairs on the covered porch and entered the house. The cabin interior was an appealing space with log walls, wood floors, a stone fireplace, and furniture made from tree timber. The home was posher than Jo would have imagined, especially considering the neglected driveway and decrepit NO TRESPASSING sign. The cabin had modern kitchen appliances and beautiful granite counters. And unlike Kinney Cottage, which was cooled with aging window air conditioners, the Nash homestead had central air.

  A handsome white-haired woman, probably Gabe’s grandmother, sat at the kitchen table, a cane with a four-legged bottom placed near her. “I’m Katherine Nash,” she said, scrutinizing Jo with sharp azure eyes. She held out a hand that trembled from what might be Parkinson’s disease.

  Jo grasped her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Joanna Teale, but you can call me Jo.”

  “Ursa’s been talking about you all day.”

  “Sorry about that,” Jo said, and Katherine smiled.

  Gabe was already dishing warm food from pots and pans on the stove. He set the plate on the table and pulled out a chair.

  “Are you sure?” Jo said. “My boots are making a mess of your floor.”

  “Nonsense,” Katherine said. “My husband used to say log cabins don’t look authentic without some dirt on the floor.”

  “A philosophy that worked well for a kid who was always covered in dirt,” Gabe said.

  Jo wondered if he’d been raised by his grandparents. Earlier he’d said his mother was sick. Maybe she had a long-term illness, something that had incapacitated her since he was a child.

  Jo sat down, cut into the tender braised meat, and swallowed a delicious bite of seasoned pork chop. “This cabin is beautiful,” she told Katherine. “Was it here when you bought the property?”

  “Arthur—my husband—and some of his friends built it,” she said. “George Kinney, the man who owns the property you’re renting, helped, too. He and my husband were great friends, you know.”

  “I didn’t,” Jo said.

  “They met as undergraduate roommates at the University of Illinois. After graduate school, they ended up in Illinois again. My husband taught English literature at the University of Chicago, and I’m sure you know George is an entomologist at the University of Illinois.”

  “Yes,” Jo said. She glanced at Gabe, noting he’d been watching her from the kitchen. Now she understood some of his mysteries. The grandfather who’d raised him was a literature professor. That explained his connection to Shakespeare and maybe the reason he’d reacted to Ursa’s PhD question. Gabe self-consciously looked away from her gaze and put a plastic container into the refrigerator. “Did Dr. Kinney or your husband buy land down here first?” Jo asked Katherine.

  “Arthur and I bought first. We wanted a refuge from the city, and Arthur had dreamed of building a log cabin since he was a boy. George and his wife bought the property next door when it went up for sale a few years later. George loved that he could study his aquatic insects in Turkey Creek, just steps away from his door.”

  “How old were your kids when you built the cabin?” Jo asked.

  “When we finished it, Gabe wasn’t born yet and his sister was in high school.” She smiled at Jo’s confusion. “I suppose you thought I was Gabe’s grandmother?”

  Jo was too embarrassed to admit it.

  “Gabe is what they used to call a ‘change-of-life’ baby,” Katherine said. “I had him when I was forty-six and his father was forty-eight. His sister is nineteen years older than him.”

  “Is your father still living?” Jo asked Gabe.

  Before her son answered, Katherine said, “Arthur died two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jo said.

  “He was fit as could be,” Katherine said, “but an aneurism took him unexpectedly.”

  Ursa had been listening to the conversation, but she ran into another room when Jo dug into her meal. She returned with a paper in her hands. “I have three names so far,” she told Gabe. “Do you want to hear them?”

  “Absolutely.” He sat in a chair facing her.

  “One of the boy kittens has to be Hamlet.”

  “He may come to a sad fate,” Gabe said.

  “I know. I read what happened to him,” Ursa said, “but Hamlet is an important person.”

  “He is,” Gabe said. “Which one will be Hamlet?”

  “The gray one, because gray is kind of a sad color.”

  “Makes sense,” Gabe said.

  “The white kitten will be Juliet from Romeo and Juliet . I really like that name.”

  “So do I,” Gabe said. “But Juliet had a sad fate, too.”

  “Stop saying that! These are just names!”

  “You’re right. After all, Juliet famously asked, ‘What’s in a name?’ What else do you have?”

  “Macbeth.”

  “Okay, and no comments on his fate. Which kitten?”

  “The black-and-white one.”

  “You’ve been busy. That covers three of Shakespeare’s best plays.”

  “I looked that up—which plays are most important. Next is Julius Caesar . But don’t you think ‘Julius’ will be too much like ‘Juliet’?”

  “You could call him Caesar.”

  “Maybe. But first I have to read about him so I know which kitten matches the name.”

  “It’s not good . . . fate-wise, I mean.”

  Ursa pressed her lips in exasperation, and Gabe swiped his hand over a smile.

  Jo loved it. They were already like old friends, playing off each other’s humor.

  “Maybe you should move on to the comedies,” Gabe said.

  “She should move on home,” Katherine said. “Will you take her or will Jo?”

  Gabe glanced nervously at Jo. “We hadn’t discussed that yet.”

  “Her parents must be frantic by now,” his mother said.

  “They aren’t,” Ursa said. “They’re happy I’m here because I’m getting my PhD.”

  Katherine’s sharp blue eyes pinned her son.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Let me talk to Jo about it.”

  “The dinner was delicious. Thank you,” Jo said, rising from her chair. Gabe gestured her toward the front door, and when Ursa tried to follow, he said, “Will you do me a favor? Put Jo’s dishes in the sink and rinse them.”

  “You’re just saying that so you can talk about me,” Ursa said.

  “I’m saying it because I hate doing dishes. Go on.”

  He led Jo out the front door and down the porch steps for further privacy. “She can’t stay here. My mother doesn’t know she slept here last night.”

  “How could she not know?”

  “I didn’t know either. When I went to milk the cow, the dog came barking at me from the barn.”

  “She slept in the barn?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Poor kid. She’s been sleeping in Kinney’s shed.”

  “I have a feeling she’s been through worse,” he said.

  “Thank you for helping her. She looks like a different girl tonight.”

  “Yeah, but she can’t stay. My mother will make me turn her in if she fin
ds out we don’t know where she lives.”

  “I guess we have to figure out how to do that. But I can’t take time off tomorrow. I have too many nests that need monitoring.”

  “Well, don’t expect me to do it. I’m not locking her up like an animal.”

  “I know. It’s horrible to imagine, isn’t it?”

  He looked down at Little Bear, as tame as Jo had seen him, licking at the pork chop scent on her fingers. “What if we wait?” he said.

  “Wait for what?”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that she set this deadline with the five miracles? Why do that?”

  “To stall, of course.”

  “But maybe there’s a reason. Maybe she’s waiting for someone she trusts to come home or something like that.”

  “Haven’t we established she isn’t from around here?”

  “She could have moved here in the last week.” He glanced at the door to make sure Ursa wasn’t listening. “Maybe a grandmother takes care of her and she’s in the hospital. Maybe when her grandmother got sick she had to come here to live with an abusive relative and she ran away.”

  “I think up stories like that, too.”

  “It fits the situation.”

  “What if the grandmother never gets better?” Jo said.

  “What if she does and we got the poor kid put in foster care?”

  “How long would we wait for the theoretical grandmother to reappear?”

  “I’m just saying we should think about it for a few days. Maybe she’ll learn to trust us and tell us the truth.”

  Ursa stuck her head out the front door. “Are you done talking about me?”

  “Nope. Get back inside,” he said.

  The door shut.

  “I think we could get in trouble for waiting,” Jo said.

  “No one’s reported her missing. No one gives a crap about her, not even that cop you talked to. And like he said, she could get stuck in a shitty foster home, and I see no reason to rush that when we might find a better solution.”

  “If we turn her in, we could make sure where she goes isn’t shitty.”

  “How?”

  She had no answer.

  “If you want to turn her in, do it,” he said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Then take her back to Kinney’s.”

  “And leave her alone when I go to work in the morning?”

  “Drop her at my road as you drive by. I’ll be doing morning animal care.”

  “That’s early.”

  “I know. I hear you drive by. She’ll deal with it.”

  “How will you explain her to your mother?”

  “She’s a local kid who likes hanging out at our farm.”

  “I don’t feel right doing this,” she said.

  “Don’t you feel worse about locking her in a closet and calling the cops on her?”

  “Damn it, I do.”

  9

  For four days Jo and Gabe surreptitiously exchanged Ursa. Sometimes it felt like she and Gabe were a divorced couple passing a child between their homes. But more often it was like some sort of illegal trade because they handed Ursa off in the dark hours of predawn and twilight. Jo checked missing children websites every night when she got home, expecting to see Ursa’s haunting brown eyes with every scroll of her finger. But after more than a week, no one had reported her missing.

  On the third day, Gabe took Ursa to a yard sale to buy clothing, which resulted in a wardrobe heavily biased toward the color purple and screen prints of big-eyed animals. By the fourth day—dressed in decent clothing, well fed, and playing outdoors for long hours—Ursa didn’t look like a changeling anymore. The dark circles under her eyes disappeared, her skin turned a wholesome pink, and she’d gained a few pounds.

  Each night after her shower, Ursa told Jo about the fun things she’d done at the homestead, and sometimes Jo was a little jealous of how much Ursa loved being with Gabriel in Wonderland. That was when it felt like a divorce, though she barely knew Gabe.

  The tension between the two “parents” became more real on the fifth night when Ursa said, “Guess what Gabe let me do today?”

  “Did you milk the cow?”

  “I already do that.”

  “Ride a baby unicorn?”

  “I wish! But shooting his guns was almost that fun.”

  Jo set down her fork.

  “I hit close to the middle of the target three times!”

  Jo pushed out her chair. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She grabbed her keys and slipped on sandals.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To talk to Gabe.”

  “Why are you mad?”

  “What gives you that idea?”

  “Your eyes get like thunder.”

  “I’m not mad at you. Stay here.”

  Jo put Little Bear on the porch so he wouldn’t follow. She cursed Egg Man every time her mother’s precious Honda scraped bottom on his neglected road.

  Gabe opened the door wearing a pink apron, and if she hadn’t been angry she might have laughed at the muscular bearded guy in Martha Stewart mode. “You should fix that Grand Canyon you call a road,” she said.

  “You came over to tell me that?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Is Ursa okay?”

  “She’s great,” Jo said, “and I’d like her to stay that way, so please keep your guns away from her from now on.”

  “Who is it?” his mother called from inside the cabin.

  “It’s Jo. She needs to borrow some sugar. Wait here,” he said to Jo. He returned in less than a minute, minus the apron, with a baggie of sugar in his hand. “You’re one of those gun-control militants?” he asked, grinning through his beard.

  “I’m against putting a gun in the hands of a little girl who can’t possibly understand the danger of firearms.”

  “She wore ear and eye protection, and I taught her every safety rule.”

  “She’s a kid, and kids do unexpected things. Sometimes they sneak into their dad’s gun cabinet and shoot their baby brother.”

  “She’s smarter than that. And who knows where she’ll end up? Some day she may need the skill.”

  “To take out her pesky foster parents?”

  “I believe in being prepared,” he said.

  “Right, for the apocalypse.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re one of those? You’re a survivalist nut? How does a guy who reads Shakespeare dumb down his brain enough for that?”

  “So all gun owners are dumb people who don’t read Shakespeare? Is that really going to be your position?”

  “I’m too tired for this. Just keep the guns locked up and away from Ursa.” She started down the stairs but went back and plucked the sugar out of his hand. “I actually need this for my coffee. I’m out.”

  Every doubt she’d had about letting Ursa stay with them resurfaced during her drive back to the cottage, especially her reservations about Egg Man. She truthfully knew nothing about the man.

  Ursa was waiting for her return outside on the walkway. “Did you yell at Gabe?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” Jo said.

  “Will he still let me come over?”

  She was more distressed by the discord than expected. Jo crouched in front of her and held her hands. “Everything is okay. I only had a little disagreement with Gabe.”

  “About shooting the guns?” she asked.

  “Yes. My parents raised me different than his did. I never saw guns as fun . I was taught that their only purpose is to kill.”

  “We only shot targets.”

  “And why do people use those targets? So they can learn how to aim the bullet at a heart or a brain. He was teaching you how to kill somebody.”

  “I didn’t think of it like that.”

  “Well, that’s what it’s all about, that or killing a deer, and I don’t see you doing that.”

  “I would never kill a deer!”

  “Go
od. No more guns, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Jo rewarmed her plate of food in the microwave, but just as she started eating, Little Bear began barking on the porch. “Now what?” She went to the porch and watched Gabe’s truck squeak to a halt behind her car. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “You drove over here to continue the argument?”

  “I wasn’t arguing,” he said.

  “You defended what you did.”

  “That’s not exactly arguing.”

  “I’d like to finish my dinner.”

  “You should,” he said, ambling up the walkway.

  “Why are you here?”

  “To make peace. Nothing like stars to show us our little arguments are meaningless. I brought my telescope.”

  “The Pinwheel Galaxy!” Ursa said behind Jo. “He promised! He said one night he would show it to us!”

  “And this is a perfect night,” Gabe said. “No moon, clear atmosphere, your blacked-out utility light inviting burglars to your gun-less home . . .”

  She tried to make a peeved face, but his smile bested it.

  “Finish your dinner while I get ready,” he said. “Want to learn how to set up a telescope?” he asked Ursa.

  “Yes!”

  Jo held the screen door open as she shot through it. “This is the only way you’re allowed to look down a barrel with Gabe. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Ursa said, and Gabe saluted.

  After Jo finished eating and cleaned the dishes, she joined them at the edge of the field and discovered Gabe’s telescope was much fancier than she’d expected. It had belonged to his father, an astronomy enthusiast who’d taught his children how to find objects in the night sky. Gabe had also brought binoculars, and he showed Ursa how to locate the Pinwheel Galaxy using the stars of the Big Dipper. Jo listened from a lawn chair, too tired from her long day in the field to work at finding a blurry smear of a galaxy.

  Even with the impressive scope, locating the Pinwheel took a while because it had something Gabe called “low surface brightness.” This meant nothing to Jo other than that she might fall asleep in her chair before he found it.

  “Okay, here it is,” he said, “Messier 101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy.”

  Ursa stood on a crate he’d brought and looked into the eyepiece. “I see it!” She fell silent as she studied the galaxy. “Do you know what it looks like, Jo?”