Where the Forest Meets the Stars(15)
“Weird,” Jo said. “I hope that wasn’t a subtle judgment about my research.”
Gabe ignited a flame on the lighter and grinned. “I promise I won’t go near your data.”
“You better not,” Jo said.
As he lit the twigs in the fire pit, Ursa went off in search of a marshmallow stick.
“I shouldn’t have brought up the cancer,” Jo said. “I didn’t mean to minimize what you told me.”
“Go ahead, minimize it—if only.”
“You never seem anxious to me. You’re more sociable than lots of people I know.”
“Yeah? I guess the egg stand has helped. But take me out of my realm and kaplooey.”
“Is that why you hate the grocery store?”
He nodded. “If the line is long, sometimes I have to leave.”
“Why?”
“The horrific crush of humanity on my soul. Haven’t you ever felt it?”
“I think I have—in Walmart.”
“Yes! That place is the worst!”
Ursa returned with a stick and poked it into three marshmallows.
“Nice,” Gabe said. “One for me, one for Jo, and another for me.”
“All for me!” Ursa said.
Jo fell asleep watching them roast marshmallows, thinking how cute they were together. She woke to Gabe’s fingers brushing her cheek. “There was a mosquito on you,” he said.
“I’ve probably fed the whole forest.”
“You haven’t. I’ve been keeping watch.”
She tried to shake off her drowsiness. “On me?”
“On you.” He was looking at her as if he might kiss her, and the rush of adrenaline straight from sleep made her feel strange. Dizzy, almost. Her heart jumped against the bones of her chest, as if it were trying to escape.
She sat up to see if Ursa had seen him touch her. She was asleep in a lawn chair on the other side of the fire, melted marshmallow stuck to her chin.
Jo stood shakily. “Ursa has to go to bed. She gets up early.”
“I know,” he said, rising next to her. “I wanted to take her but didn’t know where. Does she sleep in your bed or on the couch?”
“The couch.”
He lifted her out of the chair. “Gabe?” Ursa mumbled.
“Don’t wake up,” he said. “I’ll take you to bed.”
After they disappeared into the house, Jo watered down the fire.
“I could have done that,” Gabe said from the kitchen door. He came outside, took the hose from her hand, and coiled it over the spigot.
“Where is the telescope?” she asked.
“I put it away.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“About fifteen degrees of star movement.” He stood close to her, his face lit by the fluorescent stove light inside the house. She saw what he wanted. He wanted to sleep with her.
The stuttering beat in her chest returned. Was it hormonal, something to do with the surgeries? Why did a man coming on to her—a kindhearted, good-looking one, at that—make her body react like she was confronting a pissed-off grizzly?
She tried to remember how she used to respond when a guy she was attracted to came on too strong or too fast. She’d have made a joke to tone things down a little. The humor would have come easily because she’d be confident and relaxed. And probably a little turned on by his interest. But Jo couldn’t find her, that self-possessed woman she used to be, and the discovery of her absence made her shudder like a fever had come over her. She had to hug her arms around her body to try to make it stop.
She had no idea what her terror looked like to Gabe. Whatever he saw, he backed away, his eyes alight with fluorescent panic.
“I think . . . you’d better go,” she said.
He vanished so fast she might have dreamed he’d been right there in front of her if she didn’t hear the rumble of his pickup fading into the distance.
10
Jo waited until five to wake Ursa because she’d been up late. “Can I go with you today?” Ursa asked while they ate bowls of Raisin Bran.
“Why?”
“I want to see what you do.”
“You saw.”
“I want to see those places way in the forest. Are you going there today?”
“I am.”
“Please!”
“It wouldn’t be as fun as going to Gabe’s farm.”
“Yes it would.”
“If you hate it, I can’t come back. You’ll be stuck out there with me.”
“I promise I won’t hate it.”
Jo didn’t see any harm in it, and having someone to talk to for a change might be enjoyable. “We have to tell Gabe, because he’s expecting you.”
“We will,” Ursa said.
“I don’t have his cell phone number.”
“We have to go there to tell him. I don’t even know if he has a phone.”
Jo made two sandwiches and packed extra water and snacks. She had Ursa change into long pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt Gabe had bought her at the yard sale. After Ursa put on her beloved purple gym shoes, Jo showed her how to tuck her pants into her socks and her shirt into her pants to prevent ticks from crawling inside her clothing.
Before they locked the house, Ursa poured a big bowl of dog food. Jo had given in to buying it when she agreed to “wait awhile” with Ursa. Each morning they fed the dog at the rear door to distract him while they made a quick getaway down Turkey Creek Road.
Jo stopped the Honda at Gabe’s potholed lane, nocturnal insects swooping in the beams of the car’s headlights. “I hate this road. It tears up my car.”
Ursa unbuckled. “Then wait here. You wouldn’t know how to find him anyway.” She jumped out and disappeared at a run down the dark driveway. Minutes later, she returned breathless and got in the car.
“What did he say?”
“He said okay.”
“That’s all?”
“He was busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Fixing the hog pen gate. But he might be mad,” she added, buckling her seat belt.
“Why do you say that?”
“Usually he’s happy when he sees me in the morning, but he wasn’t. Do you think he wanted me to stay with him instead of go with you?”
“I’m sure he’s just busy with the gate.”
There was more to it than that. Now rested and thinking clearly, Jo replayed the previous night’s events in her mind and decided she’d misinterpreted Gabe’s behavior. If he had social anxiety, there was no way he’d wanted to sleep with a woman he hardly knew. He probably hadn’t almost kissed her either. Jo had panicked, maybe because she’d felt a connection with him—her first since her surgeries. She’d given the poor guy mixed signals, and even worse, he might think she’d rejected him because of what he’d confessed about his depression. If she’d opened up to a man about her cancer and he suddenly rebuffed her, she’d have been as hurt.
“Shit,” Jo said under her breath.
“What’s wrong?” Ursa said.
“Nothing.”
They began at North Fork Creek, the most distant of her “natural edge” study sites. As always, Ursa was unfazed by the hardships of a new environment. No matter how dense, wet, or prickly the creek-side vegetation, she never complained. Even pesky mosquitoes and ticks crawling up her clothes didn’t bother her.
Jo explained their three goals: monitoring the nests she’d already found, finding new nests, and downloading data from nest cameras onto her laptop. She showed Ursa how to search for nests by watching the birds’ movements and listening for alarm calls, which might mean they were protecting a nearby nest. Ursa immediately recognized how alarm calls were different from other bird sounds, and she often went off on her own to investigate when she heard one.
After North Fork, they went to the Jessie Branch study site, and after that, to Summers Creek, the prettiest of Jo’s study sites. Ursa didn’t find a nest all day, but she saw many eggs and baby birds. She also spotted a doe and her fawn, caught a leopard frog, watched a hummingbird drink nectar from cardinal flowers, and took a swim with minnows in a creek pool to cool off.
The pool was Jo’s favorite resting point. While Ursa played in the water, Jo turned on her cell phone and discovered three messages from Tabby. Tabby’s first text at nine thirty in the morning said, OMG, the peony and iris house is for rent.
The second text had come at one fifteen. I talked to owner. Lots of interest. Will go fast.
The third text—sent a minute later—said, Answer damn you! And get your ass up here!
Jo and Tabby had been apartment-mates for years, but when Jo returned to graduate school after her cancer treatment, they decided they would look for a rental house, a place with actual trees around it. The peony and iris house was on a jogging route they’d been running in Urbana since their junior year of undergrad. It was a little white clapboard house with a porch, and the first time they saw it, a profusion of peonies and irises colored the front yard. The house was ideally located in the quaint neighborhood just east of campus known as the “state streets.”
Can you grab it? Jo sent.
The text went through after about twenty seconds. Tabby was on phone sentry. She responded immediately. She says she needs us both to sign. In hurry to rent. Someone in Maine is sick and she’s going up there.