Where the Forest Meets the Stars(16)

Jo knew that sudden upheaval all too well.

Tabby texted, Please come! I love this house! U have to see inside! And the backyard OMG!

While she had some reception, Jo checked the weather for the next day: 70 percent chance of rain. She would probably have a short field day anyway.

I’ll be there around noon tomorrow. Ask her to hold it.

Tabby texted back. Will try. Meet at house. Love U! She sent an emoji of a monkey with its hand on its mouth and a pair of lips, her “monkey-blown” kiss.

Jo put the phone in her backpack and watched Ursa try to catch fish with her hands. “You need a net,” she called to her.

“Do you have one?”

“I saw one at Kinney Cottage. Maybe one day we can take it down to Turkey Creek and see what we find.”

“I want to! There’s a really pretty one in here, but I can’t get close enough to see him.”

“You’d better come out now. I need you to drip dry before we go back to the car.”

Ursa waded out of the chest-deep water and crossed the dry streambed to the big mossy rocks where they’d eaten lunch. She had a smudge of mud across her nose and cheek. Just like Jo at that age, a little mud hen, as her father used to call her.

“Where are we going now?” Ursa asked.

“Sadly, the best part is over. Now we’ll monitor and look for nests next to a cornfield until it gets dark.”

“That will be fun, too.”

“It will be hot. Good thing you cooled off.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Being wet isn’t good for handling data sheets.”

Ursa picked up a rock that caught her attention.

“Ursa . . . tomorrow I have to go up to where I live.”

She stopped rock hunting and looked at her. “The place called Champaign-Urbana?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come with you?”

Taking someone else’s kid on a trip was wrong on many levels. But Ursa couldn’t stay with Gabe because Jo might get home past the time she was allowed to stay at his farm. Gabe’s mother was already asking worrisome questions about Ursa and why she was at their farm every day.

“Can I?”

“Are you sure you want to?” Jo asked.

“Yes!”

“It will be boring. I’m going to look at a house.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m probably going to rent it. My friend and I want to move out of our apartment when our lease runs out in August.”

“It’s a real house?”

“It is, and that’s what’s so great about it. It even has a porch swing.”

Ursa turned away and threw the rocks she’d found into the pool. “I don’t want you to go live in that house.”

“I know you don’t, but I have to leave when I’m done with my fieldwork. That’s why you need to tell me why you left your home. We have to figure out what to do before I go.”

Ursa faced her. “I told you why I left my home.”

“I wish you would trust me.”

“I do, but that doesn’t change anything.”

“What doesn’t it change? Tell me.”

“I’ll probably be gone by the time you leave anyway. I’ll have seen five miracles by then.”





11



Jo parked the Honda in the oak shade behind Tabby’s red VW Bug. Tabby climbed out of the VW dressed in purple Dr. Martens boots, jean cutoffs, and an orange University of Illinois T-shirt that belonged to Jo. Though she wore her amethyst nose stud and her brown hair was streaked with blue and purple, Jo had rarely seen her dressed so conservatively. She met Tabby on the street halfway between their cars and gave her a hug.

“You look great—all tan and shit,” Tabby said. “But more importantly, you look conventional. Maybe this lady will want to rent to us when she sees you.”

“Is that why you’re wearing my T-shirt?”

“I’m showing my school spirit. The lady’s father was a professor here.”

“It’s a fail on you.”

“Only because you know I don’t do rah-rah.” She looked at Jo’s windshield. “Were you aware that there’s a little girl in your car?”

“I am aware.”

Tabby stared at Ursa. “Oh my god . . .” She turned back to Jo. “Is this the girl, the one with bruises who wouldn’t go home?”

“Yes. Keep your voice down.”

“I thought you said she ran away?” Tabby whispered.

“Obviously, she came back.”

“Why the hell is she with you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I said.”

Tabby glanced at Ursa again. “So this is what it’s like in Banjo Land? You just randomly collect kids?”

“Stop calling it that. Banjo Land is way south of Illinois.”

“You have to call the cops!” she whispered.

“I told you I did already! She’ll just run again. I’m trying to figure out what to do.”

“You have enough on your plate!”

“I know, but I had to do something. Be nice to her.” Jo walked around the front of the car to the passenger door. Normally Ursa would have gotten out by then, but she’d been reticent all morning, probably because seeing the house scared her about her future. Jo opened the door. “Ursa, this is Tabby. Tabby, meet my friend Ursa.”

“Come out of there, little person with a big name,” Tabby said, reaching inside the car and hauling out Ursa. “You’re so lucky to be named after a bear!”

“I know,” Ursa said. “You’re lucky to be named after a cat. Gabe has a tabby kitten I call Caesar.”

“How cool, but I’m not named after a cat. My completely insane mother named me after a TV witch.”

“Really?”

“For real, and that’s why if anyone calls me by my real name”—she leaned down and whispered “Tabitha” in Ursa’s ear—“I will punch them in the nose.”

Ursa smiled for the first time that day.

“She means that,” Jo said. She looked at the house, as enchanting as ever. “How much? You still haven’t told me.”

“The rent is only a little high,” Tabby evaded, “especially considering we don’t have to buy furniture. But she wants rent now because she’s leaving.”

“Now? We’d be paying for two places until August.”

Tabby dropped to her knees on the sidewalk and held her hands in a prayer gesture toward Jo. “Please, please, please use some of that wonderful money you inherited to help us get this house. I’m begging you!”

Ursa had probably never seen an adult act so goofy, but she loved it. Her left cheek was dimpled in a big grin.

“Get up, you dope,” Jo said.

“Please?”

“Let me look at the house and talk to the lady.”

Tabby sprang to her feet. “It’s our dream house! How often did we wish we lived here when we jogged past it?”

Jo walked to the front of the little house and looked up the walkway lined with a rainbow of bearded irises. “Imagine us drinking wine and pondering mysteries of the universe on that porch swing,” Tabby said.

“Will we be able to afford wine?” Jo said.

“If we correctly prioritize our grocery list.”

Frances Ivey, the retired physical therapist who owned the house, greeted them at the door, casting a wary stare on Ursa. “Who is this?” she asked.

“Jo is babysitting her today,” Tabby said.

“Good,” Ms. Ivey said. “No kids. No dogs. No smoking.”

“But cats are okay,” Tabby said. “Ms. Ivey has two.”

Ursa squatted down to pet the calico weaving between their legs.

“I hope neither of you are allergic?” Ms. Ivey said.

“That would be a bummer for a veterinary student,” Tabby said.

“It would,” Ms. Ivey said with a hint of a smile. “Of course, I’ll take my cats with me to Maine.” She closed the front door behind them. “Tabby told me you’re doing your PhD research down in the Shawnee Forest,” she said to Jo. “And you study birds?”

“Yes, bird ecology and conservation.”

“I like birds. I have several feeders out back. If you decide to rent, I’d appreciate it if you kept them filled. The birds have gotten used to me feeding them all these years.”

“I’d love to feed them. Having birds to watch would be great after apartment living.”

Ms. Ivey took Jo on a tour of the house. Up a wooden stairway with baluster handrails, three bedrooms, one small and two tiny, shared a full bath with antique tile and a claw-foot bathtub. Downstairs, the living room had a working fireplace with a gorgeous old oak mantel. Next to it was a dining room that had been converted to a reading room, and a kitchen with a breakfast nook. The downstairs half bath was as quaint as the bathroom upstairs. The rugs and furniture were simple, giving emphasis to the early nineteenth-century charm of carved woodwork, burnished oak floors, and stained-glass window transoms.

A wooden deck beyond the kitchen french doors overlooked a small backyard, a private garden of cottage-style flower beds, redbud trees, and forsythia and rhododendron bushes. A sizeable river birch shaded the western side of the garden and a bench surrounded by ferns and blooming hostas and astilbes. A house wren sang its burbling song near its nest box and a variety of bird feeders.