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!”
“Good. 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?”
“A pinwheel?”
“It looks like an indigo bunting nest. And the white stars are the eggs.”
“I have to see this.” Jo got off the chair and looked in the telescope. Ursa was right. The ethereal swirl was a celestial nest filled with white star eggs. “Okay, this is the coolest thing I ever saw. It’s like an indigo bunting nest viewed from above. They often have that messy shape around the edges.”
Gabe took another turn looking. “I see it. And the nest’s center spirals down into infinity. I like that so much better than a pinwheel. The Infinite Nest. From now on, that’s how I’ll see it.”
“That’s where I live,” Ursa said. “I live in the Infinite Nest.”
“Lucky girl,” Jo said, ruffling her hair with her fingers.
Ursa bounced manically like she was about to rocket into the stars. “Can I toast marshmallows?”
“Ursa . . . I’m too tired to light a fire.”
“I will,” Gabe said. “Get the marshmallows, Lady of the Nest.”
Ursa ran to the back door.
“Is that okay?” he asked.
“I’ve been up since four thirty,” Jo said. Ursa had, too, but Gabe’s unexpected visit had energized her.
“Sit down and rest,” Gabe said. “I’ll monitor the marshmallow toasting with better judgment than I had earlier today.” He started throwing twigs into the fire pit. “That was an apology, by the way.”
“Okay.” She returned to her lawn chair. “And I apologize for saying you’re a dumb Shakespeare reader.”
“I’m a Shakespeare reader who sells eggs on the road—which amounts to about the same.” He studied her face. “You must wonder why I sell eggs and don’t have a regular job.”
“That’s none of my business,” she said, though she had often pondered that very question.
“I sell eggs because my hens produce far more than I can use.” He looked away from her and took more sticks out of the woodpile. “But the egg stand is also therapy.”
“How is it therapy?”
He looked at her again. “For social anxiety, depression, and a touch of agoraphobia.”
She sat up in her chair to see how serious he was.
“Don’t worry, I’m okay with Ursa. I wouldn’t hurt her or anything.”
Ursa ran outside and plopped the bag of marshmallows on a lawn chair.
“Would you please bring a lighter?” Gabe said.
She ran back to the house.
“Why would I think you’d hurt Ursa just because you have depression?” Jo said.
He shrugged. “Lots of people don’t understand mental illness.”
“Where’s the lighter, Jo?” Ursa called from the back door.
“The drawer by the toaster.”
“It’s not there.”
“That means Shaw and company put it in the wrong place. You’ll have to look around.” She turned back to Gabe. “Does medication help?” she asked.
“I blew off the doctors when they tried to put me on drugs.”
“When was that?”
“A few years ago. When I was a sophomore at U of C, I had what my parents quaintly called a ‘nervous breakdown.’ I haven’t gotten my shit together since.”
“University of Chicago? Where your father taught?”
“Yeah, major embarrassment, right? And all his dreams for his only son down the outhouse hole.” He cracked a branch over his knee and tossed the pieces into the fire pit.
“Gabe, I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s not like it’s anyone’s fault. You can’t pick your genetics.”
“Tell me about it. My breast cancer was caused by the BRCA1 mutation, if you know what that means.”
“Shit, yeah, I do.”
Ursa returned with the lighter. “You know where they put it? In your desk drawer.”