Where the Forest Meets the Stars(18)

“No,” Ursa said.

“It’s about an alien,” Tabby said.

“For real?”

“For real,” Tabby said, digging in her wallet.

“This is lunch,” Jo said.

“What about it?”

“Only drunk people think this is funny.”

“Quit being so uptight.” Tabby took Ursa’s hand and led her to the jukebox. After explaining how it worked, she let Ursa put the money in the machine and select the song. When the absurd song came on, Tabby started singing and dancing in front of everybody. She’d been doing that since she’d discovered the song their sophomore year, but usually she had more than two beers in her. The diners laughed when she took Ursa’s hand and showed her how to dance. “Look at the alien go!” Tabby called to Jo. “Jojo, get over here!”

“Come dance with us!” Ursa shouted.

Everyone turned expectant smiles on Jo, which made remaining in her seat more humiliating than dancing. She took Ursa’s other hand and tried to look like she was dancing. Ursa had no idea how to dance either, but she didn’t care. She laughed and jumped and shimmied, as radiant as Jo had ever seen her, as if starlight shined straight from her Hetrayen soul.





12



At the start of the trip back to Southern Illinois, Ursa used her third and last piece of paper to draw a picture of Tabby. An hour later, she was still working on the portrait.

“How can you draw in a moving car without getting carsick?” Jo asked.

“I’m used to doing things at star speed,” Ursa said.

“You mean light speed?”

“We call it star speed. It’s different from light speed.”

“You love drawing, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I’ll get you colored pencils. Those crayons are too thick to get good detail.”

“I know,” Ursa said. “I made the purple jewel in her nose too big.”

“Art is supposed to represent how you see the world, not exactly copy it.”

“I wish I could exactly copy Tabby.” “Why?”

“So I could always have her with me.”

“I know the feeling. She’s the most free-spirited person I’ve ever met. Even when I was really sick, she could make me laugh.”

“It’s done.” Ursa handed Jo the drawing over the seat.

Jo glanced at it as she drove. “This is good! It looks like her.”

“Tabby is my third miracle.”

“Really? Tabby ranks up there with baby birds and kittens?”

“She’s kind of like a baby. She didn’t know she was supposed to grow up, and that makes her more fun than other grown-up people.”

“Good assessment.”

Ursa looked at the approaching exit ramp. “Why are you slowing down?”

“To get gas.”

She looked around in all directions. “Wait . . . where is this?”

“A city called Effingham. I usually stop here. There’s a station that has cheap gas.”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“I’m out of gas. I have to.”

“Can’t you go somewhere else?”

“Why?”

“I don’t like this place.”

Jo looked in the rearview mirror. “Have you been here before?”

She didn’t answer.

“Have you?” Jo said.

“I said I don’t like it because it’s ugly.”

“Maybe it is, but we’ll only be here for ten minutes. You’d better use the bathroom. They have a clean one here.”

“I don’t have to go.”

“You had two Sprites.”

Ursa scrunched down in her seat. “I’m going to sleep.”

Jo fueled the car and used the restroom. She also bought two Necco rolls, a candy she rarely saw in stores. That was the other, more important, reason she stopped at that particular gas station.

Jo thought Ursa was asleep when she returned to the locked car, but Ursa sat up a few miles down the highway. “Want a Necco?” Jo said.

“What is that?”

“A candy I like.” She handed the open roll back to Ursa.

“Can I have a purple one?”

“How far down is it?”

“Only three.”

“Go ahead, but purple isn’t grape if that’s what you’re expecting. It’s clove, and some people don’t like it.”

Ursa pried out the purple wafer and laid it on her tongue. “I like it!”

Half a Necco package later, Ursa said she had to go to the bathroom.

“Why didn’t you go in Effingham?”

“I didn’t have to go when we were there.”

Jo stopped in Salem and took her into a bathroom. They made it all the way to Turkey Creek Road without another bathroom break. After they turned onto the road, Ursa asked if they could see the kittens. Earlier that day, they’d stopped to tell Gabe they were going to Urbana, but when they saw a silver SUV parked in front of the cabin, Jo decided they shouldn’t disturb him and his mother when they had visitors.

As they approached the Nash property, Ursa begged her to stop. It was 7:10, early enough for a quick visit, and Jo wanted to make sure Gabe didn’t have the wrong idea about what had happened the other night. But the silver SUV was still parked at the end of the potholed drive. “Maybe we should leave,” Jo said.

“Gabe won’t care.” Ursa was out the door before Jo could stop her. A woman with a lightly grayed ponytail came through the front door of the cabin. She was in her midforties, her features broad and bullish, and the extra pounds she carried on her tall, powerful frame made her appear more intimidating than overweight. But it was probably the harsh blue of her eyes that made Ursa retreat down the stairs and reach for Jo’s hand. The woman seemed angry with them, and Jo couldn’t imagine why.

“We came by to see Gabe,” Jo said. “I’m Joanna Teale, and this is my friend Ursa. I’m renting the property next door.”

“I know who you are,” the woman said before Jo finished speaking.

“Where is Gabe?” Ursa asked.

“He’s not well,” the woman said.

“He’s sick?” Ursa asked.

The woman made an irritated face.

“Can I see him?” Ursa said.

“You may not.”

“Who are you?” Ursa asked.

Jo was thinking a similar question: Who the hell do you think you are?

“I’m Gabriel’s sister.”

Jo never would have guessed that. She looked nothing like him.

“Can I go see the kittens?” Ursa asked.

“I think it’s best if you leave,” the woman said.

“Is his illness serious?” Jo asked.

She was already walking into the cabin. “I’ll tell him you stopped by.” The door closed.

“She’s mean,” Ursa said when they got in the car.

Or what they’d interpreted as meanness was distress. Maybe Gabe’s sister was upset because he was seriously ill.

Jo took Ursa with her to do fieldwork the next day. The heat was brutal and most of the work was on roads, but Ursa never once complained. She found a new nest with two cardinal eggs. Jo told her she might have to pay her field assistant wages.

After they finished monitoring nests on Turkey Creek Road, Jo drove to the Nash property and parked next to the silver SUV. She and Ursa knocked on the front door, rapping louder when no one answered. Gabe’s mother slowly opened the wooden door, holding her four-legged cane.

“We came to see how Gabe is doing,” Jo said through the screened door.

“Lacey told me you stopped by last night.”

Gabe’s sister must be Lacey, a frilly name that didn’t suit her menacing appearance.

“How is he?” Jo asked.

“Not so well,” Katherine said.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Can we visit with him, maybe just for a few minutes?”

“He wouldn’t want that,” she said.

“Why don’t you ask him? We might cheer him up.”

“I don’t think you will,” Katherine said. “I’m sorry.”

Jo and Ursa watched her close the door with shaking hands. Lacey had come down the road that led to the outbuildings. She was dressed in dirty work clothes and rubber boots smeared with manure. Probably doing Gabe’s usual chores.

“Need something?” she asked.

“We’d hoped to see Gabe,” Jo said.

“Did my mother answer the door?”

“Yes, we talked to her.”

“Damn it,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry. If we’d known you were out back, we’d have—”

“Better if you didn’t. I have lots of crap to deal with, and I mean that literally.” She walked away toward the barns.

Jo was about to call something to her, but everything she wanted to say would sound too combative. She got in the car with Ursa.

“Why won’t they let us see Gabe?” Ursa said.

“I don’t know. Something weird is going on.” She drove to the Kinney house, unable to keep her creeping thoughts at bay. Maybe Gabe was having another breakdown. Even worse, Jo was afraid her awkward interaction with him the other night might have triggered it.

While she and Ursa were out tending to the nests the next day, Jo decided she would be more forceful with Lacey that evening. They finished the fieldwork a little early and arrived on the Nash property about an hour before sunset. “This time we won’t take no for an answer, right?” Jo said.