Where the Forest Meets the Stars(22)
“That’s awful. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be. I got over it a long time ago,” he said in a hostile tone that contradicted his assertion. “I stopped hoping she would like me the day she abandoned me in the woods. I was picking flowers for my mom, and she just walked away. I still remember how terrified I was.”
“How old were you?”
“Five. It took my mother an hour to find me. She’d asked Lacey to take me for a walk while she worked on a poem. Lacey lied, said I’d wandered off. And she went on and on about how I’d have found my way home if I was smarter.”
“God, I hope she never had kids of her own.”
“She has two sons, and she spoiled them rotten. They’re both in college now.”
“Does she have a job?”
“She kept writing while she did the stay-at-home mom thing, but none of her books ever took off. She felt like she’d disappointed my dad. But she shouldn’t have chosen that field just to please him—especially once she realized writing wasn’t her talent.”
Ursa had returned during their conversation. “Are you talking about Lacey?”
“Yes,” Jo said.
“Why did you yell when I was over there?” she asked Gabe.
“I was just fooling around.”
“I thought Lacey was here and she came to make you leave.”
“She can’t make me,” he said.
“Will you stay?”
“I’ll go soon. I’m sure you two are tired.”
“You have to stay!” Ursa said. “If you go back, they’ll keep you prisoner again. But this time, they’ll lock the door and we won’t be able to rescue you.”
“It’s not as dire as all that,” he said.
“Please? Jo wants you to stay. Jo, tell him not to go!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go back,” Jo said. “Show your sister you have a life of your own. And your mother needs to learn that, too. Why doesn’t she ever stay with Lacey in Saint Louis so you can have a break? Or they could hire someone to help her. Who voted you the forever caregiver? You’re way too young for that burden.”
Gabe stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I tend to spew opinions when I’m pissed.”
“Don’t apologize. Everything you said is true.”
“Then teach them a lesson and sleep on the couch. Ursa can sleep with me, if that’s okay with her.”
“Yes, it’s okay!” Ursa said, thrusting her arms in the air. “And tomorrow Gabe can come with us to Summers Creek! It’s the best place, Gabe! It’s like a magic forest!”
“I’ve never seen a magic forest,” he said.
“It’s pretty damn magical,” Jo said.
15
“Hey, Jo . . .”
Gabe stood thirty yards away in chest-high vegetation. “What?” she called.
“I think there’s a nest over here that lost its tag.”
She waded through the brush toward him. “I don’t believe this—did you really find a nest your first hour out?”
“It has three white eggs in it.”
“That’s an indigo bunting nest!”
Ursa heard what was going on and ran over. She and Jo arrived next to Gabe at the same time and looked down at the nest built in cane stalks. “Congratulations on your first nest,” Jo said. “But damn it, now I have to pay you field assistant wages, too.”
“It probably beats selling eggs,” he said.
“We’re all ornithologists now!” Ursa said.
Gabe touched one finger to a tiny egg.
“It’s kind of a rush, isn’t it?” Jo said.
“I’ve seen nests before, but finding one when you’re looking for one is way better.”
“Watch out, nest searching can become addictive. There’s something about it . . . you’re uncovering these little secrets of the wild.”
He smiled.
“Do I sound like a kook?”
“No. I totally get it.”
He watched Ursa record location, date, and status on a new data sheet as Jo dictated. She carefully printed Gabriel Nash on the FOUND BY line.
“I’ve contributed a data point to science. My existence is no longer meaningless,” he said.
Jo liked that. “We’d better go,” she said. “The parents are going nuts, and we don’t want to bring in a predator.”
“No predator may touch my nest,” Gabe called into the forest as they walked away.
“Maybe saying that will be magic that protects it,” Ursa said.
“That could be a new line of research,” he said. “The Use of Magic in Preventing Predation on Bird Nests.”
“I’m sure you’ll get a grant from the National Science Foundation,” Jo said.
“Ursa Major will be my coauthor.”
“Yeah, you’ll definitely get funded,” Jo said.
Gabe’s beginner’s luck didn’t continue at the next study site, but he had high hopes for their last study area, Ursa’s magic forest. They arrived at Summers Creek in the early afternoon. Gabe was immediately charmed by the wooded ravines, mossy waterfalls, and ferny rocks of the burbling stream. He told Ursa he felt the magic, and every so often he’d claim he saw a nymph or a fairy or a unicorn. Ursa started seeing phantasms, too, and soon the two of them were working harder at inventing fantastical creatures than looking for nests. Jo loved it, even if it was a little distracting.
Midway through their work, they sat at the usual big, clear pool to eat the second half of their lunch. Before Jo perched on her favorite flat rock to eat, Ursa was in the water, barefoot and grabbing at fish. “You should eat your sandwich before you get your clothes all wet,” Jo called to her.
“I don’t want to,” she said, belly flopping into the deepest water.
“So much for my disciplinary skills,” Jo said, handing Gabe a turkey-and-cheddar sandwich.
“She’s a good kid. She doesn’t need discipline.”
“Other than the fact that she won’t tell me where she’s from no matter how much I beg?”
He sat on the rock next to her. “She told you where she’s from.”
“Right, the big nest in the sky.”
“Sometimes I can almost believe it,” he said. “She’s not like any kid I ever knew.”
“I know. And there’s still no one looking for her.”
“You check the internet?”
“I do, but it gets harder every time. I’m afraid I’ll see her on one of those pages, and she’ll go back to the idiots who never even reported her missing.”
“They won’t get her back. She’ll go to foster care.”
Jo faced him. “How much longer are we going to wait until we involve the sheriff again? It’s been almost two weeks.”
His hand holding the sandwich slackened as if he’d lost his appetite. “I thought about that a lot the last few days.”
“I think about it all the time. We have to figure out a way to get her to the sheriff.”
“Yeah.”
They finished their sandwiches in gloomy silence, watching Ursa play in the water. Jo handed Gabe a Nalgene bottle filled with water and opened another for herself. “How did your sister and mother react when you went home to change clothes this morning?”
“Lacey went ballistic because she wants to go back to Saint Louis.”
“Did your mother say anything?”
“She was too surprised to say much.”
“Why would she be surprised?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t. So you had a breakdown when you faced a high-pressure university. Why does that make your life more expendable than Lacey’s? Why can’t you take a day off with friends? They purposely don’t let you recover and move on because they’ve gotten used to you being the full-time caregiver.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“I don’t think there is.”
He looked in her eyes. “I’m sick. I can’t just ‘recover and move on.’”
“If you believe that, you won’t.”
“Like most people who’ve never experienced it, your view of depression is optimistically misguided.” He set the water at Jo’s feet and walked over to Ursa. She was in ankle-deep water near the creek bank trying to catch something in the convoluted roots of a huge sycamore.
“Did you see that?” she said. “I caught a big frog, but he got away.”
“So much for your handsome prince,” he said.
“Who wants a stupid handsome prince?”
“What about a smart handsome prince?”
“There are no princes in this magic forest,” she said.
“That’s modern.”
She waded into deeper water. “Are you coming in?”
“I think I will,” he said. “I feel all prickly.”
“That’s from the nettles.”
“I know. The word nettled has taken on a whole new meaning for me.” He took off his boots and long-sleeved University of Chicago T-shirt but left his jeans on. Jo couldn’t help staring at his bare torso, lean and strong from working on the farm. When he’d waded deep enough into the pool, he ducked down and disappeared. He came up hooting and flinging water from his hair. “It’s surprisingly cold!” he called to Jo. “You should come in.”