Jo slipped her feet into flats and grabbed her keys and a flashlight. Once again, she found Little Bear closed in the screen room with an empty bowl. She left him there, frustrated and barking at her departure.
She shut off the Honda’s headlights and turned on parking lights as she arrived at the Nash entry road. She negotiated the ruts at slow speed to minimize noise, and she killed all headlights when she approached the cabin. The house was dark except for a porch light, and all the doors and windows were closed to keep in the air-conditioning. Gabe and his mother probably wouldn’t hear her car if she drove slowly.
Using the utility pole light to guide her, she crept down the road to the livestock buildings. She parked and pushed the car door closed with gentle pressure. She didn’t turn on the flashlight until she was inside the barn. She walked around the stacks of hay bales and shined her light in the direction of the kitten nest. The mother cat blinked and mewed at her, but Ursa wasn’t there. Jo searched the barn, illuminating every niche and corner. No Ursa.
Outside, she looked at the other buildings: a cow shed with two small pastures, a muddy pig field, a chicken coop with a large enclosed outdoor run, and a small wooden building that probably was Gabe’s toolshed. Jo doubted Ursa would go in the chicken coop. That left the cow and toolsheds. But she was afraid to sneak around any more than she had on a gun owner’s property. She had to get Gabe.
She walked the barn road to the cabin. She stopped in the shadows near the pole light and looked at the cabin, recalling the night she and Ursa had visited Gabe in his bedroom. They’d turned after the living room, and Gabe’s room had been the second small one on the left. Jo walked the left wall of the log cabin past the big living room window and the small window of the first bedroom. She stopped at the next one. Hoping Gabe wasn’t trigger-happy at night, she lightly rapped on the window with one knuckle. Nothing happened. She knocked louder, and a light came on. The curtains parted, and Gabe appeared in the rectangle of light.
She reacted to the sight of him. More powerfully than she would have expected.
She stepped closer to the window and waved. He unlocked the window and pushed it up. “Gone again?”
“Yes. And I already checked the kitten barn.”
“Figures she wouldn’t be there. She’s too smart for that. I’ll meet you out front.”
She walked to the porch and waited at the base of the stairs. He came out minutes later wearing a dark T-shirt, work jeans, and his leather slip-on shoes. He’d brought a flashlight.
“I’m really sorry,” she said.
“I hope you see this is getting out of hand,” he said.
“I know. Did I wake your mother?”
“No.” He walked past her and headed for the barns. Jo followed in silence. They checked the toolshed first, the cow barn next. He looked in the chicken coop, rousing disgruntled clucks. He stood in front of the coop, pondering.
“Maybe she finally ran away,” Jo said. “She barely said a word today.”
“She knows she’s worn out the welcome mat.”
“Do you think she’s gone?”
“No. It’s more of her games.”
“Let’s not forget she’s a scared little kid.”
“Yeah.” He walked away in a new direction.
“Where are we going?”
“The tree house.”
Jo followed him about a hundred yards down a trail until his flashlight hit a decayed sign painted with the faded, childishly printed words GABE’S HOMESTEAD. Below it, on the same stake, was a broken-off board that read NO TRESSP. He shined his flashlight up a huge oak tree onto an incredible tree house. It was high, three times Gabe’s height, and supported by four tall log beams. An enchanting spiral staircase with sinuous branch banisters led to its entrance.
“This is the best tree house I ever saw,” she said.
“I loved this place. My dad and I built it when I was seven. We constructed it on timbers so we wouldn’t hurt the tree.” He walked to the staircase that encircled the trunk and thunked his foot on the first stair. “Still in good shape, too.”
“Ursa knew about it?”
“She spent hours up here. This is where she stayed out of my mother’s sight when I sold eggs.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t want to sell eggs with you.”
“She did.”
“Why didn’t you let her?”
He faced her. “Funny you don’t think of these things.”
“What?”
“I was afraid to have her out there on the road. What if whoever she ran from saw her out there? I’d have to let him take her, and I’d have no idea if I was doing the right thing.”
“That makes sense.”
“You need a little more of that.”
The jab hurt, but she was in no mood to retaliate. “What sense can there be when I’m under an alien’s control?”
The scowl he’d worn since he came out of the cabin relaxed into a slight smile.
“You may not believe this,” she said, “but before star-girl showed up, I used to be a sensible person, almost to the point of annoyance.”
“I know the feeling,” he said. “I’ve been fighting a riptide of quarks since I set eyes on her.” He held his hand out. “You go up first. I want to be behind you in case you trip.”
She didn’t need his help, but she accepted his warm hand and caution as reconciliation. But when he released her fingers, he touched her again, on the waist this time, lightly guiding her up the stairs. Was he being a gentleman, or did he crave physical contact with her the way she did from him? Based on the data she’d so far collected, she supposed the former was more probable.
The handrail was sturdy, and good thing, because the treads spiraled dangerously high. Jo arrived at the top, shining her light into a room divided by two large boughs of the oak. A small rope hammock was strung between a wall and one of the trunks. A child-size chair and desk made of what looked like wood pallets sat on the other side of the space. The room opened to two views of the forest, one balcony facing the incoming trail and the other looking down a beautiful wooded ravine. Jo shined her light into the gorge, imagining little Gabe as king of all he surveyed.
“Weird,” Gabe said behind her.
She turned around. His flashlight illuminated the small desk. On its surface were two pencils with erasers, an illustrated book of fairy tales, and several pieces of white printer paper weighed down with rocks. The rocks threw sparks of light from crystals embedded in them, the kind Ursa liked to collect.
Jo looked at Ursa’s pencil drawings with Gabe: a cartoonish sketch of a frog, a very realistic rendering of a newborn kitten, and the drawing he had pulled out from beneath them. It was a picture of a rectangular grave colored dark with pencil. A white cross with no lettering stood over the burial dirt. Next to the grave, Ursa had written I love you on one side and I am sorry on the other.
“There’s a person in that grave,” Jo said.
“I know.” He picked up the paper, and they examined the grave. Ursa had drawn a prone woman with closed eyes and shoulder-length hair before she colored the dark dirt over her. “Jesus,” Gabe said. “Are you thinking what I am?”
“Someone she cared about died, and that’s why she’s on her own.”
He nodded.
Jo took the drawing out of his hand. “I wonder why she wrote I am sorry.”
“I know. It’s creepy,” he said.
“Please don’t tell me you think that little girl killed someone.”
“Who knows what happened? That’s why you should have taken her to the police right away.”
Jo returned the drawing to the table. “You know, I’m tired of your sudden virtue. I think you’ve forgotten you were the one who decided we should keep her until we found out more about her.”
“You’re doing it again,” he said.
“What am I doing?”
“You attack me to avoid the problem with Ursa.”
“Who avoids the problem of Ursa more than you? You dumped us like we were stray cats you didn’t want to deal with anymore—only I know you’d have treated cats better.”
He came close, right up in her face. “That was a shitty thing to say!”
“It was a shitty thing to do.”
“I had to do something. We’re already in big trouble. Don’t you get that, Jo? We could be arrested for kidnapping and put in jail.”
She kept her eyes on his. “That’s not why you dumped us.”
He couldn’t maintain eye contact. And that revealed much more than he’d tried to hide by looking away. Aware that she was onto him, he turned to leave.
Without thinking, she grabbed his forearm. “Don’t,” she said.
He faced her, his features carefully sculpted. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t close yourself off from me. We need to talk about what’s happening between us.”
His detached facade faded into outright fear.
At least he knew what she was talking about. “Can’t we be honest with each other?”
He stepped back, pulling his arm free of her hand. “I have been honest. I’m fucked up. You know I can’t do this.”
“You aren’t fucked up.”
“No?” He wrapped his arms around his chest. “I’ve never been with a woman. How fucked up is that?”