Ursa jumped out of the car and ran up the porch steps. Jo and Gabe followed close behind. They wanted to see her reaction.
“Can I go in?” Ursa asked.
“Since when do you ask?” Lacey said from behind the screen door.
Ursa grinned. “Do you remember that, Gabe? Remember when we rescued you?”
“I remember it very well,” he said.
“Come in,” Lacey said, pushing back the screen door.
Ursa stepped inside, her expression transforming from shock to joy as a chorus of voices sang “Happy Birthday.” Dark-purple and pale-lavender balloons floated all over the living room, and the log walls and ceiling were festooned with crepe ribbons in the same colors. Signs that read WELCOME BACK, URSA and HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY hovered over a table laden with lunch food and a cake sprinkled with silver stars. Adding yet more liveliness to the festive room, kittens sporting colorful bows were underfoot everywhere.
“I didn’t know it was my birthday!” Ursa said.
Jo hadn’t wanted her mother’s burial to fall on her birthday, but it was the only day she and Lenora could travel to Paducah. Jo and Gabe had planned the party to brighten the day.
Gabe introduced Ursa to George’s younger daughter, her husband, and their high school–age son. Gabe and George’s daughter were already good friends, but George’s other daughter hadn’t yet come around to the idea that she had a love-child brother.
Lacey’s husband introduced himself to Ursa. When Troy shook her hand, a necklace with a crystal star pendant appeared in her palm. “Where did that come from?” he said.
“I don’t know!” Ursa said.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes!”
“Then I guess it’s yours.”
That was how Jo found out Troy Greenfield, Esq., was an amateur magician.
Jo took Ursa aside to break the news that Tabby had really, really wanted to be at the party but couldn’t because her sister was visiting from California. Tabby had to drive her to the airport at the exact time of the party.
“That’s okay,” Ursa said.
Jo handed her a large box wrapped in cat-print paper. “This is from her.”
“Can I open it?”
“You sure can,” Jo said.
Ursa sat on the floor, ripped away the paper, and lifted the top of the box. Beaming, she withdrew a big, soft purple creature with a wide toothy grin and dangly arms and legs. Like the alien in the song, it had one central eye, a long horn, and two wings. She squashed the weird thing in her arms. “A purple people eater! He’s soft like a pillow!”
She opened her other presents: small binoculars and a bird field guide from Jo, a middle-grade book about stream life from George, a watercolor set from Lacey, a lavender sweater with a white kitten face from George’s daughter, and a hardbound copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with gorgeous colored illustrations from Katherine.
“Shoot, I forgot to get you a gift,” Gabe said.
Ursa smiled, aware that he was joking.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to give you something.” He looked around, rubbing his chin. He walked across the room and scooped Juliet and Hamlet into his hands. “How about these guys? I hear your new foster parents will let you have cats.”
Ursa looked up at Jo. “Really? Can I?”
“I guess those foster parents aren’t so bad after all,” Jo said.
Ursa took the kittens and buried her face in their fur.
“Seems you’ve positively influenced Juliet and Hamlet’s fates,” Gabe said.
“It was my quark things,” Ursa said.
“Wait,” he said, “I thought we were done with quark things?”
“How can we be? I’m still making good things happen.”
“You are?”
“Jo said I shouldn’t talk about Ursa like I’m not her, but just because I pretend I’m Ursa doesn’t mean I’m not an alien.”
Jo and Gabe exchanged a glance, and Ursa, as usual, perceived their unease. “It’s okay,” she told Jo. “I’m still doing what you said.”
“What did Jo say?” Gabe asked.
“She said the alien could be kind of like Ursa’s soul, so Ursa and the alien could be a whole person.”
“That’s beautiful,” Katherine said.
“It is,” Ursa said. “But it’s more like the other way around: Ursa is the soul of me, the one who came from the stars.”
Everyone was quiet, caught in the spell of Ursa’s strange magic.
“Would an alien with a human soul have any interest in birthday cake?” George asked.
“Yes!” Ursa said.
“Thank god,” he said. “I thought I would have to eat it all myself.”
They lit nine candles and sang “Happy Birthday” to Ursa again. Jo hated to leave right after lunch, but she wanted Ursa to arrive at her new home before dark. She and Gabe packed her presents and put the two kittens in a cat carrier Lacey had bought for them.
When they walked outside with the carrier, Ursa cried when she saw the kittens’ mother. “She doesn’t want me to take her babies!”
“They don’t drink her milk anymore,” Gabe said.
The orange tabby rubbed her body on Ursa’s shins.
“You see?” he said. “She’s telling you to take them.”
After everyone hugged Ursa and Jo goodbye on the porch, they went inside to give Gabe time alone with them.
“Did George and your mother tell you the wedding date?” Jo said.
He put the cat carrier in the back seat of the Honda. “Romantics that they are, they said they’re going to wait until the leaves turn color, and they don’t know exactly when that will be.”
“I’ll need some advance warning,” Jo said.
“I told them that.”
“Can I go to George and Katherine’s wedding?” Ursa asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabe said. “It depends on whether your foster parents will let you.”
“They will,” Ursa said.
“Are you sure?” Jo said. “I hear they’re the kind of people who’ll make you eat green stuff.”
“If they do, I might run away.”
“Nope, we’re done with that for good,” Gabe said. He buckled her into the back seat and hugged her. “I’ll miss you, bunny.”
“Not for very long,” Ursa said.
“Why not?”
“The quark things.”
He stood back from the car and looked at Jo. “Seems our fates are still tossing on a sea of quarks.”
“It’s been quite a ride,” Jo said. They kissed and held each other. They didn’t know when they’d next be together. Gabe had to harvest and put up the farm’s fall crops, and Jo would be teaching and taking classes during the fall semester. But she would drive down for Katherine and George’s wedding no matter how busy she was. She whispered in Gabe’s ear, “I don’t think I can wait until the leaves turn color.”
“I know. Maybe I’ll steal Ursa’s paint set and get to work on these damn leaves.”
Jo started the car and drove away, watching him recede in the mirrors.
“Don’t worry, you’ll see him before the wedding,” Ursa said.
“You seem much more confident about your quarks these days.”
“I’m better at it now.”
During the long drive, Ursa read her birthday books, cuddled with her purple people eater, and played with the kittens through the carrier door. When they left the interstate, Ursa peered out the car windows, taking in her new hometown. Jo turned the car onto her pretty tree-lined street, burnished gold with late-afternoon sun. Before she turned into the driveway, she paused to appreciate the white clapboard house, wreathed in a late-summer bloom of flowers.
Tabby stepped onto the porch, smiling and waving.
Ursa climbed out of the car, trying to balance the kittens in her arms.
“You’d better put them back in the cage,” Jo said. “If they jump down, they may get lost.” Jo looked to Tabby for help with the kittens, but she was talking seriously to someone on her phone.
“They won’t get lost,” Ursa said. She tucked the squirming kittens against her chest. “I wish Frances Ivey’s cats were here. They could be Juliet and Hamlet’s foster moms.”
“It’s a good thing Frances isn’t here. She said no kids, and we haven’t told her about you yet.”
“Something is going to happen to fix that,” Ursa said.
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
As they arrived at the walkway, Tabby ran down the steps. “You’ll never guess what just happened!”
“Tabby! How about you say hello to my foster daughter?”
“Right . . .” She pocketed her phone and pressed a kiss on Ursa’s cheek. “Happy birthday, awesomest girl in the universe.”
“I like the purple people eater you gave me,” Ursa said.
“He’s from Purpletonia, a faraway planet,” Tabby said. “Wow, how cute are those kittens?”
“Gabe gave them to me.”
“So what happened?” Jo said.
“Frances Ivey called—I just hung up with her. You won’t believe it. She’s going to marry Nancy and stay in Maine! She wants to know if we’re interested in buying the house.”