Suspicion tinged his green eyes. “How did you see them if she had on pajamas?”
“I let her shower here.”
His eyes narrowed even more.
“Like I said, she was dirty. And I had to keep her busy while I waited for you to arrive. I gave her dinner, too.”
The way he was looking at her, as if she’d done something wrong, was infuriating.
“I still don’t see how you came up with her being homeless,” he said.
“By homeless, I meant she’s afraid to go home.”
“So . . . she isn’t homeless.”
“I don’t know what she is!” Jo said. “She has bruises. Someone is hurting her. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“Did she say someone hurts her?”
The girl’s alien story would muddle the already exasperating situation. “She wouldn’t tell me how she got the bruises. She wouldn’t tell me anything, not even her name.”
“You asked?”
“Yes, I asked.”
He nodded.
“Do you want a description of her?”
“All right.” He didn’t take out a notebook, only nodded more as Jo described the girl.
“Will you look for her—in the morning when it gets light?”
“If she ran, she doesn’t want to be found.”
“So what? She needs help.”
His contemplation of her seemed judgmental. “What kind of help do you think she needs?”
“Obviously she needs to be removed from whoever hurts her.”
“Send her to a foster home?” he said.
“If necessary.”
He mused for a moment, stroking his fingertips on his scar as if it itched. “I’m gonna tell you something,” he said, “and you might take it wrong, but I’ll say it anyway. One of my friends in middle school was taken from his mother because she drank and pretty much let him run as wild as he wanted. He was put with people who took foster kids for the state money—which happens more than you’d think—and he ended up a lot worse off than if he’d been with his mama. The foster father hit him, and the mother verbally abused him. My friend died from an overdose when he was fifteen.”
“What are you saying . . . you think she should be left in an abusive home?”
“Now, I didn’t say that, did I?”
“You implied it.”
“What I implied was, don’t pull that girl outta the pan and drop her into the fire. Those bruises might be from climbing a fence or falling out of a tree, and if you turn her in, she’ll probably say that even if it isn’t true. Kids are smarter than we think. They know how to survive the shit that’s dealt them better than some welfare worker who never spent a day in one of those kids’ shoes.”
Were those the unspoken rules Jo had sought? Or were they only the opinions of one bitter man who’d lost a boyhood friend?
“I guess this means you won’t look for her?” Jo said.
“What would you have us do, get the dogs out after her?”
She showed the deputy to the door.
4
Jo took a flashlight out the back door and looked for the girl. A front that was expected to bring rain the next day had moved in, its clouds conquering the moon and stars. Jo already smelled a hint of rain in the warm humid air. But she found no trace of the girl.
The rain arrived a few hours later, a hard patter on the cottage that woke Jo out of a deep sleep. She thought of the girl, possibly alone in the dark woods in the rain, and she wished she hadn’t called the sheriff. She looked at her phone. 2:17 a.m. Just a few hours into her mother’s birthday. She would have been fifty-one.
She went to the bathroom, more for distraction than for need. As she washed, she leaned toward the sink mirror, assessing the healthy glow of her skin and sun-lightened streaks in her hair. Her face was thinner and her hair still wasn’t long enough to pull back, but she almost looked like herself again.
Almost. The hazel eyes in the mirror mocked her. But who was reflected there, the old Jo or the new almost Jo? She gripped the sink and bowed her head, staring into the dark tunnel of the drain. Maybe this was how it would be from now on, two versions of herself living inside one body. Jo looked up at the woman in the mirror as she flicked the switch, purging her with darkness.
The storm continued all morning, and she couldn’t work in the rain. She slept past her usual waking time, until about an hour past dawn. After she dressed, drank her coffee, and ate cereal, she gathered the laundry, a rain-day ritual. The alien child’s clothes were draped over the laundry basket. Jo stuffed them into the duffel bag along with her dirty clothing, towels, and a bottle of detergent.
She packed a courier bag with her laptop and enough raw data for an hour’s worth of data entry. As she locked the front door behind her, something moved in her peripheral vision. The old afghan she kept on the wicker porch couch was stretched over a long lump the exact dimensions of the alien. She was pulling the blanket over her head, trying to hide.
Jo tried to transform the intensity of her relief into anger. But she couldn’t. “I guess you haven’t figured out how to hide your human body yet,” she said to the lump.
The edge of the afghan came down from the girl’s pale face. “I haven’t,” she said.
“What are Hetrayen bodies like?”
The girl considered for a few seconds. “We look like starlight. It’s not exactly a body.”
Creative answer. Jo pondered what to do. If she called the sheriff, the girl would run again. The only possibility would be to lock her in a room until the deputy arrived. Jo wasn’t up for that, and even if she were, the house didn’t have any rooms that couldn’t be opened from the inside.
The girl intuited Jo’s thoughts. “I’m leaving now. I only came back because I couldn’t see to go nowhere last night.”
Though the girl tried to hide it, Jo saw a shadow of the distress she had experienced when she ran from the house. With clouds covering the moon and stars, she wouldn’t have been able to see her hand if she held it in front of her face. She had stayed near the cottage lights.
The girl sat up and pushed the blanket aside. “Usually I sleep in that old shed back there, but rain was dripping on me.”
“That’s where you went the night you came to my fire?”
She nodded. “There’s a bed out there. I share it with Little Bear.”
When Jo had moved into the cottage, the one full-size mattress that was left in the house over winter had been ruined by nesting mice. Many biology students would have used the urine-tainted bed anyway, but Jo wasn’t quite that tolerant. She’d dragged the smelly, chewed mattress out to the shed and used some of her research money to buy a cut-rate queen mattress.
“You shouldn’t go in that shed,” Jo said. “It looks like it’s going to fall down any day.”
“I know. There’s big holes in the roof. And now our bed is all wet.” She’d said the last tragically, as though the foul mattress had been all the security she had in the world.
“Are you hungry?” Jo asked.
The girl eyed her suspiciously.
“How about some pancakes?”
“I bet you’re tricking me again,” she said.
“I’m not. I’m on my way out, and I don’t want to leave you here hungry.”
The girl mournfully stared into the rainy forest, considering what to do. Don’t pull that girl outta the pan and drop her into the fire, the deputy had said. Were those really her only options? Jo had a sudden urge to bundle the child into her arms and hold her. “I have syrup,” she said.
The girl looked up at her. “I heard syrup on pancakes is good.”
“I can’t believe you remembered to pretend you’ve never had it.”
“Were you trying to trick me?”
“I wasn’t.” Jo returned the key to the lock and opened it. “Come on, then.”
After the girl stuffed herself with pancakes and orange juice, she begged Jo to let Little Bear come in from the rain and eat a pancake on the porch. Jo relented on the condition that the mutt and his fleas didn’t enter the house. Wearing Jo’s raincoat, the girl went to the shed with a pancake to lure the dog. The hungry dog slunk onto the porch to get the food, but only when Jo retreated into the house. “If he pees or poops out there, you have to clean it up,” Jo said.
“I will. Can I give him a bowl of water?”
“Sure. I’m going to the Laundromat now.”
“Why isn’t there a wash machine here?”
“I guess Kinney doesn’t want to waste his money on one when this place is only rented for a few months of the year.”
“Is that why there’s no TV?”
“Probably.”
“You could bring your own.”
“There’s no cable or internet,” Jo said.
“Why not?”
“Kinney is from a generation of biologists who believe you work, eat, and sleep when you’re immersed in the natural world.”
“How long will you be at the Laundromat?”
“A few hours.” She’d been trying to decide whether to lock the girl out of the house while she was gone. Instead, she put her binoculars in her bag with her laptop. Those and her wallet were the only two items she owned that were worth stealing.