Where the Forest Meets the Stars(11)

“Don’t turn on the stove while I’m gone,” she said.
“You’re going to let me stay inside?”
“I am—for now. We’re going to talk about what to do when I get back, okay?”
She didn’t answer.
“Don’t mess with that desk while I’m gone,” Jo said.
The girl looked at the desk piled with books, journals, and papers. “What is all that?”
“It’s my science stuff. Stay out of it.”
She followed Jo onto the screened porch. Little Bear was curled in a tight ball on the rug, his wary gaze on Jo as she walked to the screen door.
“Remember, don’t let the dog in the house,” Jo said.
“I know.”
Jo put up her hood and bustled through the steady rain to the driveway. The girl watched her load the car and get in, her small body ghostly and distorted through the translucence of the rain-soaked porch screens.
During the forty-minute drive to the small town of Vienna—pronounced Vī-enna by locals—the rain reduced to a drizzle, though the sky was dark with a threat of more. Downtown Vienna looked like places she’d seen in old movies, and something about that was oddly comforting. As she cruised the mostly empty streets, two old-timers seated under a store awning lifted their hands at her, and she returned the greeting. She passed the sheriff’s station on her way to the Laundromat.
She sat in her usual blue plastic chair facing the window while her laundry churned in two washers. She brought up Tabby’s face on her phone contacts, a photo of her wearing striped cat ears, a plastic goldfish dangling like a cigarette from her lips. Tabby had been Jo’s closest friend since sophomore year of undergrad when they were lab partners, and she’d also stayed at the University of Illinois for her graduate work. She’d gotten into the veterinary school, a very good program, but she often questioned why she hadn’t switched to a school with better surrounding scenery than corn and soybean fields.
“Hey, Jojo,” Tabby answered on the third ring. “How’s Dawg Town?”
A town named Vienna in rural Illinois was hilarious to her, and she was certain it must be more about dawgs, Vienna-brand hot dogs, than the capital of Austria.
“How’d you know I’m in Vienna?” Jo said.
“I only ever hear from you when you’re doing laundry. I also know it’s raining down there because you’d wear the same disgusting clothes until they fell apart rather than do laundry on a nice day when you could be working.”
“I didn’t realize I was so predictable,” Jo said.
“You are. Which means you’re working your ass off even though your doctors told you to take it easy.”
“I took it easy for two whole years. I need to work.”
“Those two years weren’t easy, Jo,” Tabby said in a quiet voice.
Jo stared out the misty Laundromat window at a puddle in a crater of broken asphalt, its surface dimpled with rain. “Today is my mom’s birthday,” she said.
“Is it?” Tabby said. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Liar.”
She was. She’d called Tabby to ask her advice about the girl but had instead blurted out the bit about her mother’s birthday.
“Pick up your water,” Tabby said.
“Why?”
“We’re doing a toast.”
Jo lifted her battered blue water bottle, predictably situated next to her.
“Ready?” Tabby said.
“Ready,” Jo said.
“Happy birthday to Eleanor Teale, the flower whisperer who made everyone and everything around her bloom. Her light is still with us, growing love across the universe.”
Jo raised her bottle to the gray sky and drank. “Thanks,” she said, wiping fingers on her lower lashes. “That was a good toast.”
“El was one of the coolest people I ever met,” Tabby said. “Not to mention my surrogate mom.”
“She loved you,” Jo said.
“I know. Shit . . . now you’re making me cry, and I was trying to help you feel better.”
“You did,” Jo said. “But guess who’s coming to visit today?”
“Don’t tell me . . .”
“Yeah, Tanner.”
“I wish I was there so I could kick his ass!”
“He deserves no such attention.”
“Why would he fucking dare come there?”
“I doubt he wanted to. He and two other grad students are at a workshop with my advisor in Chattanooga. They’re going to break their drive back to campus at Kinney Cottage and stay overnight.”
“You have enough room for four more people in that house?”
“Not beds, but most biologists will sleep anywhere.”
“Put Tanner in the woods. On an anthill.”
Where would Jo put the girl? During the drive from the cottage, she’d come up with only one possible solution. But if that didn’t work . . .
“Are you there?” Tabby said.
“I’m here,” Jo said. “This weird thing happened two nights ago . . .”
“What?”
“A girl showed up at the house, and she wouldn’t leave.”
“How old is she?”
“She won’t say. I think she’s around nine or ten.”
“Jesus, Jo. Just tell her to go home.”
“I tried that, obviously. But then I saw bruises.”
“Child-abuse kind of bruises?”
“I think so.”
“You have to call the cops!”
“I did. But when the deputy got there, she ran away.”