Where the Forest Meets the Stars(37)

“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.”
“Jo doesn’t like to get her data sheets wet,” Ursa said.
Jo walked to the edge of the pool.
“Are you coming in?” Ursa asked.
“I have to now that you said that.”
“Said what?”
“That I don’t like to get my data sheets wet. It makes me sound like a dork.”
Ursa cheered and jumped on Gabe’s back, clinging to him like a baby monkey.
Jo took off her hiking boots and rolled her field pants to her knees. The problem was, she didn’t want to get her data sheets wet when she went back to work, and the two layers of shirts that kept nettles and mosquitoes away from her skin would never dry.
She unfastened the top buttons and pulled both long-sleeved shirt and tee over her head. Maybe she did it because she’d told Tanner she was happy with what she looked like. Or because her mother had said, Live passionately for both of us . Maybe she took off the shirts because she wanted to show Gabe that she knew something about how to “recover and move on.” Whatever the reason, the shirts were off and the cold water she was splashing onto her hot chest felt great.