Where the Forest Meets the Star - Glendy Vanderah Page 0,10

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

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