in the woods must have been amazing.”
After a silence he said, “Yeah, it was amazing, but not in the way you’re thinking.”
Jo propped on her elbow and tried to see him in the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” He rolled over, turning his back to her.
17
The windows rattled. Jo opened her eyes and tried to make sense of what she’d heard until another long rumble of thunder shook the panes. She put her hand on Ursa to make sure she was breathing and picked up her phone. It was 6:03. After a few minutes she got enough signal to check the weather. The remnants of a tropical storm in the Gulf were hitting Southern Illinois, and rain was expected until at least noon. More thunder rolled in the distance.
“Just what we need, another storm,” Gabe said.
“It is what we need. I get to stay in bed. And that’s good for Ursa.” She turned off the alarm on her phone.
“You don’t work when it rains?”
“It’s not good to pull birds off their nests in rainy weather.”
“Makes sense.”
“Gabe?” Ursa said. She sat up and stared blearily at him.
“Go back to sleep,” Jo said. “It’s raining. No fieldwork.”
“Good.” She curled on her side with her arm around Gabe and fell back asleep.
“Well, guess I can’t get up now,” he said.
“You can’t,” Jo said. “Rainy mornings are the best.”
They slept for two more hours. Ursa woke first, laying one hand on Jo and the other on Gabe. “This is like a nest. I feel like a baby bird.”
“Bet you’re as hungry as one, too,” Jo said.
“I am, but I never want to leave the nest.”
Gabe sat up. “Half your nest is going to the bathroom.”
“Gabe!”
“Sorry, birdie. I’ll brew some coffee. Stay in bed if you want,” he told Jo.
“Nope,” Jo said. “I’m aiming in the same direction.”
Ursa’s nest moved to the kitchen, where her beak was stuffed with fried eggs, half an English muffin, and orange slices. After breakfast cleanup, Gabe worked on the clogged kitchen sink with tools he had in his truck. He ended up taking apart all the pipes. He was putting them back together when Little Bear started barking outside. From the porch, Jo watched Lacey stop her silver SUV next to Gabe’s pickup. She marched down the front sidewalk, ignoring the steady rain and Little Bear’s attempts at scaring her off. “I need to see Gabe,” she announced, striding into the house.
“Come on in,” Jo said to her back. Lacey stopped in the kitchen doorway. She looked at Gabe on the floor fastening pipes and Ursa seated at the table drawing an indigo bunting with her new colored pencils. “Isn’t this the picture of domestic bliss,” she said.
Ursa looked like a cave troll had entered the room, and Gabe scrambled to his feet.
“I guess her broken sink was more important than me leaving,” Lacey said.
“I guess it was,” he said.
Lacey focused on Ursa. “I hear you got hurt yesterday.”
Ursa nodded slightly.
“What happened?”
Ursa glanced nervously at Jo. “There was a storm. A branch fell . . .”
“What did your parents say about that? I bet they were worried.”
“Is there a reason you’re here?” Gabe asked.
“Several reasons,” Lacey said. “Thanks to your raid on our kitchen last night, we need groceries.”
“There’s plenty of food in the big freezer,” he said.
“Well, there isn’t toilet paper in the freezer, and we need that, too. And Mom’s out of that cream she puts on her eczema. She’s upset you haven’t gotten it yet.”
“I’ll go as soon as I’m done here,” he said.
“Too late. I’m on my way.”
“I thought you were leaving?”
“I thought so, too, but there’s a lot that has to be done at the cabin while you’re screwing around over here at Kinney’s.” Nodding at the sink, she said, “George will be grateful to you for fixing it. Maybe you should hire on as his handyman.”
Lacey sniffed a soft laugh before she left the room, and Gabe’s eyes took on a strange glassiness. He turned away, staring out the window, his hands clenched on the sink edge. Little Bear barked at Lacey’s departure, and Gabe turned around, all traces of anger, or whatever it was, gone from his eyes.
“What was with that dig about being George Kinney’s handyman?” Jo asked.
“Just Lacey being Lacey.” He got on the floor to finish the plumbing.
For the next two hours, Jo entered data from her nest logs into her laptop, and Gabe showed Ursa how to play war and solitaire with an old deck of cards.