The little girl Vanessa was frightened of the hens at first and Jo had to show her how to shoo them away in order to get the eggs. They’d taken a walk out into the pasture field earlier. Vanessa had tried to pet the goats but the goats were having none of it, particularly the billy, who didn’t like people in general and definitely didn’t like to be touched by them. The pony—Grace’s pony—was of a more affable nature and Vanessa had patted her neck and run her hand over the stiff bristles of her mane.
They walked to the pond to look at the fat bullfrogs where they rested in the mud, and the turtles lined up on the fallen log where the creek flowed into the pond. The grass there was knee-deep and the cattails growing in the pond were five feet tall. At one point, Jo realized that Vanessa was on the opposite side of the pond from her. As Jo started walking toward her, the little girl gave her a look of indignation.
“I’m not going to run.”
“Good,” Jo told her.
“I know you can catch me.” The girl reached out to run her fingers across the fuzzy top of a cattail. “This is sort of like a field trip.”
“You go on field trips for school?” Jo asked.
“We went to the zoo in Washington last year. It was pretty awesome.”
“What was your favorite animal?”
The girl didn’t hesitate. “The pandas. They were amazing.”
“I’ve never seen a live panda,” Jo admitted.
“You should go.” Vanessa looked around at the farm and sighed. “My mom would like it here.”
Jo watched her a moment as she stood by the pond in her jeans and muddy runners. “Do you and your mom do lots of things together?”
“Not really. She’s busy all the time.”
“What does she do?”
“She always has meetings, with charities and stuff. We’ll probably do more things together when I get older.”
Jo didn’t know what to say to that. “She misses you,” she told the girl after a few false starts.
Now they were collecting eggs. Jo showed the girl the various places where the hens sneaked off to lay, beneath the old seed drill in the barn, or in a musty corner of the haymow. When they had all they could find, the two of them sat on a bench outside the brood house. The rooster strutted over to them, gave them a quick look and kept on going.
“That’s Buster,” the girl said. “He’s like an alarm clock.”
“You’ve been listening to Henry.” Jo let the name slip before she could stop it.
The girl caught it, of course. She looked up at Jo and smiled. She didn’t say anything.
That night Jo sat on the porch, drinking tea and listening to the farm. Henry came out, bottle in hand, and sat down. It was nearly ten o’clock, well past his bedtime. He poured wine into a jam jar and had a drink. Jo waited for him to ask but he didn’t say anything.
“Did she have her bath?” Jo asked.
“Yes.”
“She asleep?”
“She is.”
Jo took a drink of tea, grown cold. “I’ll call the mother tomorrow from Cooperstown. If they agree to the demands, we’ll let the girl go the next day.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We’ll let her go anyway. We can’t win, Henry. All we can do is make sure she doesn’t lose.” Jo rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. “I had it in my mind that she would be a spoiled brat. I actually thought she might be as reprehensible as her father. What is wrong with me that I would think that, Henry?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. And if there was, it was only temporary.”
Jo shook her head. “You know, when we were gathering the eggs—do you know who I was thinking about?”
“You were thinking about Grace.”
“I wasn’t though,” Jo said. “I should have been thinking about Grace. But I was thinking about Susan. What she would say if she knew what we were doing.”
Henry watched her as he drank from the glass.
“And what she would say,” Jo continued, “is that Vanessa needs to be home with her mother. And she would cuss me out royally while she said it.”
“And what would you tell her?” Henry asked.
“I’d tell her she was right.”