Read Stars Go Blue for Free Online Page B

the words and columns and figures and facts.
    She stamps her feet to warm up, glides her hand over the chicken, and then notices, with a start, how clean the chicken house is. The cement floor is mostly devoid of chicken shit; there’s only the clean hay that has been kicked around by the chickens themselves. It’s clean enough, in fact, that she knows it must have been cleaned today. She pauses, cocks her head. “Jess?” She calls it out, in the cool air of the chicken house, and then leans her head out the door and calls it again.
    She stares into the silence created by the boom of her voice. A squirrel has paused halfway up a tree. The donkeys have raised their heads. The hayfields and distant mountains all sit in silent white. And then she hears the clink of hoof on wood, and she walks out of the chicken house and into the shed next door, the one in which they stack the best hay and alfalfa, and she sees Jess in there with Fury, the horse, both in the space created by missing bales, in a cavern created by still-green hay. The horse is standing, shifting his weight, but Jess is sitting on a bale, leaning against another bale, just lying there, in a ratty old sleeping bag, looking as if she’s dozing. She’s wearing a gray flannel shirt that used to belong to Ben and a Carhartt jacket and a bright pink hand-knitted hat that someone in the Alzheimer’s support group made for her. She looks up at Renny with one eye.
    â€œWarming up,” she says. “Smells good in here.”
    â€œ Why do you have a sleeping bag in a hay shed?”
    Jess rubs her nose and shrugs.
    â€œThere’s a house for warming up. You could come inside .”
    â€œI like it here.”
    Renny simply doesn’t know what to do with blankness. “You just carry a sleeping bag around with you?” She cocks her head and stares. It’s true that Jess is beautiful, more beautiful than anyone in the family. Fine dark brown hair and green eyes with eyelashes long enough to belong on a horse. A perfect dimple on one side, which rarely shows. Tall and slender and beautiful. A lot like Rachel, except that Jess has a still-noble presence and a quiet watchfulness that is like Ben. And it’s this centeredness—Renny decides that’s the right word—that gives Jess her deep beauty, which is shining so bright right now that Renny has to scowl at it, otherwise she will gasp.
    â€œWell, yes. On the saddle.”
    Jess always speaks with the tone of voice that ends conversations, no upward lilt, no invitation to keep speaking. She’s done speaking, and Renny would like to strangle her. Instead, she pauses, breathes, tries to make her voice more pleasant. “Was it you that cleaned the chicken house?” And when Jess nods affirmative with a shrug, Renny nods at the room, then at Jess, which is her way of saying thanks. “Well, why aren’t you going to Mexico? They could take you.”
    Jess gives her a look of amused delight. “Goodness, Renny. It’s a romantic getaway. Plus, I don’t want to go.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause I want to be here right now.”
    â€œAnd why is that?”
    Jess shrugs, as if it’s obvious. Then she says, “Renny, you’re all right.”
    Renny lets the horse nuzzle her jacket, which makes a swishing noise. “You want to be here, in this cold wasteland of an idiot winter, and stay by yourself in that house, and not go to Mexico, and not come stay with us. Do I have that right, Jess?”
    â€œYes,” Jess says.
    Renny hears the gruff of her voice, and she tries to calm it. “Jess, I don’t understand you. Not one bit.”
    â€œI like it here.”
    â€œBut no normal person would like it here, Jess.”
    Jess shrugs.
    â€œWhy don’t you go talk to Grandpa, at least?”
    â€œI just did. He went past me on his way on a walk, so I walked with him to the middle gate. He was talking