“Do you think it might flood today?”
Myron looked over at the rushing water. “I’d say it’s likely.”
“How far is the bluff from here?”
“Mile. Mile and a half. Why?”
“I think Finn’s there. Or shewillbe. If we hurry, we can catch her.”
Myron’s skepticism caused him to hesitate momentarily before finally assenting. “Okay. Follow me.”
The creek continued to rise as the rain continued to fall. They reached a bend in the creek, and the water was so high that the lowest boughs of the cedars were fighting against the current andthe ferns clinging to the mossy bank were gasping for air. “We’re almost there,” Myron said, peering down at his GPS.
As they rounded the bend, it was clear the creek had indeed flooded. The forest floor was now a rippling pool of gray water that extended from the creek bed to the base of the granite cliffs to the south. “It looks like the swamps I used to kayak on when I lived in Georgia,” Joel said, coming to a stop. “Without the gators.”
Zadie dipped a boot into the floodwater, and all but the top lace disappeared. Myron looked out over the floodplain and pointed west. “Bluff’s that way,” he shouted over the rain. “We have to cross it.”
Without another word, the three of them waded into the water. Zadie looked down and almost didn’t recognize the murky, quivering reflection staring back at her. This woman with the wet hair and determined gaze was not the same Zadie as the one who’d left Texas with a beach bag full of romance novels.
ThatZadie wouldn’t have trudged through a rainstorm in the middle of the wilderness.
ThatZadie wouldn’t have broken the promise she’d made to herself to never use her ability.
ThatZadie never wanted to see her mother again.
This Zadie, she realized, did.
She ignored the water splashing inside of her boots, ignored the stitch in her side and the burn in her muscles. Her sister needed her. Her mom needed her. And so she forged ahead through the drowning wood.
Myron slowed as they came to what appeared to be the western edge of the white pine forest. “We’re here,” he said. Zadie’s heart vaulted into her throat. She was about to rush ahead when Myron held her back. “The rock is slick.” His tone was sobering, parental. “Be careful.”
Zadie nodded and stepped out of the forest onto a rocky outcropping. If Myron hadn’t told her otherwise, she would have assumed she was wading through another branch of the creek. The water wasn’t stagnant here, but flowed steadily across the smooth sheets of shale down a nearly imperceptible hill to the lip of a cliff. Where the water went after that, Zadie couldn’t see, but what she could see through the rain was the thin frame of her sister silhouetted by an expanse of ashen sky. She was wearing a bright yellow raincoat, hood down. Her normally buoyant black curls hung in sad wet clumps like kelp washed up on the sand after a storm. She didn’t move, but the wind moved her, the same gentle swaying motion that tricks birds into thinking scarecrows are alive.
Instinctively, Zadie took a hurried step forward and felt the ground slip underneath her. Her heart leaped, and she took a moment to steady herself before calling out, “Finn!”
Finn didn’t give any sign of having heard her, just like her mom hadn’t heard her when she’d found her teetering on the edge of another precarious drop-off six years earlier. That cliff, however, had been still and dry. This cliff had a current.
Zadie looked over her shoulder and locked eyes with Joel, who was following a few steps behind. He looked frightened. “Do you want me to grab her?”
“No,” Zadie replied, trying to keep her voice steady. She caught Myron’s eye, too. “I don’t want to spook her. Let me try and talk to her before we try anything else.”
Joel was about to respond, but Myron beat him to it. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Zadie turned back around and began inching forward. If she startled her sister on the slick rocks, Finn might vanish over the edge of the cliff with the floodwater. From their back porch, the Van Houten girls might see her fall, a drop of yellow amidst the shower of blues and grays. If they blinked, they would miss her.
Panic had Zadie by the throat. She could feel it tighten the closer she got to the edge of the bluff. Zadie tried talking to Finn again,hoping that maybe she hadn’t heard her the first time she’d spoken. “Finn, it’s Zadie. Are you okay?” she said. She tried to sound calm, but her voice wavered.
No answer. The rain was falling sideways now. Mist rose from the exposed shale that had spent the previous day baking in the sun. To Zadie, it both looked and felt like a bad dream.
“Look. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m just going to start talking.” Zadie swallowed. “Wherever you think you are, you’re not. Whatever you do, donottake another step. I want you to turn around very slowly. Turn toward the sound of my voice.”
Finn did not turn. She did not move.
Zadie took another cautious step forward. “You’re having an echo, Finn. Do you remember what that means? It means you’re not yourself. It means whatever you think is happening happened a long time ago… to someone else.”
Six feet of water still stood between her and her sister, only it wasn’t really her sister. Finn was trapped in a memory, and Zadie had a pretty good guess as to whom it belonged to. It was her she needed to reach.
“Mom?”